The Eugenic Marriage Volume I Part 3

science must continue to solve the problem of a fitter sanitary and hygienic environment for the congested and densely populated zones of habitation. Philanthropy must not continue to be wholly misdirected, it must extend its aid to the deserving healthy and fit, as well as to be exclusively the protecting agency of the diseased and unfit. If life is the only wealth, and the preservation of childhood the highest duty of society and the state,--which it would seem to be, since the continuance and preservation of the race is obviously essential to the continuance of the state itself,--the life of every child must be considered an economic as well as a moral trust. If, therefore, every child is sacred, every mother is equally sacred. If every child is to be cared for, every mother must be cared for. If the state cannot afford to provide for what is imperatively essential to its own continuance, it might as well go out of existence, as it inevitably will in the end on any other basis, and as all preceding states have done.

Mothers must not be dependent upon their children's labor for their maintenance, because if children are compelled to work, they will not be able to work in the future,--and adult efficiency is necessary to the well-being of the individual, the race, and the state.

No mother should work, because in the care of her children she is already doing the supreme work. The proper care of children is so continuous and exacting a task, and of such importance to posterity, that it must be regarded as the highest and foremost work--and adequate in itself--and its efficiency must not be hampered by mothers having to do anything else.

Motherhood must not be financially insecure, because this would defeat its eugenic purpose. Society, therefore, as a matter of self-preservation, must ensure to woman her mental and economic security. Civilization's margin is large enough to provide this. We spend large amounts on luxuries and evils which are contrary to the genesis of self-preservation, while motherhood is its basic necessity. When public opinion is educated in the essentials of eugenics much of this can be, and will be diverted to a n.o.bler purpose. The total cost necessary to ensure the adequate care of dependent [19]

motherhood would be a mere fraction of the national expenditure, and not a t.i.the of what we spend in pension allowances yearly. The latter is regarded as an honorable debt and is at best the direct product of a decadent ideal, while motherhood const.i.tutes the very germ of the only altruistic idealism for all the future.

We concede, therefore, that the children and the mothers must be provided for, not only as a product of the true construction of the ethics of sociology, but in obedience to the fundamental law of a moral system of eugenics. We must go further and a.s.sert that children must be cared for through the mother. It has been the practice to divorce the improvident mother from her dependent children. This has been demonstrated to be not only an altruistic fallacy. It has proved to be an economic blunder.

There is another type of evil which largely menaces the eugenic ideal of motherhood. It is those cases where married women who have children are compelled to be the bread winners of the family as well as its mothers. No woman can earn support for herself and children outside of her home and competently a.s.sume the responsibilities of motherhood at the same time.

Whatever aid a mother renders to the state, as a result of effort in factory or shop, is of infinitely less value, from an economic standpoint, than her contribution as mother in caring for her own children in her own home. A careful study of infant mortality, and the conditions of child life, so far as survival value is concerned, condemns in the strongest and most vital sense this whole practice. The preservation of the race is the essential requisite, and it is the vital industry of any people. Any seeming economic necessity which destroys that industry is one that will contribute largely to the downfall of the people as a race.

EUGENICS AND THE HUSBAND.--The question of the husband's moral and parental obligation, as dictated by the marriage inst.i.tution and const.i.tution, may be left out of this discussion. We may a.s.sert, however, that we do not believe the eugenic principle intends, in devising ways and means for [20]

the adequate protection, in its completest sense, of motherhood, to relieve the father of any of his moral or parental obligations. These obligations will be justly defined, and as previously stated, will be the subject of special state legislation. No legislation of an economic character can detract from the performance of a moral obligation, and by no process of sophistication can modern statesmanship accomplish the dethronement of motherhood. The duty of the father is to support his children and the mother of his children, and the duty of the state is to see that this is done. The fundamental law of the eugenist must be to recognize that fatherhood is a deliberate and responsible act, for which a fixed accountability must be maintained. Whatever legislation is undertaken in this connection must be with the object in view of strengthening the efforts of the right kind of father and husband, and of rendering more difficult the path of the irresponsible father and husband. If the supreme duty of a state is the maintenance of justice, its whole effort in the future will be to legislate in harmony with the eugenic principle.

[21]

CHAPTER III

"I hope to live to see the time when the increased efficiency in the public health service--Federal, State and munic.i.p.al--will show itself in a greatly reduced death rate. The Federal Government can give a powerful impulse to this end by creating a model public health service."

EX-PRESIDENT TAFT.

EUGENICS AND EDUCATION

THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS INADEQUATE--OPINIONS OF DR. C. W.

SALEEBY, ELLA WHEELER WILc.o.x, LUTHER BURBANK, WILLIAM D. LEWIS, ELIZABETH ATWOOD, DR. THOMAS A. STORY, WILLIAM C. WHITE, DR. HELEN C.

PUTNAM--DIFFICULTY IN DEVISING A SATISFACTORY EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM--EDUCATION AN IMPORTANT FUNCTION--THE FUNCTION OF THE HIGH SCHOOL--THE HIGH SCHOOL SYSTEM FALLACIOUS--THE TRUE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION.

The fundamental law of eugenics demands that all education be exerted for parenthood. We have proved that the child is not only essential to the life of the state, but is the state. Consequently any function other than parenthood is a non-essential so far as organic existence is dependent upon it. Education can, therefore, have no higher or more righteous motive than as a contributory agency in the perpetuation of the function upon which all existence depends. If the only function of education is to make one a worthy citizen, or to make him, or her, self-supporting, or able to bear arms in defense of his country, rather than a perfect link in the complete chain of enduring life, its purpose is being perverted. It is not sufficient to provide a girl, for instance, with an exclusive environment which regards her simply as a muscular ent.i.ty, as is the tendency in some of the "best" girls' schools to-day; nor to fit her as a domestic or society ornament; nor must she be regarded simply as an intellectual machine, as is done under the system styled "the higher education of women." Any one of these is an example of misdirected excess and is [22]

only part of the whole. None of these systems strives to develop the emotional side of the complex female character, and any educational system which ignores the emotions is not only inadequate but reprehensible in the highest degree. The ideal which will strive for education for ultimate parenthood will more completely solve the question of complete (eugenic) living.

THE PRESENT EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM IS INADEQUATE.--There is no question that education, as conducted at the present time, is one of the most disastrous inst.i.tutional fallacies of modern civilization. In support of this contention, we are prompted to quote at length from various authorities bearing on this subject.

Dr. C. W. Saleeby, an international authority on education, writes as follows:

"A simple a.n.a.logy will show the disastrous character of the present process, which may be briefly described as 'education' by cram and emetic.

It is as if you filled a child's stomach to repletion with marbles, pieces of coal and similar material incapable of digestion--the more worthless the material the more accurate the a.n.a.logy--then applied an emetic and estimated your success by the completeness with which everything was returned, more especially if it was returned 'unchanged,' as the doctors say. Just so do we cram the child's mental stomach, its memory, with a selection of dead facts of history and the like (at least when they are not fictions) and then apply a violent emetic called an examination (which like most other emetics causes much depression) and estimate our success by the number of statements which the child vomits onto the examination paper--if the reader will excuse me. Further, if we are what we usually are, we prefer that the statements shall come back 'unchanged'--showing no sign of mental digestion. We call this 'training the memory.' The present type of education is a curse to modern childhood and a menace to the future. The teacher who cannot tell whether a child is doing well without formally examining it, should be heaving bricks, but such a teacher does not exist.

In Berlin they are now learning that the depression caused by these [23]

emetics (examinations) often lead to child suicide--a steadily increasing phenomenon mainly due to educational overpressure and worry about examinations.

"Short of such appalling disasters, however, we have to reckon with the existence of this enormous amount of stupidity, which those who fortunately escaped such education in childhood have to drag along with them in the long struggle towards the stars. This dead weight of inertia lamentably r.e.t.a.r.ds progress.

"If you have been treated with marbles and emetics long enough, you may begin to question whether there is such a thing as nourishing food; if you have been crammed with dead facts, and then compelled to disgorge them, you may well question whether there are such things as nourishing facts or ideas."

The gifted writer, Ella Wheeler Wilc.o.x, in an editorial in the _New York American_, expressed herself recently in the following terms:

"A wave of dissatisfaction is sweeping over the country regarding our school system. And eventually this will cause a change to be made. The larger understanding of mothers regarding education will result in the personal element entering into the training of children.

"When women have a voice in the affairs of the nation there will be more teachers, larger salaries, fewer pupils in each department, and more attention will be given to the temperaments and varying dispositions of children by their instructors.

"Instead of regarding the little ones who enter public schools as machines which must be taught to go according to one rule, each child will be studied as a threefold being, and his mind, body and spirit will be cared for and developed according to his own peculiar needs. All this will come slowly, but it will come.

"Before children enter the public schools there should be a great sifting process under the direction of a national board of scientific men. The brain equipment of each child, the tendencies given it at birth, should be tested; then the nervous, hysterical and erratic minds ought to be [24]

placed in a school by themselves, under the care of men and women who know the law of mental suggestion.

"Quiet, loving, wholesome rules, followed day after day and month after month, would bring these children out into the light of self-control and concentration. The hurried, crowding, exciting methods of the public schools are disastrous to fully half of the unformed minds sent into the intellectual maelstrom which America provides under the name of Public Schools.

"For the well-born, normal-minded, healthy-bodied child, who has wise and careful guardians or parents to a.s.sist in his mental guidance, the public school forms a good basis on which to build an education. For the average American child of excitable nerves and precocious tendencies, it is like deep surf swimming for the inexperienced and adventurous bather.

"The great foundation of education--character--is not taught in the public schools. There is no systematized process of developing a child's power of concentration; there is not time for this in the cramming process now in vogue and with the enormous pressure placed on teachers. No teacher can do justice to more than fifteen children through the school hours. In many of our public schools there are fifty and sixty children under one instructor.

This is fatal to the nervous system of the teacher and deprives the pupils of that personal sympathy which is of such vital importance."

Luther Burbank, the famous California horticulturist, declares that the great object and aim of his life is to apply to the training of children those scientific ideas which he has so successfully employed in working transformation in plant life.

In an editorial, ent.i.tled, "Teaching Health," the _New York Globe_ states, "Anatomy and physiology are reasonably exact sciences, and nine-tenths of the hygienic abuses against which the doctors are preaching would be prevented if the laity had an elementary knowledge of physiology. Such an educational reform could be carried out without causing any clash whatever between the warring medical sects." [Page 25]

William D. Lewis, Princ.i.p.al of the William Penn School, Philadelphia, in an article ent.i.tled: "The High School and the Girl," in a recent issue of the _Sat.u.r.day Evening Post_, wrote in part as follows:

... "The first thing that society wants of our girl is good health. This is the first essential for her efficient service and personal happiness in shop, office, store, school or home. The future of the race so far as she represents it, depends upon her health. What is the high school doing to improve the girl's health? In the overwhelming majority of cases absolutely nothing. On the other hand, it is subjecting her to a regimen planned for boys, without the slightest consideration of the physical and functional differences between the s.e.xes.

"It pays no attention to the curvature of the spine developed by the exclusively sit-at-a-desk-and-study-a-book type of education bequeathed to the girlhood of the nation by the medieval monastery: It ignores the ch.o.r.ea, otherwise known as St. Vitus' dance developed by overstudy and underexercise; it disregards the malnutrition of hasty breakfasts, and lunches of pickles, fudge, cream-puffs and other kickshaws, not to mention the catch penny trash too often provided by the janitor or concessionaire of the school luncheon, who isn't doing business for his health or for anybody else's; it neglects eye-strain, unhygienic dress, uncleanly habits, anemia, periodic headaches, nervousness, adenoids, and wrong habits of posture and movements.... If you believe that the high school is a social inst.i.tution with a mission of public service, regardless of the relation of that service to Latin or Algebra, then you must agree that it should look after what everyone recognizes as the foremost need of the adolescent girl.

"One fact that every educator in both camps knows is that the home is not attending to the health of the adolescent girl. This problem is pressing upon us now largely because of the revolutions in living conditions that has come within the last quarter of a century."

In a report of a recent Conference on the Conservation of School [26]

Children held at Lehigh University by the American Academy of Medicine, the following items appear.

Four great reasons why medical inspection in schools is needed were brought out by Dr. Thomas A. Story of New York, who spoke from the educator's standpoint:

"The first reason is concerned with communicable diseases, and the second with remediable incapacitating physical defects. It was reported in 1906 that over twenty per cent. of the children in the schools of New York City had defective vision, and over fifty per cent. had defective teeth. These defective conditions are amenable to treatment whereby the functional efficiency of the pupil is improved. He is capable of better work and the school efficiency is advanced.

"The third reason is concerned with irremediable physical defects. The cripples, the deformed and the delinquents whose incapacitating defects are permanent should be found and cla.s.sified. This enables special instruction and opens up educational possibilities otherwise unattainable, besides removing r.e.t.a.r.ding factors in the progress of the normal pupil.

"The fourth reason is concerned with the development of hygienic habits in the school child, and through the child, of the community. Medical inspection which influences the health habits of the ma.s.ses is a matter of supreme importance. The teacher will have pupils of cleaner habits and healthier, with fewer interruptions and disturbances from absences.

"To make medical inspection successful physical examinations should uncover the anatomic, physiologic, and hygienic conditions. Every piece of advice given to a pupil that can be followed up should be followed up and the result recorded. No system of medical inspection in schools can be complete and permanently successful which does not eventually educate the parent and child to a sympathetic and cooperative relationship with the system.

Medical inspection is a force working for a better general education in personal hygiene and should coordinate with the cla.s.s room instruction.

Hence it must be a system in sympathetic relationship with the general [27]

management of the school, and should be under the same responsible control.

Since it is an educational influence and so directly related to the success of the school, it ought to be a part of the school organization."

A paper was read by Dr. Helen C. Putnam of Providence, R. I., on "The Teaching of Hygiene for Better Parentage." She said:

"Life is a trust from fathers and mothers beginning before history; to be guarded and bettered in one's turn, and pa.s.sed along to children's children. A definite conception of this trust is essential to right living.

Educators are finding that well directed correlation of human life, with phenomena of growing things in school gardens and nature studies, develops a wholesome mental att.i.tude. Since tens of millions of our population have only fractions of primary schooling, there is where the teaching must begin. These primary years are the time to lay foundations before a wrong bias is established.