The answer to the question you

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The answer to the question youve all asked at
some point in your life

• What does literature have to do with me?

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The Eugenics Movementand Brave New World
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A Definition

• Eugenics-
• -origins in Greek roots for good and
  generation or origin
• -The study of the agencies under social control
  that seek to improve or impair the racial
  qualities of future generations either physically
  or mentally Alan Stoskepf

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The history

• Eugenics was a term coined by Francis Galton,
  Darwins half-cousin (1883)
• English Scientist
• Wanted to improve hereditary characteristics,
  both physical and mental
• -www.huxley.net

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Galtonian ideal

• Positive eugenics is a moral philosophy to
  improve humanity by encouraging the ablest and
  healthiest people to have more children
• Elof Carlson, Scientific Origins of Eugenics

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Youve got the wrong idea

• Negative eugenics advocated culling the least
  able from the breeding population to preserve
  humanitys fitness.
• America, Scandinavia, and GERMANY favored the
  negative approach
• -Elof Carlson,
• Scientific Origins of Eugenics
• (anyone surprised????)

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Characteristics

• Eugenicists used a flawed and crude
  interpretation of Gregor Mendels laws on
  heredity to argue that criminality, intelligence,
  and pauperism were passed down in families as
  simple dominant or recessive hereditary traits
• -Stoskepf

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In America

• Eugenics fed off of the fears of white middle
  and upper class Americans
• A time of rapid social and economic change at the
  turn of the century
• Supporters for the movement argued for laws to
  control the spread of inferior blood into the
  general population

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It really existed
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And a bit of eugenics humor
A typical 12-step meeting for eugenicists.
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American history of eugenics

• Harry Clay Sharp, a prison physician, believed
  that sexual self-satisfaction was a sign of
  degeneracy, which led the prison to carry our
  vasectomies on prisoners.
• This culminated in an Indiana law mandating
  compulsory sterilization of degenerates in
  1907, the first in the U.S.

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Cont

• During WWI the American Eugenics Society spread
  its news about a fitter family and better
  baby at fairs and competitions
• Awarded blue ribbons to the Best human stock

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Cont

• President Coolidge embraced the Eugenics
  movement, which helped to pass the Immigration
  and Restriction Act of 1924.
• America must be kept American. Biological laws
  show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with
  other races.
• Coolidge

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Cont

• In the Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes
  declared forced sterilization in Buck vs. Bell in
  1927
• Other famous supporters, like Alexander Graham
  Bell furthered support for the movement
• Critics from the African American scholars
  (W.E.B. Dubois, Horace Mann, Howard Long)

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And how this relates to YOU

• In education, eugenicists were the first to
  suggest standardized IQ tests to help sort
  through the good and bad and help with the
  population control according to eugenic ideals
• Eugenic ideology worked its way into the
  educational reform movements of the 1910s and
  20s

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The origins of AP?

• This movement stemmed the first gifted and
  talented programs in the U.S.
• Lewis Terman, Professor of Education at Stanford
  University, created the Standford-Binet
  intelligence test (still used today) and was an
  early proponent of tracking
• Slow students were placed into special classes

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Cont

• Termans book, The Measurement of Intelligence,
  states
• As far as intelligence in concerned, the tests
  have told the truth No amount of school
  instruction will ever make them intelligent
  voters or capable voters in the true sense of the
  word.
• The fact that one meets this type with such
  frequency among Indians, Mexicans, and negroes
  suggests quite forcibly that the whole question
  of racial differences in mental traits will have
  to be taken up anew and by experimental methods.

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AIMS anyone?

• Our current testing methods have their roots in
  this damaging public experiment to rid the
  world of the lowliest of society, and as the
  Nazis in Germany believed, Americans alike were
  supportive of extermination of the unable, the
  inept, the genetically unclean we just didnt
  take it as far as Hitler.

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Visual Aids
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Brave New World

• BNW is often described as a society based on
  eugenic principles. But this formulation can be
  misleading. BNW is a stratified genetic caste
  society where the lower order are deliberately
  stunted both mentally and physically The
  relative proportion of each caste is fixed by a
  World Government bureau, the Predestinators
  Individuality has been sacrificed for the good of
  society as a whole -Jim Regan, csmonitor.com

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The Caste System

• Alpha destined for leadership positions
• Beta intellectually demanding jobs, less exalted
• Gammas and Deltas need some intelligence in
  their roles
• Epsilons happy morons capable of only the most
  menial and unskilled tasks

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Are you ready?Questions?Discussion time
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Questions on themes

• What do you think is the impact of having AP
  classes versus on-level classes in schools?
• Why is our society stratified (why are there
  levels)? What is this saying about society in
  general (not just American)?
• What purpose does leveling people serve to our
  social agendas?
• What role does technology play in the continuance
  of these social hierarchies?
• What will be the defining point(s) of the future
  in regards to which class people fall into?
  Economy? Politics? Popularity? Education?