Deselection of the Bottom 8%: Lessons from Eugenics for Modern School Reform

By Cedar Riener | July 19, 2011

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, to prevent our being swamped with incompetence.

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1927)

The majority of our teachers are hardworking and effective. But the previous estimates point clearly to the key imperative of eliminating the drag of the bottom teachers.

Eric Hanushek (2011)

One common strain of modern education reform has a direct, yet familiar logic: An education crisis persists despite more spending, smaller classes, or curricular changes. We have ignored the major cause of student achievement: teacher quality. Seniority and tenure have diluted the pool of talented teachers and impeded student learning. Reformers such as Michelle Rhee have acted on this assumption, implementing test-based accountability measures, merit pay, and lesser job protections. Unfortunately, the current educational reform movement shares its logic with the early-twentieth-century American eugenics movement, which in efforts to improve our gene pool, wrote a horrific chapter in our history.

In suggesting this provocative comparison, I hope to guide readers through three shared errors. Both eugenics and modern school reform view education too deterministically, share a faith in standardized tests, and exaggerate the fixedness of traits. Considering this comparison requires a reconsideration of early eugenics, not as merely precursors to Nazis, but as an optimistic and Progressive movement. What is now disdained as pseudoscientific racism was once widely accepted. To learn from history, however, we must not dismiss our ancestors as evil or senseless. Recognizing the noble intentions of the past allows us to compare it to the present and find the same misguided assumptions about human nature.

What was eugenics? In the decades after Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species (1859) loud protests became acceptance, and many hoped to combine Darwin’s findings with newly re-discovered genetic mechanisms of inheritance. Scientific research satisfied a collective urge for deterministic explanations; if our genes determine our intelligence, our personalities, and our futures, this knowledge could be used to improve humanity. How could a society use these discoveries to improve livestock, but refuse to use them for the betterment of society?

The first error of the eugenicists, and of the school reformers, is a deterministic view of a complex and uncertain process. The eugenicists began with Darwin’s animal models and findings that diseases run in families and jumped to the conclusion that genes determine everything from criminality to genius. Today’s school reformers begin with the finding that the teacher is the relatively largest in-school predictor of academic achievement as measured by test scores, and quickly jump to: ". . . the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents’ income — it is the quality of their teacher." Without a doubt, teachers matter. But to argue that a child’s teacher is the single most important factor in school success writ large is an unsupported leap from suggesting that certain test scores are more influenced by good teaching than by other conveniently measured variables.

If good genes singly cause success, and good teachers are responsible for student learning, then how do we define "good"? Many eugenicists and school reformers dismiss the problem. Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton wrote, "There is a sufficient consensus of opinion as to what kind of human beings are desirable in an ideal state, so that we need not trouble ourselves about further details for some time to come." The school reformers agree: We all know the difference between a great teacher and a poor one; we can worry about the details later. A great teacher imparts great learning, a poor teacher doesn’t.

The second common error becomes apparent once the need arises to concretely measure quality. Both eugenics and modern school reform share an overabundant faith in standardization, and in testing in particular. Eugenics arose just as the first intelligence tests were being created. Stanford psychologist Lewis Terman, who adapted a pioneering French intelligence test into the IQ test, was an early supporter of eugenics. Many statistical techniques now used by Stanford economist Eric Hanushek to measure teacher quality through student achievement were invented by Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, and Raymond Cattell, all pioneers in intelligence testing, and often supporters of eugenics ideas. Of course, "achievement" is now used instead of intelligence, as if the tests are entirely different from intelligence tests of days past. The tests have changed, but the unbounded faith in testing has not.

I do not wish impugn the statistical techniques themselves, or doubt progress in measuring what we aim to measure. However, in each moment, a refinement of the science of testing has been mistaken for readiness to apply to public policyand specific individual cases. A strong general relationship between conveniently measurable variables becomes riddled with errors when applied to individual personnel decisions. As these tools leave the lab (or the economist’s model) and enter policy reality, the uncertainty magnifies the bias and corruption that science is supposed to prevent. Whether using early IQ tests to reject immigrants at Ellis Island, or using Value-Added Measures (VAM) scores to fire or reward teachers, policymakers convinced they are using the latest microscope, are later seen holding a distorted mirror.

The third error is a belief that important traits are fixed rather than changeable. Eugenics advocates regarded many human traits as fixed and hence sought to manage reproduction. Early supporters of eugenics began positively, by encouraging society’s winners. Galton’s book Hereditary Genius documented how genius ran in families, using the latest statistical techniques (some of which he invented; his contributions to statistics were impressive). "Positive" eugenics found acceptance among Progressives eager to use the tools of science improve their country’s future. Contests for "Fitter Families" and "Better Babies" were a staple at state fairs from 1915 through the 1920s. Another example of positive eugenics was a bonus (bankrolled by a conservative, segregationist organization) given to Air Corps officers. Some officers were offered a $4,000 bonus for fathering a child in 1940.

Although these relatively harmless positive eugenics efforts remained limited, negative eugenics became the most popular aspect of the eugenics movement, "successfully" promoting involuntary sterilization. Tens of thousands of poor women in mental institutions were involuntarily sterilized. In the Deep South, the "Mississippi appendectomy" was part of a systematic effort to reduce the "undesirable" population. These efforts were only accepted because of the premise of rigid and unchanging genetic traits (race, but also intelligence).

School reformers are not so stark or broad. For example, involuntarily sterilization is different from telling someone to find another job. Further, overt racial resentment and competition is mostly absent from the current wave of education reform. But their writings and policies make it clear that reformers often regard good teaching as a permanent trait. This position is evident in the priorities of standard-bearer Teach for America, which places far more emphasis on recruitment and selection than on their five-week training program. Rhetoric that refers to "teacher talent" instead of "teaching effectiveness" reflects different assumptions about the possibility of improving teaching skills. These assumptions suggest improvement through performance bonuses and firing as opposed to support for training or classroom resources. Modern reform hopes to shape teacher selection, not behavior in the classroom. While suggesting "lowering barriers to entry" by reducing certification requirements, many reformers seek to improve the teacher corps through selection pressures, via increased competition from better teachers.

Both sets of reformers share good intentions. Just as many of the current school reformers consider themselves to be progressive, American eugenics was considered a progressive movement, and was often couched in terms of concern for the children and for the future of society. Like modern school reform, eugenics supporters included billionaire philanthropists (John D. Rockefeller), government luminaries (Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, President Theodore Roosevelt), non-profit activists (birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger), and eminent scientists (Alexander Graham Bell, Francis Galton, and several Nobel Prize winners).

I contend that policy efforts urgently focused on improving through selection, rather than supporting all who have chosen a profession, are doomed to fail. Despite confidence that we know the right people, and that science can reliably identify them, science has taken only small tentative steps using convenient measures. There is some genetic basis for intelligence. Teacher quality does matter. But the uncertainty and flexibility of both intelligence and teachers makes policy applications counterproductive. A few bold scientists, hoping to apply limited findings to solve social problems, make ridiculously confident assertions (e.g., "Getting rid of the bottom 8% of teachers would be worth 100 trillion dollars for our economy"). A few wealthy individuals, eager to use their fortunes for social good, support these assertions.

Stephen Murdoch discusses IQ testing at Ellis Island:

 

The three errors above are human errors, often stemming from sympathy and a desire to see a simple yet hidden lever to alleviate injustice in our society. We see a monster guarding that lever, behaving poorly as we try to move it. Yet despite our noble intentions, we will not be remembered as heroes or Supermen, striking down a monster. We will be not be saluted for our urgency. The monsters in our society are not unintelligent degenerates or teachers unions. When teachers are fired in front of crowded classrooms, escorted out by security guards, when standardized scores areprinted in the newspaper to shame "ineffective" teachers, when we say that Hurricane Katrina was the best thing to happen to education in New Orleans, we will not be remembered for putting students first. When we agree that we need a dictator to slay those monsters keeping us from greatness, we are the monsters. And as our children get older, if they aren’t too busy taking a reading test to read a history book, they will look at us with uneasy shame and ask us why we didn’t do anything to stop it.

About the Author: Cedar Riener is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Randolph-Macon College, where he teaches General Psychology, History of Psychology, as well as courses in Sensation and Perception. His academic research focuses on embodied perception, or the way in which the state of our body influences our perception of the world. He holds a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Virginia and an A.B. in the History of Science from Harvard University. Several members of his family are teachers and involved in public education, which might explain his occasional lapses from scientific detachment into passionate advocacy for the profession of teaching. He blogs at Cedar’s Digest and can be found on Twitter (@criener)

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/07/19/deselection-of-the-bottom-8-lessons-from-eugenics-for-modern-school-reform/

Education for World Government - UNESCO Its Purpose and Its Philosophy Part 3

By Brent Jessop

“I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology. Mass psychology is, scientifically speaking, not a very advanced study [...] This study is immensely useful to practical men, whether they wish to become rich or to acquire the government. It is, of course, as a science, founded upon individual psychology, but hitherto it has employed rule-of-thumb methods which were based upon a kind of intuitive common sense. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called ‘education’. Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the Press, the cinema and the radio play an increasing part.” – Bertrand Russell, 1952 (p40)

 

In our current western society, young people attend University to attain little more then base level indoctrination and acclimate themselves to living with debt.

As the first Director of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), Sir Julian Sorell Huxley (1887-1975) wrote a paper entitled UNESCO Its Purpose and Its Philosophy(1946) [1] in which he outlined his vision for the newly created international organisation (which grew out of the League of Nations’ Institute of Intellectual Co-operation). According to Huxley, the guiding philosophy of UNESCO should be what he termed, World Evolutionary Humanism. Part 1 in this series described this philosophy and its relation to eugenics. The second article outlined the purpose of UNESCO, which is to mentally prepare the world for global political unification under a single world government. This article will describe the use of education by UNESCO, as an essential technique of forming the minds of the young as well as the old.

Julian Huxley, an evolutionary biologist, humanist, and ardent internationalist held many titles including: Secretary of the Zoological Society of London (1935-42), first president of the British Humanist Association (1963), Vice-President (1937-44) and President (1959-62) of the British Eugenics Society. He was also a founding member of the World Wild Life Fund, coined the term “transhumanism” (as a means of disguising eugenics) and gave two Galton memorial lectures (1936, 1962). Huxley also received many awards including the Darwin Medal of the Royal Society (1956), UNESCO’s Kalinga Prize (1953) and the Special Award of the Lasker Foundation in the category Planned Parenthood – World Population (1959) to name but a few. He is also the Grandson of Thomas Huxley (Darwin’s Bulldog) and brother of author Aldous Huxley.

Literacy Campaigns for World Government

From UNESCO Its Purpose and Its Philosophy:

[Italicised text is original emphasis and bolded text is added by author.]

“From this global aim, another principle immediately follows. It is that Unesco should devote special attention to the levelling up of educational, scientific and cultural facilities in all backward sectors where these are below the average, whether these be geographical regions, or under-privileged sections of a population. To use another metaphor, it must attempt to let in light on the world’s dark areas.

The reason for this is plain. For one thing it will be impossible for humanity to acquire a common outlook if large sections of it are the illiterate inhabitants of a mental world entirely different from that in which a fully educated man can have his being, a world of superstition and petty tribalism in place of one of scientific advance and possible unity. Thus mass campaigns against illiteracy and for acommon fundamental education must form part of Unesco’s programme. Further, a satisfactory common scale of values can obviously not be attained so long as large sections of mankind are preoccupied with the bare material and physiological needs of food, shelter, and health.” – 17

“On reflection, however, it is speedily seen that a campaign for mere literacy is not enough. It needs to be linked with the general system of education, and, among illiterates above school age, to be coupled with general social education, notably in relation to health, current methods of agriculture, and citizenship. That is why, in Unesco’s programme, literacy campaigns have been merged in a more comprehensive study of Fundamental Education.” – 30

Public Relations as Adult Education

“To conclude with a more immediate problem, Unesco is proposing to support further study and experiment in regard to the discussion group method. Every extension of democracy, whether political, economic, or cultural, makes it more necessary to have a general awareness among the people at large of the problems, tasks, and possibilities which confront them. The discussion group, properly led and properly serviced by bodies such as the Bureau of Current Affairs, seems to be one of the most fruitful methods to this end, and Unesco must investigate its potentialities in different types of societies and for different special purposes.

A converse problem is that of Public Relations, notably in government. These are in modern conditions indispensable agencies of adult education for citizenship. But they can readily degenerate into organs of justification for government departments or ministers, and can equally readily be distorted into mere propaganda organisations. The most careful study of their uses and abuses, their possibilities and limitations, from the joint angle of education and social science, is of great importance and considerable urgency at the present stage in human evolution.” – 33

“Higher” Education for Inferior Types

“But it would also, we may assume, have to include provision for some new type of higher education for those with quantitatively lower I.Q.s and aptitudes, who yet desire (or are desired by society), to devote some of their post-adolescent period to further education instead of to earning a living. And when the time comes, it will obviously be for Unesco to help in working out the requirements, both in content and methods, of this new type of higher education.”

This is clearly manifested in our current western society, where young people attend University to attain little more then base level indoctrination and acclimate themselves to living with debt.

UNESCO in the Nursery

“One other item which Unesco should put on its programme as soon as possible is the study of the application of psycho-analysis and other schools of “deep” psychology to education. [...] This would mean an extension of education backwards from the nursery school to the nursery itself.” – 33

 

“Education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.”

The importance of education, especially of the very young was well emphasized by Lord Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) in his book The Impact of Science on Society (1952) [2]. Russell was a renowned British philosopher and mathematician who was an adamant internationalist and worked extensively on the education of young children. He was the founder of the Pugwash movement which used the spectre of Cold War nuclear annihilation to push for world government. Among many other prizes, Russell was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1950 and, like Julian Huxley, UNESCO’s Kalinga prize (1957).

From Bertrand Russell’s 1950 book The Impact of Science on Society:

“What is essential in mass psychology is the art of persuasion. If you compare a speech of Hitler’s with a speech of (say) Edmund Burke, you will see what strides have been made in the art since the eighteenth century. What went wrong formerly was that people had read in books that man is a rational animal, and framed their arguments on this hypothesis. We now know that limelight and a brass band do more to persuade than can be done by the most elegant train of syllogisms. It may behoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.” – 40

It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fichte laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. But in his day this was an unattainable ideal: what he regarded as the best system in existence produced Karl Marx. In future such failures are not likely to occur where there is dictatorship. Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so.” – 61

Russell also made it clear the importance of not allowing the public to know how their convictions were generated.

“Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class. The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen [...]” – 41

More about Bertrand Russell’s views on education can be found in this article entitled: Mass Psychology and Education.

Conclusion

Part 4 in this series describes the use of science and the creative arts in guiding society toward predetermined goals. The final article in this series outlines UNESCO’s use of the mass media and other forms of communication in pursuit of its goals.

[1] Quotes from Julian Huxley, UNESCO Its Purpose and Its Philosophy (1946). Preparatory Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. pdf from UNESCO.

[2] Quotes from Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society (1952). ISBN0-415-10906-X

Graduate Student Speaks Out Against Schooling (Video + Transcript)

 

by Erica Goldson

Transcript:

Here I Stand
Erica Goldson

There is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and asked the Master, "If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, "Ten years." 
The student then said, "But what if I work very, very hard and really apply myself to learn fast - How long then?" Replied the Master, "Well, twenty years." "But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?" asked the student. "Thirty years," replied the Master. "But, I do not understand," said the disappointed student. "At each time that I say I will work harder, you say it will take me longer. Why do you say that?" 
Replied the Master, "When you have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path."
        This is the dilemma I've faced within the American education system. We are so focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to achieve our original objective.
        Some of you may be thinking, “Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian, didn't you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.
        I am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contest that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I'm scared.
        John Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory schooling, asserts, “We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness – curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don't do that.” Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and therefore viewed with contempt.
        H. L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. ... Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim ... is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States.

        To illustrate this idea, doesn't it perturb you to learn about the idea of “critical thinking.” Is there really such a thing as “uncritically thinking?” To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?
This was happening to me, and if it wasn't for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.
        And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.
        We are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so special, so aren't we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after placation. There is more, and more still.
        The saddest part is that the majority of students don't have the opportunity to reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all, they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18 years. I can't run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be - but only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.
        For those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, “You have to learn this for the test” is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool, if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.
        For those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.
        For those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America. Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all, we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will demand truth.
        So, here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I couldn't have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.
        I am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a “see you later” when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement. But first, let's go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we're smart enough to do so!