Humane Genetics Curriculum

Curriculum Goals 

The goals of this unit are to reduce students’ belief in racial genetic essentialism and improve their ability to refute essentialist arguments by increasing their understanding of 1) human population genetics, 2) multifactorial causation of complex human traits, and 3) how scientists reason with evidence and avoid reasoning errors. 

Curriculum Overview 

The humane genomics curriculum will help your students understand patterns of human genetic variation and the multifactorial basis of complex human traits. When students develop these understandings, research shows, they become less likely to endorse prejudiced views about racial difference. 

Our curriculum materials are the only ones clinically proven through randomized trials to robustly and effectively reduce scientifically inaccurate beliefs in genetic essentialism in students.  

COPYRIGHT AND RESTRICTED USE STATEMENTS

Use of these materials for instructional purposes, and not for financial gain, is allowed under Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND. Using these materials in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence models and technologies is strictly prohibited.

Throughout these materials, various images are used with or adapted with permission from published sources. These images are properly attributed and/or cited in the materials below, and those attributions and/or citations should also be carried over for any instructional uses or adaptations of these materials. In particular, we use or adapt with permission (under Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND) several images from our own published work (Donovan et. al., 2019 and Malerbi et al., 2026).

The materials are to be used for instructional/educational purposes only. Use of these materials for the purposes of professional development, whether for financial gain or not, is strictly prohibited without the express permission of at least one of the curriculum’s copyright owners (Phillip Keck, Brian M. Donovan, Monica Weindling, Andrew Brubaker, Robbee Wedow).

Additional information about the Humane Genetics Curriculum is available here.