Echoes of a Forgotten Past: Eugenics, Testing, and Education Reform
Echoes of a Forgotten Past: Eugenics, Testing, and Education Reform
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被遗忘的过去的回声：优生学、测试和教育改革
DOI：
10.1080/00131720208984814
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发表时间：
2002
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
A. Stoskopf
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
A. Stoskopf
教育心理学家刘易斯·特曼（Lewis Terman）所使用的隐喻构成了优生思想的一部分，指导了世纪早期的教育改革。在今天要求进行更多高风险测试的呼声中，也可以听到过去的回声。对优生学在考试史上所起作用的调查，不仅仅是对法学院教育中被遗忘的一章的《双城之战》研究。它提出了关于当今改革努力方向的根本问题。英国数学家弗朗西斯高尔顿爵士发明了优生学。他认为这是一个跨学科领域的科学探索与公民的目的。正如高尔顿（1919，第1页）所写：“优生学研究的是社会控制下的机构，这些机构试图改善或损害后代的种族品质，无论是身体上还是精神上。“高尔顿所认为的科学探索的新分支，将成为人类价值排序的教条式规定。他的思想在美国世纪的头几十年里最受欢迎。优生学在教育史上的出现，往往是作为法学院社会效率和科学管理运动的一个注脚。教育.事实上，这也是一个被广泛接受的人类差异理论，深深影响了特曼、亨利戈达德和爱德华桑代克等改革者的思想。这三位教育心理学家在标准化考试的建设和管理方面做出了重要贡献;他们也是他们那个时代主流思想的一部分，拥抱未经检验的关于人类潜力的信念。这些信念影响了当时学校改革的方向，也为我们今天所面临的问题留下了遗产。优生学的思想需要合适的社会背景才能出现和发展。美国在世纪之交经历了来自南欧和东欧的大规模移民，以及非洲裔美国人从吉姆·克劳南方向北方城市的移民。就业竞争加剧了现有的沿着阶级和种族界限的摩擦。美国优生学运动就是在这场社会动荡中开始的。对于许多土生土长的欧洲裔美国人来说，这些变化威胁到了他们的社会地位。优生倡导者明确表示，
The metaphors employed by educational psychologist Lewis Terman formed part of a eugenic ideology that guided educational reform in the early 20th century. Echoes from this past can also be heard in today's calls for more high-stakes testing. An investigation of the role eugenics played in the history of testing is more than an arcane study of a forgotten chapter in Ll.S, education. It raises fundamental questions about where today's reform efforts are heading. Sir Francis Galton, an English mathematician, invented eugenics. He conceived of it as an interdisciplinary field of scientific inquiry with a civic purpose. As Galton (1919, 1) wrote, "Eugenics is the study of the agencies under social control that seek to improve or impair the racial qualities of future generations either physically or mentally." What Galton saw as a new branch of scientific inquiry would become a dogmatic prescription in the ranking and ordering of human worth. His ideas found their most receptive audience in the first decades of the 20th century in the United States. When eugenics is mentioned in the history of education, it is usually as a footnote to the social-efficiency and scientificmanagement movement in Ll.S. schooling. In fact, it was also a widely accepted theory of human differences that deeply influenced the thinking of such reformers as Terman, Henry Goddard, and Edward Thorndike. These three educational psychologists made important contributions in the construction and administra tion of standardized tests; they also were part of the mainstream thinking of their time, embracing unexamined beliefs about human potential. These beliefs would influence the direction of school reform then and create legacies for us to confront today. Eugenic ideas would need the right social context to emerge and thrive. The United States at the turn of the century was experiencing large-scale immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe as well as the beginning of African-American migration from the Jim Crow South to Northern cities . Competition for jobs intensified existing frictions along class and racial lines. It was out of this cauldron of social upheaval that the U.S. eugenics movement began. For many native-born European Americans, these changes threatened their social status. Eugenic advocates articulated those