Monday, February 18, 2008

Eugenics And Education

Another author who has touched on this subject is John Taylor Gatto. In his book "Underground History of American Education", he talks about arrival of eugenics between 1890 and 1920:

The American Birth Control League1 left no doubt about its plans. Its position, as expressed by Yale psychologist Arnold L. Gesell, was that "society need not wait for perfection of the infant science of eugenics before proceeding upon a course which will prevent renewal of defective protoplasm contaminating the stream of life." Gesell’s The Family and the Nation (1909), a thorough product of the new zeitgeist, advocated "eugenic violence" in dealing with inferiors. According to Gesell, "We must do as with the feebleminded, organize the extinction of the tribe." [emphases added]

IOW, kill those deemed "unfit" by the American Birth Control League.

And this:

The eugenics movement begun by Galton in England was energetically spread to the United States by his followers. Besides destroying lesser breeds (as they were routinely called) by abortion, sterilization, adoption, celibacy, two-job family separations, low-wage rates to dull the zest for life, and, above all, schooling to dull the mind and debase the character, other methods were clinically discussed in journals, including a childlessness which could be induced through easy access to pornography.2 At the same time those deemed inferior were to be turned into eunuchs, Galtonians advocated the notion of breeding a super race.

He also speaks about racial suicide here:

Advocates of Yaleman Gesell’s "eugenic violence" offensive against the underclasses swung from every point on the scientific compass. William McDougall, the eminent social psychologist, announced himself a champion of Nordic superiority; Ellsworth Huntington, prominent Yale geographer, wrote The Character of Races, showing that only one race had any real moral character. Henry Fairfield Osborn, president and founder of the American Museum of Natural History, gave the "Address of Welcome" to the Second International Congress of Eugenics; Osborn’s close friend Lothrop Stoddard wrote The Revolt Against Civilization: Menace of the Underman; and psychologist James McKeen Cattell, a force in the rise of standardized testing, wrote to Galton, "We are following in America your advice and example."

The famous humanitarian anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber remarked acidly to a newsman that anti-eugenic protests came only from the "orthodoxly religious," rarely from the enlightened camp of science. So there it was. Keep them all in mind: Kroeber, Gesell, Ripley, McDougall, Huntington, Osborn, great scientific humanist names whose work underscored how important a role forced schooling was designed to play. Scientific studies had shown conclusively that extending the duration and intensity of schooling caused sharp declines in fertility—and sterility in many. Part of school’s stealth curriculum would be a steady expansion of its reach throughout the century.


Do we not see this happening today in schools? How many of our public schools across the country have become nothing more than PP centers? This all ties together very neatly for the pro-death crowd.

I have to say when I first read JTG's book, I was more than a little angry. He doesn't intentionally want people to become angry, just to wake up to what is going on. Many parents in the 1940's and 1950's were vilified for placing their children in Catholic schools. The same thing is being done to those who homeschool. Two very positive ways to keep their children out of the hands of the pro-death lobby.

I also have to say that not a single person has successfully refuted any of his facts. That is telling in and of itself.