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C00002 00002	eugeni[s83,jmc]		What if the eugenicists were right?
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eugeni[s83,jmc]		What if the eugenicists were right?

	Around the turn of the century, the eugenics movement came
into existence in Britain.  The intellectual basis for the movement
was (1) the Darwin theory of natural selection, (2) the ability to
measure intelligence (3) the ideas of deliberate social policy.
The movement quickly came to believe that less intelligent members
of society were reproducing more rapidly than the more intelligent
and that this would eventually lead to a decline in intelligence.
They proposed various measures to reverse this trend.  To my knowledge
none were adopted in any reasonable country.  The disastrous exception
is that the Nazis used eugenics as a partial excuse for killing Jews,
Gypsies and also (I believe) the feeble minded.

	The eugenicists were mainly elitists, and after many years,
they died without recruiting enough younger people to sustain a
movement.  The reasons for this failure was probably the increasing
dominance of equalitarian ideas.  To equalitarians, the idea that
dominance in human society was associated with inherited qualities
was distasteful.  The main means of refuting the eugenicists and
other hereditarians was to require very high standards of proof -
to regard the hypothesis that there were no such inherited qualities
as established unless overthrown by arguments that had no answers.
They could certainly show that the existing but dying hereditary
aristocracies had no genetic basis, but no-one claimed that they
did.

	Now we discover that school scores are declining and have
been declining for many years.  There are various possibilities.

	1. Really determined equalitarians say that the tests measure
the wrong thing and should be abolished.

	2. The educational establishment claims that not enough
money is being spent, ignoring the fact that education consumes
a larger fraction of the GNP than when the scores were higher.

	3. Another popular suggestion is that talented people are
being attracted away from education, especially education in science,
by high industrial salaries.  However, verbal aptitude scores have
declined even faster than mathematical.

	4. It is also stated that the reforms that responded to
the agitation of the 1960s were harmful.

	5. We propose consideration of the eugenics hypothesis.
The lower fertility of the intelligent is finally taking its toll.
The effect may have been masked for many decades by overcoming
barriers to education in the lower classes of society.
Thus the low fertility of the existing people in intellectual
occupations was overcome by picking new recruits out of the working
class.  Once picked out, these people were subject to the same
influences that lowered the fertility of their predecessors.
Now there may be only slim pickings left in the non-intellectual
classes in America except among groups whose social conditions
discouraged education of the intelligent.
Presumably there is still a big gene pool
for intelligence in the immigrants from areas where educational
opportunity was not available to the lower classes or where the
upper classes had high fertility.  Thus we may expect, and indeed
see, intellectual contributions from Vietnamese refugees and
other immigrants far out of proportion to their number.

	I don't believe explanations 1 and 2, but I
incline to think that explanations 3, 4, and 5 all contain part
of the truth.  Therefore, the following remedies are suggested.

	1. Devise methods of teaching bright students with less
manpower.  Better books, better computer programs, concentration
of able students, early admission to colleges.  For the very bright
a very important role is played by the science books in libraries.

	2. Reverse the reforms of the 60s in so far as these lessen
demands on the students to study.  I also believe that the "new mathematics"
was a mistake, somewhat related to the ideology of the 60s, i.e.
the ideology of superficial relevance.  When Euclidean plane geometry
was de-emphasized, it wasn't replaced by anything that gave comparable
opportunity for developing mathematical creativity.  Example: My high
school geometry book included a proof of Pythagoras's theorem attributed
to President Garfield (who apparently wasn't the first to discover it).
Garfield was presumably a lawyer and politician by inclination, so
his exposure to mathematics that would excite his creativity must
have occurred in school.  New math contains nothing comparable so
far as I know.

	3. Adopt some measures to increase the fertility of the
intelligent.  Shockley proposes measures to reduce the fertility
of the unintelligent, and they may have some virtues.  However,
he is accused of having bad motives, and there seems to be no
likelihood that this ideology could be overcome sufficiently
overwhelmingly to permit adoption of any of his suggestions
by the Government, and they all require action at the State or
Federal level.  Actions to increase the fertility of the intelligent
might be taken at the government level, but this is not likely soon.
However, there is much that can be done at lower levels.  Here are
some suggestions.

	a. Propaganda in favor of the intelligent having more children.
Since having children is an individual decision, this is the
single most important measure.  Articles and books in the right
media are important.  It is also important to counteract the
propaganda in favor of family limitation in so far as it affects
this group.

	b. Measures to help people in prolonged educational processes
have children.  For example, universities could improve their support
of housing for graduate students.  The stipends could contain
allowances for children.

	c. Direct subsidies of children.  Every kind of privately
offered fellowship should contain allowances for support of children.
Where eugenic arguments are unacceptable, equity arguments will serve.
Thus it can be argued that it is wrong to discriminate against those
fellowship holders who have children.

	The Nazi use of eugenic ideas to support genocide will be raised.
It will take the form of a "slippery slope" argument.  It may even be said
that housing subsidies to graduate students is a step on a path leading to
extermination of blacks.  Slippery slope arguments need to be resisted on
principle, since they are a means whereby a preponderance of shouting can
enable a dominant group to resist reason.  Opposing slippery slope
arguments are readily ignored by those dominating communications.

	However, the key point is that if genetic decline is a genuine
cause of reduced CEB scores, something will have to be done about
it sooner or later.  Our society already suffers from an absolute
shortage of extremely intelligent people.  There are plenty of positions
in society for which intellectually qualified people are unavailable,
and these positions are filled by people who aren't smart enough to
do the job well.