...back to the 1830s as far as understanding of the basic biological sciences. I would expect an entire elementary and secondary curriculum of eugenics from kindergarten to 12th grade as the next step in Texas Education.
Warning: the contents of these sites may shock you!
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Promoting Eugenics in AmericaWhen Francis Galton coined the term eugenics in the 1890s, it is doubtful that he could have foreseen the power the movement would accrue in America during the first half of the 20th century. A broad-based social, political, and scientific movement, American eugenics reflected the fears of many whites that their once-great nation was threatened by demographic and economic change. Their understanding of the principles of genetic inheritance led eugenicists to conclude that genetically defective members of society -- including the "feeble-minded," criminals, the sexually wanton, epileptics, the insane, and non-white races -- were rapidly out-reproducing the "normal" members of society at an alarming rate, passing on their "deleterious" genes at the expense of the "normal." The social cost of such a situation, they feared, would be devastating.
In pursuit of their social agenda, the eugenics movement adopted two faces, a "positive" one, which concentrated on exhorting the genetically gifted to reproduce, and a "negative" one, which sought to prevent the defective from breeding. From 1900 on, the movement found a receptive ear in state legislatures, as it did in Washington, and it exerted a profound influence on American public policy. By the 1930s, most states had passed eugenical laws authorizing the sterilization of "defectives," and in an infamous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed such laws were constitutional. Eugenical lobbying also contributed to the powerful anti-immigration movement of the 1910s and 1920s, using their scientific studies to support the claim that non-whites and immigrants were inferior to native-born white Americans in intelligence, physical condition, and moral stature. Even though the meticulous studies of Franz Boas, H.S. Jennings, and others amply demonstrated the failure of eugenical methodology and the falsity of their claims, the eugenical tide continued to swell. Only after the Second World War, when the horrific results of the Nazi eugenic program became fully evident, did the movement lose steam. Though much smaller in scope, it continues today.
The American Eugenics Society was founded in 1926 by Harry Crampton, Harry H. Laughlin, Madison Grant, and Henry Fairfield Osborn with the express purpose of spearheading the eugenical movement. With a peak membership of around 1,250 in 1930, the AES worked at both the scientific and popular levels, becoming a highly effective organization at disseminating practical and scientific information on genetic health, drawing attention to eugenics, and promoting eugenical research.
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http://www.amphilsoc.org/library/exhibits/treasures/aes.htm<snip>
The Social Context of Eugenic Thought
by Professor W H G Armytage
XII “Education, Social Mobility and Equality”
“Run away to sea rather than go to a secondary modern.”
A J P Taylor
The Twentieth Century (October 1957) The 1944 Education Act (UK) was a key item in the social legislation which constituted the blue-print for the post-war Labour government’s New Jerusalem. The fact that it had been authored by a Tory and enacted in the last year of the wartime coalition government did not diminish either Labour’s enthusiasm for the Act or the energy with which its Minister of Education, the first woman to hold the post(1), set about implementing, without amendment, its provisions.
Ellen Wilkinson (1891-1947) was the daughter of a cotton operative and made her way from a Lancashire working-class home by way of a scholarship and her local Grammar School to Manchester University. She was a suffragist, an early member of the ILP and, from 1920 to 1924, a member of the Communist Party which she left on becoming Labour member of parliament for Middlesbrough. Defeated there in the election of 1931 she re-entered Parliament as member for Jarrow in 1935 and her diminutive figure manages to dominate the often re-shown newsreel footage of the leaders of the Jarrow Marchers. Ellen Wilkinson was also a keen eugenicist and had urged the formation of a Eugenics Branch within the Labour Party. (2)
The 1944 Act enhanced the powers of the Minister over local authorities(3), abolished fees in all state schools, made the daily act of collective religious worship compulsory in all schools and raised the school-leaving age to 15 from April 1947 and to 16 as soon as practicable. Finally, in what was regarded at the time as its truly ground-breaking and egalitarian provision but was later to become its most controversial, it guaranteed secondary education for all: academic, technical or general according to ability.
“According to ability”, of course, implied selection and the egalitarianism underlying the Act was an egalitarianism based on equality of opportunity and not on equality of outcome: “it is just as important to achieve diversity as to ensure equality of educational opportunity”. This, unequivocally meritocratic, philosophy - together with the techniques of selection which its implementation required - was universally applauded by politicians, teachers and parents. It was also approved by those educational sociologists who were later to become its vehement critics. Professor D V Glass, who, it has been said, “provided the main link between pre-war eugenics and post-war sociology”(4), regarded the Act as one of the “the most important measures of the last half century” which by greatly increasing social mobility would “do much to enable ability to fulfil itself”.
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http://www.galtoninstitute.org.uk/Newsletters/GINL9809/social_context.htm<snip>
Evolution Education <MORE>
http://hometown.aol.com/darwinpage/educate.htm
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