Scientists, policy-makers, and other leaders have made many attempts to reduce racism in our society. They’ve found that projects focused on helping victims or punishing those who commit racial violence can help, but these approaches don’t address the root cause. People learn racism from many different sources, such as education or familial relationships, making removing it entirely a difficult option.
One challenge they’ve faced is that many people don’t realize the concept of race isn’t based on biology, but is, instead, a product of society. This misunderstanding could exist because the current educational system teaches a simplified understanding of genetics, focusing on how changes in single genes can change a person.
Simplified genetics can cause students to develop a black-and-white understanding of how physical traits are passed from one generation to another, but biology is more complex than that. For example, previous scientists have shown that early childhood experiences can impact the genes in our bodies that regulate stress.
Researchers in the past have shown that when students are taught that one gene can decide if someone has a disease or not, it’s easy for them to assume that all differences between people, including race, are due to genes. Teachers have tried removing race-based vocabulary when teaching genetics, but that doesn’t change the overall course content or the students’ assumptions.
Researchers led by Brian Donovan addressed this challenge by presenting a new way to teach genetic complexity, called humane genomics. Humane genomics highlights how the environment can affect people’s genes. The researchers proposed that a humane genomics curriculum could help teach young people that a person’s environment and social interactions play a large part in differentiating all humans, including racial groups.
To test their idea, the authors worked with over 1,000 students in 14 high schools and 1 middle school. The schools were spread throughout 6 states, including Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, with 1 biology teacher participating from each school. The teachers received 40 hours of training on how to include humane genomics in their curricula and how to connect it to what they already taught. In half the classes, the teachers taught a simple genetics unit followed by a humane genomics unit. In the other half, teachers taught the same units in reverse order.
The researchers asked the students to take a survey before they began, and again after each unit. The surveys included questions about the students’ basic knowledge of genetics and genomics, their beliefs about racism and its causes, and their thoughts about what they had learned. The researchers found that leading with humane genomics caused 24% fewer students to believe that genes form racial differences than leading with genetics. In addition, 50% of the students who were taught humane genomics first said they gained a better understanding of how the environment can affect human genes.
Donovan and colleagues concluded that how we teach genetics to students in the USA can impact their beliefs and knowledge about race. However, they cautioned that their results cannot yet be generalized to other countries. Since the teachers required additional training to effectively teach this new curriculum, it also added extra costs in both time and money.
Despite these limitations, the team suggested that their results could help change genetics education for the better. They hope that focusing on young people can lead to a larger change in our overall society.
