Eugenics

Eugenics (from the Greek roots for good and generation or origin) was an international scientific, political, and moral ideology and movement that reached its height in the first half of the 20th century. Advocates of eugenics touted its potential to improve the quality of the human race through the promotion of higher reproduction of certain people and traits and through the reduction of reproduction of certain people and traits. Following the end of World War II and the recognition of the genocidal enactment of this ideology, it was largely regarded as a brutal movement that inflicted massive human rights violations on millions of people and was substantially abandoned by the mainstream and academia. However, the legacy of eugenics continues to be felt in both policy and practice, as ideologies of race-based characteristics and aptitudes manifest themselves in current regimes of testing, standards, curriculum differentiation, tracking, and segregation of students. There is continuing evidence of eugenics' policies in teacher education, curriculum development, and school organization.

Eugenics was presented as a way that human breeding could be controlled to improve the species. From the beginning, however, there were subtle and overt rhetorics that proved extremely dangerous. In the early part of the 20th century, Americans were increasingly fearful of foreigners and immigration, and local eugenics' societies and groups sprang up around the United States after World War I, with names such as the Race Betterment Foundation. Not only did eugenicists promote better breeding, but also they wanted to prevent poor breeding or the risk of it. In 1924, the Immigration Act was passed by majorities in the U.S. House and Senate. It set up strict quotas limiting immigrants from countries believed by eugenicists to have inferior stock, particularly Southern Europe and Asia.

The most infamous proponent and practitioner of eugenics was Adolf Hitler, who incorporated U.S.-developed ideas and strategies for race betterment into Mein Kampf and emulated eugenic legislation for the sterilization of defectives that had been pioneered in the United States. Hitler was proud of his connection with U.S. eugenicists and drew extensively from their writing and research.

Perhaps the most well-known modern eugeni-cist was William Shockley who, late in his life, became intensely interested in questions of race, intelligence, and eugenics. Shockley believed that the higher rate of reproduction among the less intelligent would lead to a drop in average intelligence and ultimately to a decline in civilization. He proposed that individuals with IQs below 100 be paid to undergo voluntary sterilization.

Shockley created great consternation among other eugenicists, some of whom thought he gave their work a bad name because of his overt racial agenda. Others praised him for breaking the taboo of frank discussions about racial differences.

Unfortunately, the legacy of eugenics is still alive and thriving in our educational system. Not only was Lewis Terman, one of the originators of the Stanford-Binet intelligence test, an early proponent of tracking, but his views were rooted in a eugenic conception of intelligence. He maintained that school instruction could never educate male laborers and female servants to become truly thoughtful, intelligent voters, and intelligence tests have proven this to be true.

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