Modern American education, Winfield (historical and philosophical foundations, Roger Williams U.) argues, was conceived and formed in an ideological context in which racist eugenics was being championed by "venerated professors, ivy league universities, wealth philanthropists and industrialists, educators, armies of social workers and medical professionals, and government officials of all stripes." Not only did this have a deep impact on the structures, ideologies, practices, and curricula of the time, but also its influence has persisted in multiple ways by means of collective familial and institutional memories. She in her opening contextual chapters, she examines how eugenicists pursued their agenda through popular culture, ties eugenics into prior forms of race theory in the United States, introduces the Progressive context within which the translation of Social Darwinism into the pseudo-scientific ideology emerged, and traces the success of the eugenics movement in creating government policy. She then turns to the question of education describing the eugenic elements of the theories of the "Fathers of the Curriculum" (Thorndike, Bobbitt, Hall, etc.) and discusses the translation of eugenic ideology into popular conceptions of schooling through the 1950s. Annotation 2007 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
