Dysgenics, Geneticity, Raceology: A Chalenge to the Intelectual Responsibility of Educators, by Wiliam Shockley and William Shockley © 1972 Phi Delta Kappa International.

An interesting partial article on the dynamics of race... check your local public or university library to read the full thing.

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Dysgenics, Geneticity, Raceology: A Chalenge to the Intelectual Responsibility of Educators, by Wiliam Shockley and William Shockley © 1972 Phi Delta Kappa International.

Dysgenics, Geneticity, Raceology: A Challenge to the Intellectual Responsibility of Educators

by William Shoclkey

Do our nobly intended welfare programs promote dysgenics -- retrogressive evolution through the disproportionate reproduction of the genetically disadvantaged? One inidcident that led me to express my worries publicly was news story of an acid-throwing teen-ager, one of 17 children of a mother with an I.Q. of 55. Later I learned of Denmarks's sterilization programs with their eugenic implications. The rising per capita homicide rate of Washington, D.C., is 50 times Denmark's falling one, Dysgenics?

My inquiries unearth no support of studies of dysgenics by a government agency or a major foundation. But conspicuous hints of dysgenic worries do occasionally emerge. In 1964 Secretary of Labor Williard W. Wirtz said: "There is a strong indication that a disproportionate number of unemployed come from large families, but we don't pursue evidence that would permit establishing this as a fact or...

...Back in 1969 the graduate students who edit the quarterly Harvard Education Review were harshly critized for publishing A. R. Jensen's 123-page article, "How Much Can We Boost I.Q. and Scholastic Acheivement?" A good deal of the criticism came from blacks who regard Jensen as "racist" because he concluded on the basis of questionable evidence that Negro I.Q. inheritance is inferior to that of whites.* Some of it came from academians who thought the editors should have presented, simultaneously, contrary views, theories, and research findings. (Such material was published in the next issue.) A good deal of the criticism came from people who don't like the social and educational implications of Mr. Jensen's belief that heredity accounts for some 80% of I.Q. variance, environment for no less than 20%. Not all of the critics questoned the value of publishing the article, but -- considering that open-mindedness is one of the strongest of the scientist's values -- a suprising number of them did.

At our request, William Shockley wrote the first article presented in this supplement to the theme issue assembled James A. Banks. Mr. Shockley's views on the heritability of intelligence are very similar to those of Mr. Jensen. When he tries to express them publicly he is sometimes subjected to the same kind of harassment that has been Mr. Jensen's burden since the Harvard Review article was so widely publicized. On November 22, for example, Mr. Shockley was forcibly prevented from speaking on the campus of Sacramento State College at the invitation of the student association.

When we invited one prominent sociologist to respond to Mr. Shockley's paper, he promptly refused, arguing first that Mr. Shockley is not qualified to write on this topic, then that his notions on heredity and race are "wrongheaded" and "obscene." The implication was the wrongheaded and obscene theories should be suppressed, or at least denied a promnent forum. Fortunately, such objections do impress Mr. Gage and he readily consented to write when we appealed to him. Our arrangement with the authors is that Mr. Shockley will comment on Mr. Gage's paper ina breif article to be published in the March Kappan and Mr. Gage will have an opportunity for final breif comments in the same issue.

The editors themselves have intention, in these introductory remaks, of taking sides on the substansive questions addressed here be Shockley and Mr. Gage. But we are quite sure they are important questions and we see no reason why they should not be discussed and examined in a journal professional.

Like most educators and meliorists, however, we are drawn to environmenal determinism: If you ameliorate the conditions or life, you transform humanity. We believe that bad conditions make bad people. We prefer to regard genetic inheritance, over time, as simply one more factor in environment and therefore, in a world of reason and certainly in the world of genetic marvels to come, ultimately manipulable.

We hope that Kappan readers of all persuasions will view the Shockley-Gage encounter as what we have tried to make it: an examination of questions fundamental to enlightened educational policy. Even in a period of great racial tension, the investigation must proceed. Last May 10, Newsweek* reported the defeat of Mr. Shockley's  five-year effort to persuade the National Academy of Sciences to sponsor studies of the relative influence of heredity and environment on human intelligence. A special committee headed by Kingsley Davis reported that the study of racial differences is "a proper and socially relevant scientific subject." It recommended that the academy set up a working group of scientists to study the feasibility of a long-term research program on the interaction of genetic and environmental factors in human performance. (Note that both Shockley and Gage, in addressing the heredity-environment question, rely heavily on one inadequate study --Newman, Freeman, and Holzinger -- now more than 30 years old.

When the committee's report came up before the NAS membership, they accepted the proposition that the study of human racial differences is a relevant one, but rejected the recommendation urging the NAS to get to work on such studies.

There may be good political reasons for theis decision. There can hardly be good scientific reasons, for the first duty of scientists is to inquire. In a fascinating aritcle full of illustrations form the history of science, Bernard Barber explains why why scientists resist scientific discovery.* One source of resistance is the pattern of specialization that prevails in science at any given time. Ordinarily specialization concentrates and focuses the requisite knowledge and skills where they are needed. "But occasionally," says Barber, "the negative aspect of speialization shows itself, and innovative 'outsiders' to a field of specialization are resisted by 'insiders.' "Thus, as an electrical engineer (co-inventor of the transistor) and brilliant statistical analys, Mr. Shockley has been attacked by psychologists and geneticists for "trying to take the stringent disciplines of mathematics and physics and bring them to bear on heredity, environment and genetics." A hundred years ago Gregor Mendel's auditors were repelled by his strange linkage of botany with mathematics. Today a good many of William Shockley's auditors are repelled by his approach to questions of race and intelligence. We do not ourselves endorse his conclusions. But we believe that we must face repellant -- or at least tedious and unseductive --facts in order to find and dissemenate the truth. As James Madison put it, "A people without information or the means of access thereto is but the prelude to a farce or a tradgedy, or perhaps both" The Editor

*The attitude is perhaps best explained by W.H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs in Black Rage. Among their comments: "For a black man survival in America depends in large measure on the development of a "healthy" cultural paranoia. He maintains a high degree of suspicion toward motives of every white man and at the same time never allow this suspicion to impair his grasp of reality. It is a demanding requirement and not everyone can manage it with grace."

*"Is Inteligence Racial?," pp. 69, 70.

* Bernard Barber, "Resistance by Scientists to Scientific Discovery," Science, September 1, 1961, pp. 596-601.