The First International Eugenics Congress / by Edgar Schuster.

  • Schuster, Edgar.
Date:
[1912]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The First International Eugenics Congress / by Edgar Schuster. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of a ‘ liberal ’ education seems so ‘ useless ’ that it is thought that only the well-to-do can afford to study them; their real use is to serve a caste-mark or class distinction. But they evince their liberality in another way; they are liberally endowed. Care is taken that it shall pay a clever boy exceed¬ ingly well to study them.” The scholarship system in which the liberal endowment evinces itself is of distinct eugenic value for the following reason : it is characteristic of our social system that the pecuniary rewards for successful professional work, though adequate, are given rather late in the lives of those who earn them. Thus, at the time in a man’s life when his children are being born success is usually not yet assured and his income is comparatively low. Yet under the existing system, if he is a man of ability, his children will have a reasonable chance of obtaining scholarships, and the feeling that this is the case will militate against some of the prudential reasons for re¬ stricting the size of the family. The Athletic Branch of British education has a moral and also a eugenic value in that it sets up an ideal of fitness, which acts as an incentive to self-improvement. Its value could be greatly enhanced by intellectualizing and spiritualizing this ideal. It cannot be claimed that the foregoing account of Dr. Schiller’s paper is at all adequate, as only the points dealing more immediately and directly with eugenics have been referred to. (c) Inspection. Dr. Querton1 pleads for the systematic inspection of chil¬ dren. He sees in this a necessary corollary to free and com¬ pulsory education in order to ensure its profitable application. Some sort of examination, physical and mental, should be im¬ posed at the commencement of the school period to determine on what lines education should be conducted, and this should be repeated from time to time, as often as necessary, in order 1 Rapport sur 1’Organization Pratique de l’Action Eugenique, Dr. Louis Querton, Professeur & l’Universite Libre de Bruxelles.