A PROBLEM IN EDUCATIONAL EUGENICS 3 61 



lesson of selecting seed corn ; if a state may spend hundreds of thousands 

 every year for exhibitions of blooded stock, the triumphs of horticulture, 

 the fleetness of the race-horse, may it not be worth while to ask an 

 equally serious consideration of the same state and its citizens to the no 

 less equally important problem of how to select and improve the seed 

 destined to yield its fruition in human brains ? And on the other hand, 

 lauding the laws which warrant the slaughter of tuberculous herds, and 

 the common sense of the farmer who relegates his scrubs and dwarfs to 

 the shambles, what are these same sensible people doing toward a similar 

 process of eliminating defective and unprofitable human stock ? Almost 

 nothing. Almost! It is matter for note that already nearly a dozen 

 states have taken steps to cure some of these human blights. There is 

 not time for details, but they exist. Such are glimpses of facts all too 

 common and dominant. They cry for attention and intelligent treat- 

 ment. They constitute in a special sense an educational problem the 

 importance of which is beyond computation. It is our problem; what is 

 to be our attitude ? 



Educational Eugenics. — It has seemed to me for some time that 

 there should be found an application for the principles of eugenics in 

 the work of education in general, and for that of higher education in 

 particular. In seeking light on the problem I have submitted certain 

 queries to a considerable number whose work or concern in such matters 

 I know to be great enough to warrant inquisition. For example, to Dr. 

 Davenport I put the following : 



I have long felt that for some reason we are failing to get the best results 

 from college training, due in part, as I believe, to the fact that instead of 

 affording opportunity and stimulus to the capable student, to the man of brains 

 and fitness, the dead level of mediocrity is a constant check on just the man who 

 could profit by it. We level down to the average man or below, and the capable 

 fellow, unless selected by individual interest, is left to drift in idleness or worse. 

 Can there not be devised some means whereby the incapable may be deflected 

 from a college course? Why may it not be practicable to devise a scheme of 

 entrance tests whereby some sort of mental pedigree may be made evident? 

 Why not include pedigree examinations as a part of the medical examination 

 now generally exacted? 



To another was asked this additional question : 



Can not a means be found for giving to eugenics a distinctly educational 

 direction as well as the conventional physical? The crucial query is How to 

 get at it? 



To still another: 



American education has been recently designated as a Proliferating medi- 

 ocrity. How can this charge be refuted? What is the way out? Is it not pos- 

 sible to secure some sort of family-school-pedigree record as a basis for education? 



To these varied inquiries various replies have been received. Some 

 have been extremely suggestive, others have been conservative to the 

 point of the worse than helpless. For example, one in reply says 



VOL. LXXXIII. — 25. 



