Dangerous Liaison: The Eugenics Movement and the Educational State

By the early twentieth century, the educational state and the eugenics movement in Canada had formed a partnership of Puritanical proportions, inflicting a tyranny of social controls and devastating the lives of disadvantaged children who were capriciously classified as feeble-minded and unfit for breeding (Curtis, 1988; McLaren, 1990; Weber, 1958).1 Eugenicists used both environmental and hereditarian arguments to popularize their politics, until their elitist careers finally ended in disgrace along with the eugenics-based ‘final solution’ of the Nazi Holocaust (McLaren, 1990). The alliance between eugenics and education represents a dangerous liaison in Canada’s history, a liaison that is recurring today.