Eugenics in America
What do you think of when you hear the word eugenics? Well, one thing that should come to mind is Hitler and what he did with the Jews and other people he thought were noncompliant to what he had in mind was the perfect human race. Not only did Hitler do this, but the American people thought it was ok in the mid 19th century. Even in our time there are some things that people are doing that could be considered as eugenics, such as genetic testing. These things and others will be talked about in this paper, and they will attempt to be better explained. What a few people think about eugenics is not necessarily what everybody else thinks about it. The reason for saying this is because from the mid 20th century up to the present, geneticists have been doing genetic testing. One main question that will be addressed is how have we as Americans and other societies of the world tried to control the science of improving the human stock for social and political reasons since 1865. To answer this question I guess we will have to start at the beginning. Eugenics was probably really started when Alfred Binet came up with the intelligence test in France. The test was made up of a series of short tasks that were in some way related to
The Army, around the time of World War One, wanted to weed out all the recruits that were feeble-minded so they appointed Robert M. Yerkes, who was a professor of Psychology at Harvard in 1915, straight to the rank of colonel. While there he came up with the Army Alpha and the Army Beta exams and tested 1.75 million recruits with these tests. The Army Alpha exam was a written exam for all the literate recruits. If they failed the Army Alpha exam they had to take the Army Beta exam which was all pictures. If they still failed the Army Beta exam they had their individual IQ tested. Yerkes had certain grades that he gave the recruits based on their scores on these exams. Some of the worse scores were a C, D, and a D and E. If someone got a C, according to Yerkes they were of low average intelligence and should only be used in ordinary practice. If someone got a D, Yerkes said that they were rarely suited for tasks requiring special skills. Finally, if someone got a D and E, Yerkes said that they should not be expected to read and understand written directions. After doing these tests Yerkes found that the average mental age for white men was thirteen and it had been 16. This created a new incentive to control the breeding of the feeble-minded. He also found that European immigrants could be graded by their country of origin and many of the men from other nations were "morons." Another thing that he found was that people of darker skin had a lower average test score than light-skinned people. There were however some problems with these exams just like Goddard's, in that they were strictly timed, and there were many zeros which leads you to assume that many of the people taking the tests didn't understand what they were supposed to do. Yerkes also thought that most black recruits didn't attend school and this reflected low natural intelligence. Yerkes had confused cause and effect when he said this. Some of the reasons blacks didn't go to school during this time because schools were segregated, the education was not equal to what the whites were getting, and many of the black schools were poor. But his own data revealed that blacks from the North scored better on the exams because they attended more
Some common words found in the essay are:
Finally Yerkes, Hitler American, Alfred Binet, Caplan California, America France, Army Beta, Ellis Island, Binet's IQ, Restriction Act, Immigration Act, genetic testing, eugenics genetic, army beta, eugenics genetic testing, army alpha, neural tube defects, intelligence test, birth defect, alpha exam, mental age, failed army, army alpha exam, army beta exam, feeble-minded people, gene passed generation,
Approximate Word count = 1501
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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