The+Science+Connection

====To begin our exploration of racism, we began by examining where racist attitudes come from to begin with. To begin this we explored the notion of animal classification by learning about Carlos Linnaeus and his book [|Systema Naturae] in which the botanist divided all living things, including humans, into catagories based on their physical characteristics. In his classification of humans, he also explained which catagory was superior (I bet you can guess which one). Future scientists went on to continue his work and through this racism was born. We used the site [|RACE: Are We so Different] to explore this. Check it out, it is really very interesting.====
 * Animal Classification **

====One of the assignments that my students were required to do was Create-A-Creature. In this assignment they pretended that they were explorers that discovered a new species. They used [|Wikipedia's] taxonomy listings to classify their new creatures. (See right hand column under Scientific Classification)====



The Cell ==== Once we discovered that there are no genetic reasons for race distinction and that it is only a human construction, we began to learn about how cells are structured and what they need to do to create new ones. ====

 DNA Our final step in our exploration of the Science of Racism is to look at DNA and how it is responsible for determining human characteristics. We began by extracting DNA from our own cheek cells to see the structure of a clump of DNA!