New York City's Sex-Education and Eugenic Movements in the 1920s

Although public schools in the 1920s lacked formal policies or uniform curriculum for sex education, educational researchers found that by 1927 New York City teachers consistently teaching eugenics as part of this curriculum. In an attempt to understand how the messages of prominent male eugenicists influenced sex education in New York City’s public schools, this paper examines teacher training at Teachers College of Columbia University where sex education training emerged from women’s reform organizations and new developments in educational psychology. In so doing, it brings together historical scholarship on race, eugenics, and reproductive rights. I argue that teacher training in New York City incorporated instructions for eugenic reproductive responsibility in curriculum that discussed such traditionally feminine topics as morality, monogamy, elementary biology, child development, and public health and welfare. Scholars interested in reproductive rights and eugenics identify the 1920s as the moment when lawmakers used eugenic philosophies, often promoted by male scientists, to construct forced sterilization laws. Because the public school sex education movement was shaped by women’s reform organizations, however, sex education placed the male-directed field of eugenics within a female-centered framework. This paper builds on previous scholars contention that fears about racial and societal improvement took precedence in the 1920 and examines how the eugenic movement, led by prominent male eugenicists, and sex education movements, led by female reformers, converged in New York City’s teacher training programs.