SOME ASPECTS OF INSTRUCTION IN EUGENICS 

 OTIS W. CALDWELL 



Institute of School Experimentation, Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, N. Y. 



"If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been 

 churches and poor men's cottages, prince's palaces." — Shakespere. 



There have been several ways of providing education in eugenics — public 

 lectures, magazine articles, books, research publications and group discus- 

 sions. These efforts have convinced large numbers of people that biological 

 knowledge, if properly used, may greatly increase its service to the human 

 race. Such services may be comparable to those which men have accomplished 

 through their careful production of such animals as race and draft horses, 

 or milk and beef cattle, that conform fairly well to the ideals toward which 

 the channels of inheritance have been directed. Men direct their animals 

 and plants by guiding them and by applying such restraints and controls as 

 are necessary. Men who wish to produce a superior race horse or beef 

 animal now plan for it "even to the third and fourth generation" in advance 

 of existing race horses and beef cattle. 



For themselves, however, men depend largely upon the controls and guides 

 supplied by each individual. Small groups — part of the feeble-minded, or 

 part of the criminal class — are arbitrarily controlled, those being at the 

 lowest levels of human conduct. Little is done as yet toward selection of 

 human types comparable to the superior animal types men insist upon. 

 Men depend upon guidance resulting from education, and when education 

 is absent or when humans are too poor in quality to profit it, eugenical 

 control is in a bad way. 



This paper will deal with public school education and not with valuable 

 work being undertaken by other agencies. 



From the point of view of those interested in making public education 

 more effective, the problems of eugenics are not easily separated from related 

 problems in inheritance and in social controls. Most of us, I suppose, agree 

 in large part with Galton's definition that eugenics is "the study of the agen- 

 cies under social control, which may improve or impair the racial qualities of 

 future generations either physically or mentally." However, this definition 

 does not give emphasis to certain outstanding facts which must be recog- 

 nized if the education of young persons regarding eugenics is to be effective. 



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