Matthews Lucas J
Department of Medical Humanities and Ethics, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.
The Hastings Center, Garrison, NY, USA.
Camb Q Healthc Ethics. 2024 Nov 7:1-17. doi: 10.1017/S096318012400046X.
The day has arrived that genetic tests for educational outcomes are available to the public. Today parents and students alike can send off a sample of blood or saliva and receive a 'genetic report' for a range of characteristics relevant to education, including intelligence, math ability, reading ability, and educational attainment. DTC availability is compounded by a growing "precision education" initiative, which proposes the application of DNA tests in schools to tailor educational curricula to children's genomic profiles. Here I argue that these happenings are a strong signal of the geneticization of education; the process by which educational abilities and outcomes come to be examined, understood, explained, and treated as primarily genetic characteristics. I clarify what it means to geneticize education, highlight the nature and limitations of the underlying science, explore both real and potential downstream bioethical implications, and make proposals for mitigating negative impacts.
面向公众的教育成果基因检测的时代已经到来。如今，家长和学生都可以寄出一份血液或唾液样本，然后收到一份关于一系列与教育相关特征的“基因报告”，这些特征包括智力、数学能力、阅读能力和学业成就。直接面向消费者的基因检测的普及因一项不断发展的“精准教育”倡议而变得更加复杂，该倡议提议在学校应用DNA检测，以便根据儿童的基因组概况调整教育课程。在此，我认为这些情况是教育基因化的一个强烈信号；在这个过程中，教育能力和成果开始被审视、理解、解释，并被主要当作基因特征来对待。我阐明了教育基因化的含义，强调了基础科学的本质和局限性，探讨了实际的和潜在的下游生物伦理影响，并提出了减轻负面影响的建议。
