All right. Hello, welcome to Eugenics. Let me get my face in the video. I'm not
good with this. There we go. Welcome to
Eugenics. I'm Lydia Fecteau. You may
see videos of me looking slightly
different. Some of our videos are a
little older from the last or previous
times I've taught this course. One of
which I was recovering from pneumonia so
I apologize for my looks in those
videos. Let me explain to you what you
see in front of you. Here is our syllabus
so let me quickly go over some of the
areas of the syllabus that are important
to you. First off my name, so this is my
contact information. If you prefer for
some reason to find the need to put
something in my box my mailbox is in J
105 which is the skill center a Writing
Lab. Since I'm doing this course online, I
won't be having office hours. If you want
to come speak with me for any reason in
person just set up an appointment. I live
10 minutes from the college and I'm more
than happy to come over any weekday
Monday through Thursday, as you know the
college is closed on Fridays. My phone
number here is my cell phone. If you
call that, you'll probably get an
answering machine. I will respond within
24 hours to any phone calls, a little
quicker if you text me so feel free to
text me for any questions you may have
even if it's like is "when is paper due"
though everything should be also
available to you about that kind of
material
on blackboard, but if you have any
specific questions about anything
dealing with the class or, you know, if
you are doing research and want some
more information or some guidance, don't
hesitate to contact me. Next is my email
address. My Stockton email I checked that
constantly all throughout the day so
that's a great way to get in contact
with me. Now even though we have two
books for this class only one you have
to purchase. The other one is available
free and is loaded on blackboard already.
So the one that you have to purchase is
War Against the Weak and it's a pretty
hefty book. It is available in Kindle
form as well as it should be at the
bookstore. The other book I have is
called Race and Membership in American
History and those ones I have loaded up,
as PDF files, the different chapters of this
book. It is available free from the Facing
History website. For this class, our
requirements are you will have weekly
journals, discussion boards, and quizzes.
The journals basically are graded in
the following way:
if you have met the minimum word
requirement, have shown me some paragraph
development by having at
least two paragraphs, and you've answered
the question-- you get full points. They're
worth 20 points each. If you have only one
paragraph, you lose two points. If you're
on or if you are under 150 words, you lose
two points. If you're answering something
that has nothing to do with the question
I asked, you may lose a couple of points.
The weekly discussion boards are pass/fail for the
most part, most of them are worth ten
points each.
There are a few that are going to be
worth five points. For example in our
first week, there is an introduction
discussion board which is asking you to
post your name, your major, or why you
chose to take this class, and also I'm
asking you to identify yourself.
What kind of groups do you most
associate with?
I'll get back to that one in just a
second. That discussion was only
worth five points, but you only have to
post once. Most of our other discussion
boards are worth ten points and they
require an original post from you and
then a response to a classmate. As
long as both are thoughtful,
you'll receive full credit. If your
response to a classmate is yeah Clement
has a great point there. Now
give me a little bit more all right.
Quizzes are going to be based on that
week's readings or for example in weak one
asking you to also watch a video from
the Twilight Zone
so any extra material I'm asking you to
read or look at will be on the quizzes.
Things in the lectures maybe on the
quizzes and the quizzes will be ten
multiple choice and true/false questions
and a extra credit question. Once in a
while I may throw an essay question in
them, but they're rare. Then there'll be
three papers ranging from three to five
pages and I put in there are 
projects because your last assignment is
not a paper,
it's a PowerPoint and I'll explain more
about that in just a second. As you see
they're each worth fifteen percent of
your grade for grand total of forty five
percent I think I'm going to have the
wrong
count here.
No, that's right.
Then our final exam is worth 15%, and
the final exam will be divided into two
parts: part one will be multiple choice
questions-- very similar to your quizzes
including you may see occasionally the
same question, and then the other half
will be essay questions some of which
may look like some of your discussions
and journals so there'll be a mixed
grouping. I divided it up so that way part
one of the exam is is going to be the
multiple choice and that will be graded
by the computer very quickly. The other
part is the essay which will be graded by me so
that may take a little bit longer to
grade. All right, for your papers. Your
first paper should have a minimum of a
a thousand words, excuse me,
a minimum of thousand words. I'm asking
you to do MLA formatting. I'll have some
links to help you with that, and it's
going to cover the issue of an
employment of eugenics which I'm sorry. With ideas employed before
World
War two. So, for example, in World War two,
excuse me, so for example you can analyze
the early scientific or social origins
of eugenics, early immigration policy,
race laws, the ugly laws (which we will
explain as the class goes on), treatment
or diagnosis of feeble-mindedness, etc...
Many of these issues that I've mentioned
here have their own separate folder with
extra links to further information. The
paper will be submitted through
blackboard
and it's due on the 10th of July. Your
second paper should have a minimum of
750 words so it's a smaller paper. Again
MLA format, but this time the issues you're
gonna look at is the Holocaust or
institutionalization, which is its own
kind of Holocaust, You can also look at
sterilization, so anything that that
deals with the implication of Eugenics.
In other words trying to make the race
improved in quotation marks and then
finally that's going to be due on July
24th.  Your final project is due on the
last day of class August 8th
and it will be on the impact and/or
future of eugenics. This PowerPoint-- this
project is a PowerPoint which explains
the scientific and social implications
of, you know, this idea of the future of
Eugenics which your one author Edwin
Black nicknames Newgenics, so it's
looking at how well scientific advances
in genetics change our scientific and/or
social use of the potential for the
human race. Is this good?
Are there potential drawbacks? So, you
know, for example is there drawbacks to
this-- this new technique called CRISPR. In
which the genetic material, your genetic
material, is edited. Yes, it can get rid of
defects, but at the same time it can also
maybe have people get to choose what
their child's eye color will be or what
their child's athletic ability will be or
what their child's gender would be.
So think of the potential here and also
think of potential even for getting rid
of so-called defects right now. There's a
big controversy about whether Down's
Syndrome should be eliminated through
this kind of genetic pre-testing. In
other words, checking and seeing if the
embryo is going to be a child with Down
syndrome and if so, just getting rid of
the embryo so many disabilities may find
themselves being wiped out. Deafness
Blindness, etc. Now for some people may
say things like Alzheimer's, getting rid
of that-- that's a good thing but do we
want to get rid of everyone with autism?
So how do we decide and who does the
deciding, and what about the economic
potential. Will this ability to fix genes
be only available to the wealthy? In
which case poor people are stuck with
more genetic flaws. Will this then cause
a greater... disparagement
between the wealthy and the poor? In
this case you're gonna make a PowerPoint
to talk about these and your your
PowerPoint will have at least ten slides.
There should be pictures and script, 
words, explaining how you see the impact
of this scientific pursuit and even
though it's a PowerPoint I want a
bibliography slide which includes at
least three sources. Your first two
papers will also have a minimum of three
sources and there'll be more details as
those papers come closer.
Next I have listed. Because this
is a very shortened course, only six
weeks, please no late work. We can always
talk if
something comes up. Contact me. Now I have
your listings of what we're going to be
looking at for the most part in each
week here as you can see we're not
necessarily reading all the chapters in
Race and Membership. We are going to try to finish most of them in War Against
Weak. Then I tell you that you should
complete all your discussions, journals,
and quizzes in that folder. The grade legend is there.
In completes-- you need to talk to
me, and again any late or work that needs
to be made up, please contact me. Again if
you have any questions,, contact me. And I
will be having lots of these kinds of
powerpoints, I mean videos up. This
video was created through Loom. I will
have two links to all my videos: one
through Loom and one with the video
converted onto YouTube that will be
closed captioned. If you have any questions,
don't hesitate to contact me, and have a
good day.
