CURRICULUM AND

INSTRUCTION
EDU 555
REPORT ON ARTICLE REVIEW:
Putting Humanity Back into the
Teaching of Human Biology

NAME: SYARIFAH LIYANA BINTI SYED MAHADI

STUDENT ID: 2013697472
INSTUCTOR: ENCIK MUHAMMAD FURKAN BIN MAT SALLEH

Not long time ago, racism is very high in European country. The racism is between
Black and White people. They are many factors that cause racism become worst such as racial
prejudice, stereotype and racial inequality. As in Malaysia, there also racism happens because of
colonization of British. British government has make each race are separated by occupation and
geographically. The Malay lives in rural area where they work as farmers while Chinese lives in
town that have industrial development. They have better chances to have education and learn
English. As for Indian, they live in estates managing rubber plantation where it is a new sector
of economy at that time. Thus, they have different income and standard of living that make
inequality become explicitly see by the people.
Therefore, many academician and researchers argue that in biology education should
have origin of races, human evolution, and reason human divided in sub-division. However,
when different between races are discuss in article there seems to be that disparity become
stronger in races because we can see clearly difference amongst ethnic. Early in 20th century,
what the academician want is implemented in the biology textbooks. Nonetheless, scientific
controversies surrounding races cannot be explained properly by science teacher even the
teachers familiar with the curriculum.
Nowadays, races are not discussed directly in the textbook and the teachers avoid
explaining clearly about it to student. This is because they want to stay away from strengthening
the difference between races. Additionally, (Donovan, 2014 as cited in Donovan, 2015) said that
students become strongly agree races are different when eight grades classroom make an
experiment about race in the modern biology curriculum. All this things lead to argument about
vital subject matter knowledge (SMK) that a teacher need to have in order to teach about genetic
and variation in human behavioural without reinforcement inequality beliefs about race.
Actually, it is only foundation for shaping pedagogical content knowledge.
There are four element of SMK. Firstly, psychological essentialism is related with
misinterpretation of human genetic diversity and the principle that racial disparity is
unchangeable. Secondly, biologists can deduce distinct things about the reality of race by using
different ways to the similar genetic data. Thirdly, philosopher who oppose about the reality of
race can each be concerned with remove racial difference. Last but not least, scientific research
on human behaviour not necessarily proofs the essentialist state that racial inequality is
permanent for biological reasons.

In my opinion, usually children do not have what we call racial inequality. They just
treat their friends with different races equally. During their primary and secondary, they might
look at their friends phenotype which is skin colour and tend to be friend with phenotype that
similar with them. Students always curious to know they belong to what group because they feel
important to belong to group such as biological, social and cultural. At this time, the teachers
must play their role as an educator to educate their student that all races have equal in term of
their ability in education, strength and treatment to people. This is because we have
psychological essentialism that said that human is different and racial disparity is unchangeable.
Actually, social-psychologist has studied the outcomes of essentialist thinking and
belief and as result they have two sets of belief which are natural kind thinking and entitative
thinking. Both gives bad effect as they are essentialism that always related with prejudice, and
stereotyping. The effect is people will look less different within racial group such as Malay and
Malay people but more dissimilarity between racial group such as Chinese and Indian. Thus, a
teacher must know that it is prognostic of racial unfairness and misinterpretation of variation
among races without rising discrimination. Even if teacher thinks that biological data does not
hold up the thought that races biological is real they must be careful because biologist can use
same genetic data and use different ways to see the reality of race.
In element two there are four things being discuss that race is not biological if more
genetic variation within populations than between population, race is real if there population
structure in humans thus both can be justified using same genetic data but different technique as
a result the finding is the main point that we want to see the truth of race. Lewontin-Edwards
argue has using different ways to the same genetic data. Lewontin express the argument that race
is not real while Edward argues that race is real. First method is averaging crossways the loci
that have result that more standard genetic difference within populations than among population.
For instance, if we choose Ali and Ah Beng from different racial group and contrast them with
Ahmad and Ah Leong from the same racial group, the result would slightly hereditarily
different. It means here Ali and Ahmad would be slightly different because they have same races
same as Ah Beng and Ah Leong.
Then, variation that has been gathering without averaging across loci somewhat
different things will happens. The example is that between frequencies of identity allele A that
have 47% in Asian, 35% Europe and 41% in Africa and allele B that have 62% in Asian
populations, 40% in Africa and 43% in Europe we can confirm that the ancestry is Asian

because the Asian has the most highest frequency. Thus they can do genetic clustering because it
can give accurate result. Therefore, there is population structure in humans if using identical
genetic data while using different methods. This is why teacher must know about biological data
that it do not have fixed answer whether human nation are real or not. They can help students to
understand even though the reality about race is different but they have same genetic data set.
Philosopher has discussed about the reality of race and has two views which are racial
anti-realist and racial realism but both views consider removing racial dissimilarity. Then, racial
realism divided into biological racial realist (BRR) equal to racial naturalism and social racial
realist (SRR) same as racial constructionism. The one with SRR said that social artifacts appear
into reality through historical acts and retain by social and political practices this days.
Nevertheless, BRR disagree with SRR and said that ethnic group are biological real. Even
though we have biological difference such as skin colour, education and behaviour it does not
assemble that racial dissimilarity is natural and it can be fixed. A teacher can gives students other
option of essentialist vision of human racial inequality if teachers know there is distinct
perception of race that are consider to remove racial disparity by using Haslanger(2000) and
Hardimon(2012) view.
Lastly, in element four we discuss that concept of behaviour does not have fixed
definition even for experts so, people cannot be stereotype about one race such as aggressiveness
and intelligence. There is also method to behavioural research such as Quantity Behavioural
Genetics (QBG), Molecular behavioural genetics (MBG), Gene-environment interactionism
(GEI) and Social-environmentalism (SE). Actually all approached that has been used not
necessarily presenting reason of human behaviour because in reality it only represents some part
of it. This is because human are complex and this making people always can find evidence
culturally, biologically or socially.
In conclusion, the four subject matter knowledge that a teacher must to know may be
one day will be changed into pedagogical content knowledge. Thus we can have science
educator create a curriculum that can make a teacher to teach on race without strengthening the
racial inequality. Science teacher also can have clear goal and objective by reading this SMK. I
am totally agreed that race should discuss clearly in class and in biology textbook because we
live in multicultural nation. We must know other races and have respect for them. Subject matter
knowledge about putting humanity back into teaching human will make students more
understand in human evolution and decline racial discrimination.

REFERENCES

Donovan, B. M. (2015). Putting Humanity back into The Teaching of Human

Biology. Elsevier , 1-11.