Lewis Terman's Theory Of Eugenics

When one speaks of intelligence or how bright another person is, the often quoted figure is the IQ or intelligence quotient. It is the most often used standard of how smart a person is. This paper shall look at what intelligence tests measure, how the IQ tests measure intelligence and interrogate their history. It shall then apply the tests to school policy and hence evaluate their validity.

The eugenics movement began in the 20th century by a man named Francis Galton. As the cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton believed that eugenics was a moral philosophy to improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and healthiest people to have more children (Carlson). This Galtonian ideal of eugenics is often thought of as positive eugenics. Eugenics can be defined as the outgrowth of human heredity aimed at "improving" the quality of the human stock (Allen and Bird). At the other end of the spectrum is what can be classified as negative eugenics and is presently in disrepute. Negative eugenics entails selective breeding in which the least able from the population is taken out of the reproduction pool to preserve humanity's best traits.

In 1883, Francis Galton coined the word eugenics composed of the two Greek words “well” and “born” (Galton 1883, p.138) to represent his studies on heredity and evolution. This idea was sparked after Charles Darwin published his theory of Natural Selection in 1859. Though his theory of Natural Selection was fascinating, what intrigued researchers and scientist the most was how Darwin explained Artificial

In conclusion, people from Justice Holmes to Francis Galton who were inspired by Darwin’s theory of natural selection, wrote a book about the Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry Into Its Laws and Consequences. According to Cesare Lombroso weaker was a group of criminals, born for evil. A wealthy English expatriate and social reformer Richard Dugdale insisted that human behavior was influenced by several factors, environment among them. He investigated the “Jukes,.” The German biologist, August Weismann, developed his theory of “germ plasm” and dictated

At the beginning of the 20th century, power and prestige was held by the majority of (if not only) White people. African Americans were living under Jim Crow laws, Native Americans were forced into reservations and all of the new immigrants were in crowded ghettos. Those that were a race other than White were at “the bottom of the social and political hierarchy.” One of the aims of the Eugenics Movement was racial purification. Using the concept of Mendelian genes, scientists would try to breed the best, smartest, most talented, most beautiful and always white individuals and breed out the worst and weakest colored individuals. Mixed race people were seen as not put together because it was a combination of the best and worst traits someone could have.” Frederick Hoffman, presented data, statistics and a theory that claimed African Americans would become extinct because of high death and disease rates that were caused by African Americans being biologically lesser than Whites. However, his analysis was flawed because it failed to mention how systematic poverty and social neglect could be affecting the health of African Americans.

Gregor Johann Mendel was an abbot at the St. Thomas’ Abbey in Brno, in the modern day Czech Republic. He is credited as being the father of genetics because of his work crossbreeding pea plants in order to favor certain traits such as height, color, and pod shape. He worked in the late 1850’s to the early 1860’s. Even though farmers had been doing this similar practice for centuries, his experiments established many of the heredity rules we now refer to as Mendelian inheritance. Around this time another theory of genes was coming out from a man by the name of Sir Francis Galton. Galton is credited as the “Father of Eugenics” and is also known for the popular phrase “Nature vs Nurture”. Galton studied the upper class in Great Britain and believed came to the conclusion of their “superior genetic makeup” was

I believe the view held by the author is one of unmistakable unbiased caution. In reading this article, the author, Hannah Lou, points out that although Sir Francis Galton, whose work was inspired by Charles Darwin, believed that, "the key to human progress would rest on a national program of better breeding . . . The chronic poor, the insane and feebleminded, and the ‘criminal

Nicholas Agar, in Liberal Eugenics promotes a more neutral position of moral obligation to tolerance in respecting the differences people have regarding what constitutes a valuable trait and their perceptions of a good life, thus seemingly avoiding the authoritarian eugenics of the past. In this new conception of eugenics governments cannot tell parents what children should be like and parents will respect their child’s autonomy as not to favor one specific identity or lifestyle over another. In this doctrine parents have the freedom to select particular hereditary traits and it is morally permissible for them to eradicate traits deemed undesirable, as long as the child’s autonomy is not in any way compromised. Scholars such as Agar

The idea of eugenics was first introduced by Sir Francis Galton, who believed that the breeding of two wealthy and successful members of society would produce a child superior to that of two members of the lower class. This assumption was based on the idea that genes for success or particular excellence were present in our DNA, which is passed from parent to child. Despite the blatant lack of research, two men, Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Jon Alfred Mjoen, played to the white supremacists' desires and claimed that white genes were inherently superior to other races, and with this base formed the first eugenics society. The American Eugenics Movement attempted to unethically obliterate the rising tide of lower classes by immorally

In the society of today, there are various educators who believe in assessment as proper method to measure the performance of a child in school as well as the overall achievement of a specific school system. The assessment may be presented in the form of verbal, written, or multiple choice, and it usually pertains to certain academic subjects in the school curriculum. Recently, many educators began to issue standardized tests to measure the intelligence of a common student body. (Rudner, 1989) These standardized tests were initially created to reveal the success in institutional school programs, and exhibit the abilities of students today. The standardized tests can reveal the strengths and weaknesses

In 1904, a French psychologist (Alfred Binet) created the first intelligence test in order to help the French Ministry of Education segregate children that may have difficulty learning in a regular classroom. At that time, he did not know that his test would be the basis for IQ tests administered over 100 years later. He has a Stanford University psychologist, Lewis Terman, to thank for expanding his work and creating the Stanford-Binet intelligence test that took root in the United States in 1916 and is still popular today. However, along with its popularity came criticism. Critics see the current version of the Stanford - Binet test and other intelligence tests, despite attempts to make them culturally fair, as limiting to individuals who are not from the major social norm. They claim that cultural bias in test questions is why certain races do not perform as well as others on the test.

The term eugenics was coined by Francis Galton in 1883. However, the idea emerged well before, in the 1700’s with the discussions of race and questions of the superiority of some over the others. Although the main aim of these scientific discussions and theories was to obtain a better explanation and more understanding of the human nature and to ultimately answer the question of why we have so many different races, it was nearly impossible to preclude the idea of a possible superiority of certain races being over others, or of a few to be less better than the rest. To support this idea, Voltaire in his essay said: “what is the most interesting to us is the sensible difference in the species of men, who inhabit the four known quarters of the

The theory of Eugenics can be dated back all the way to 400 B.C. but was not popularized until the mid-1800s by an English scientist, Francis Galton. He researched and published the theory that aimed to improve the genetic quality of the human population through selective breeding (NC Office of Archives and History). As the half-cousin of Charles Darwin, Galton applied the Darwinism science (survival of the fittest) to heredity characteristics. Two types of Eugenics stemmed from the theory, positive and negative. Positive eugenics is encouraging the “best” people in the society based on financial and personal features to have more children while negative eugenics is picking people with flaws and defects from the population

The psychiatrist Rüdin pioneered a published paper applying Mendelian genetics to what was known as dementia or schizophrenia after researching extensively on the genetics of either condition and because of his research the German institute for Psychiatry saw that the implementation of the new sterilisation law provided a window to study the patterns of inheritance.

Eugenics, on the other hand, was first introduced into the scientific lexicon, by Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton in 1883. According to Galton eugenics was, “the study of agencies under social control that may improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally.” Through reference of Mendel’s laws of heredity, Galton further theorized that physical, mental, and moral traits were