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What does it mean when education is considered a threat to population? As an education student, I am interested in the ways population panics are essentialized and circulated in formal education settings. Schools can play a major role in shaping our beliefs about population, and their responsibility to address population critically within their political contexts cannot be overlooked. In the early aughts, a Hampshire College survey identified that many U.S. textbooks failed to cover the basics of demography, and instead relied on reductive, stigmatizing, and alarmist overpopulation frameworks. In these classrooms, images of the “population bomb” took precedence over nuance, and students learned to fear population changes before they understood them. In contrast with such antinatal ideology, classrooms in recent years have become targets of a rise in pronatal ideology, which fosters fears about civilization collapse and demographic overtaking by non-native, non-white populations.
Studying Eugenics
Importantly, the role of education in spreading population disinformation far predates the aughts. The eugenics movement in the United States, perhaps the most widespread “population panic,” also made a significant appearance in schools. As it...