The Role of Social Heredity in Education

Abstract

During last two or three decades we have seen growing up two seemingly irreconcilable attitudes toward heredity. The theoryof Weismann that acquired characteristics are not inheritable has been gaining general credence at same time that eugenics has been formulated into a program. According to accepted biological point of view acquired traits, either of weakness or strength, disease or health, boorishness or culture, unless they get into germ plasm, which in general they seem not to do, cannot be perpetuated through organic heredity. According to eugenic point of view hope of speedy progress in civilization lies in guarding and guiding hereditary factors entering into racial development. If Weismannic dictum that sort of lives we live has little effect on organic inheritance we transmit to posterity, then eugenic program can accomplish little without a more radical change in processes of parental selection than hardiest eugenicists have dared seriously to propose. Either current biological views of heredity must be overthrown, or eugenic crusaders must confine their hopes to prevention of only a small, almost negligible, fraction of most unfit from perpetuating their kind and stimulus it provides normal individual to cause him to pay attention to laws of heredity. If eugenic crusade has done little else, however, it has stimulated interest in past achievements and has led to a better recognition of debt we owe to our ancestors. It has paved way for what Professor Conn has called the other side of eugenics, that is, social heredity. If we cannot transmit to our descendants powerful physiques and giant minds, or new instincts, cultivated tastes and sentiments, or a thirst for scientific knowledge, we can at least transmit a social heritage which it is difficult if not impos-