October 14, 2016 - WRECKING BALL EDUCATION - Blinded By Science, Pt 2: Thorndike, Yerkes, Sanger, Terman, and Snedden and the Rise of Educational Eugenics (original) (raw)
The Progress of Eugenics: Growth of Knowledge and Change in Ideology
History of Science, 1988
A BIAS TOWARD THE SUBJECTIVE SIDE OF SCIENCE? This paper sketches the general development of eugenics from the beginning of the twentieth century up to its middle, concentrating on a comparison of England and America with Germany and Scandinavia. The main purpose is to bring out the role that genetic science played in the process, through advances in knowledge as well as through a normative influence of scientific method on public thinking. In other words, this paper presents a case study of interaction between the growth of scientific knowledge and change in political ideology. It focuses on the effect that these two kinds of factors had on eugenic policy. As the account will illustrate, genetic science does not provide arguments either against or for eugenics in general, only for or against specific proposals.' But since political decisions are concerned with more or less specified proposals, the development of genetic knowledge may well have been decisive for the development of eugenics. The greater the benefits to be achieved, the more attractive will eugenic policies appear and the less serious the objections. One good reason for the continuing interest in the history of eugenics is that it demonstrates so well the problematic relationship of science to politics. While genetics provides one of the greatest success stories of scientific progress in the twentieth century, the application ofthe new knowledge in social policy has been highly controversial. Historical accounts of how science interacted with politics in this case have also been highly varied. A rationalist tradition, popular in the scientific community, has looked upon genetic science as a main source of moderation and sanity: it is when scientific and political issues are confused, and especially when free formation and communication of scientific opinion is suppressed, that evil varieties of eugenics have the best chance to prosper. But this view of science as a progressive social factor which enlightens and dissipates prejudices, has met strong challenges. Critics have claimed that when eugenic policies were abandoned, it was due only, or primarily, to ideological reorientation, not to growing scientific knowledge. Some have even considered science itself to be a main source of the evils, its spirit of objectivity and efficiency destroying other human values.
Resuscitating Bad Science: Eugenics Past and Present
2012
One hundred years ago, the discourse among America's economic, political, and scientific elite focused on "weeding out" the "unfit" people of the nation in order to make way for "well-born, " "superior" people to flourish and achieve the socalled "American Dream. " Now, in the 21st century, we are witness to a modern version of the same agenda, an agenda that serves to devalue people. The push for privatization and corporate models of education provides structure around the assumption that some people are worth more than others (Kohn, 2004; Woods, 2004). Reformers who wave around international test score comparisons in support of their ever more draconian pursuit of test-driven mandates fail to see the irony: What those comparisons show is not that the United States is behind, but that the United States fails its poor, Black, and Brown children. If we compare American White, middle-class and wealthy students with similar students in other industrialized countries, the test scores are comparable, if not better (Berliner, 2005). Current school reform agendas do not seek to rectify this problem. Rather, these agendas show that profit margins now outweigh humanity in the public sphere (Gould, 1996; Iverson, 2005). The message we hear today is less caustic than it was a century ago: We no longer talk about forced sterilization of the feebleminded, but the basic ideological rationale that allows us to live in a society that is so rewarding of the wealthy, and so punishing of the poor, remains intact (Winfield, 2007). Nineteenth-century social Darwinism and 20th-century eugenics spell out in stark terms who among us is worthy and who among
You can't keep a bad idea down: Dark history, death, and potential rebirth of eugenics
Be careful what you wish for": This adage guides both how this project came to life, and how the topic covered in this review continues to unfold. What began as talks between two friends on shared interests in military history led to a 4-year discussion about how our science curriculum does little to introduce our students to societal and ethical impacts of the science they are taught. What emerged was a curricular idea centered on how "good intentions" of some were developed and twisted by others to result in disastrous consequences of state-sanctioned eugenics. In this article, we take the reader (as we did our students) through the long and soiled history of eugenic thought, from its genesis to the present. Though our focus is on European and American eugenics, we will show how the interfaces and interactions between science and society have evolved over time but have remained ever constant. Four critical 'case studies' will also be employed here for deep, thoughtful exploration on a particular eugenic issue. The goal of the review, as it is with our course, is not to paint humanity with a single evil brush. Instead, our ambition is to introduce our students/readers to the potential for harm through the misapplication and misappropriation of science and scientific technology, and to provide them with the tools to ask the appropriate questions of their scientists, physicians, and politicians.
The 'Science' of Eugenics: America's Moral Detour
2014
Eugenics was popularized in the in the United States in the 1890s. High school and college textbooks from the 1920s through the 1940s often had chapters touting the scientific progress to be made from applying eugenic principles to the population. Many early scientific journals focusing on heredity in plants and lower organisms were published by eugenicists and included “scientific” articles on human eugenics-promoting studies of heredity. When eugenics fell out of favor after World War II, most references to eugenics were removed from textbooks and subsequent editions of relevant journals. We cannot erase history. To do so would allow it to repeat itself. Definition of Eugenics Eugenics is a science that deals with the improvement (as by control of human mating) of hereditary qualities of a race or breed. 2 The word is derived from the Greek word eu (good or well) and the suffix -genes (born). Eugenics is sometimes broadly applied to describe any human action whose goal is to impro...
Roles of Science in Eugenics (Eugenics Archives)
The relationship of eugenics to science is intricate and many-layered, starting with Sir Francis Galton’s original definition of eugenics as “the science of improving stock”. Eugenics was originally conceived of not only as a science by many of its proponents, but as a new, meliorative science emerging from findings of a range of nascent sciences, including anthropology and criminology in the late 19th-century, and genetics and psychiatry in the early 20th-century. Although during the years between the two World Wars many central claims made by eugenicists were critiqued by scientists in these disciplines, in more recent years forms of eugenics (e.g., liberal eugenics”) have been defended as an inevitable outcome of biotechnologies and respect for autonomous choice. Understanding the shifting and varied roles that science has played in eugenics requires an appreciation of the ways in which science and values are intertwined.
Eugenics history: university geneticists respond
Nature, 2020
The same technological tools that spread misinformation and influence elections are now taking aim at our natural world. Misinformation campaigns on social media are particularly rampant and troubling in Brazil. In the past year, backers of Jair Bolsonaro's government burnt vast tracts of the Amazon rainforest to support largescale agribusiness, further accelerating the current rate of Amazonian deforestation (see go.nature.com/341rxda). These environmental atrocities are being denied on social media, despite evidence from Brazil's own National Institute for Space Research (INPE). Bolsonaro seeks to end fines for environmental crimes. He has accused scientists of falsifying data (see go.nature.com/ 341bj4e; in Portuguese) and, last August, he dismissed INPE director Ricardo Galvão -listed in Nature as one of the ten most important scientists of 2019 (Nature 576, 361-372; 2019). He is also demeaning and demoralizing Amazonian Indians, who have inhabited these forests for millennia, in his Facebook broadcasts -probably, in our view, to justify the exploitation and environmental degradation. Moreover, the flames of last summer's fires in the Amazon were fanned on social media: individual actions were coordinated and amplified to inflict irreversible damage on this unique ecosystem. We call for a renewed commitment to trustworthy information and to those who fight for the rights of all living beings.
Commentary: From Liberal Eugenics to Political Biology
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 2019
This essay is a comment upon: Agar, N. 2019. ‘Why We Should Defend Gene Editing as Eugenics’. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics. 28(1): 9–19. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180118000336\. As its title suggests, Agar’s essay is an attempt to defend gene editing and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) as eugenics. Although he seeks to distinguish between this essay and his previous efforts, this article continues a program of work that began with his 1998 paper Liberal Eugenics. One reason why eugenic interventions—as commonly understood—are objectionable is that they require intolerable infringements on reproductive freedom. Agar’s thinking is that if a liberal approach is taken—meaning that parents should be allowed to choose whether to enhance their children in accordance with their values—then at least some things that might rightly be termed eugenic (in his idiosyncratically broad conception of “liberal eugenics”)—cease to be morally objectionable. However, in contrast to his earlier work….