By Anthony Cody.
Friday, a column in the New York Times cited research in genetic markers associated with resilience to advance what I believe would lead to the practice of Eugenics in our schools.
Eugenics was quite popular in the 1920s. The basic idea was that society would benefit by encouraging reproduction of those most genetically “fit, and actively discouraging those determined to be unfit. The project was discredited when it became the foundation of Hitler’s racist program to establish the “master race.”
But the idea has great intuitive appeal, and as we gain more and more detailed information about the role our genes play in various aspects of human development and attributes, eugenics is staging a bit of a comeback.
How does this enter the realm of education? Friday’s column by Jay Belsky describes recent research into genes that affect young people’s ability to learn, and to benefit from interventions.
There is evidence that people who carry certain variations of these alleles have a greater chance of developing particular disorders. For instance, short alleles of the gene 5-HTTLPR, which transports serotonin, have been linked to depression, while long alleles of the dopamine-receptor gene DRD4 have been linked to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Intriguingly, these “risk” genes also turn out to be associated with heightened sensitivity to environmental conditions. Children who carry either or both of them appear to be most adversely affected by negative experiences, and seem to benefit most from supportive ones. Children without them seem relatively immune to the effects of both supportive and unsupportive environments.
He cites several other studies that have found other genes which affect learning. This could help explain why some children are “resilient,” and others are not.
Previously educators have treated “resilience” and “grit” as qualities that could be learned. The research cited here suggests that this may be a waste of time. What is more, Belsky suggests taxpayer money be spent where it will be most effective, according to this information.
Here is what he states:
This brings up a challenging ethical question: Should we seek to identify the most susceptible children and disproportionately target them when it comes to investing scarce intervention and service dollars?
I believe the answer is yes. Of course, we have a lot of research to do before that is possible. We need to understand that many genes and even environmental factors are likely to affect how susceptible children are to environmental influences. Thus, we need to move beyond investigations of single genes to examine multiple genes simultaneously, which is becoming possible thanks to advances in DNA sequencing. Some work of this kind already reveals that instead of thinking only in terms of certain children being susceptible and others not, it is more accurate to say that some children are highly susceptible, some are moderately so and some are far less so.
Those who value equity over efficacy will object to the notion of treating children differently because of their genes. But if we get to the point where we can identify those more and less likely to benefit from a costly intervention with reasonable confidence, why shouldn’t we do this? What is ethical, after all, about providing services to individuals for whom we believe they will not prove effective, especially when spending taxpayers’ money?
One might even imagine a day when we could genotype all the children in an elementary school to ensure that those who could most benefit from help got the best teachers. Not only because they would improve the most, but also because they would suffer the most from lower quality instruction. The less susceptible — and more resilient — children are more likely to do O.K. no matter what. After six or seven years, this approach could substantially enhance student achievement and well-being.
Let me say clearly that even if targeting can be done effectively, it doesn’t mean abandoning those who appear less responsive. Every child deserves a decent quality of life, no matter the cost or long-term payoff. Furthermore, money saved by restricting interventions to those most likely to benefit should be used to explore different and conceivably radical intervention alternatives. After all, we don’t know if the children who seem unsusceptible to interventions truly are, or whether they’re simply not affected by what is currently being provided. The ultimate goal should not be to save money, but rather to spend it more wisely.
While in the end, Belsky puts strenuous conditions on how this information should be used, I believe this approach to be, at its core, eugenicist, in that it promotes making discriminatory decisions based on a genetic profile. And the restrictive conditions Belsky suggests will be very difficult to enforce once this information is available and being acted upon.
As Belsky notes, this is a challenge to our ethics. Implicit in his argument is the idea that there is a very limited pool of resources available to support the development of children, and these limited resources are to be “invested” for maximum return, according to the children’s genetic predispositions.
The standardized tests which some have embraced as vehicles for equity are already being used to rank and sort students, to separate those supposedly “college and career ready” from the rest. I wrote about this sordid history, and the connections between standardized tests and the Eugenics movement a few months ago. Back in 1922, one of the fathers of intelligence testing, Lewis Terman, was challenged in a debate by Walter Lippman, who said:
If it were true, [that intelligence could be accurately measured] the emotional and worldly satisfactions in store for the intelligence tester would be very great. If he were really measuring intelligence, and if intelligence were a fixed hereditary quantity, it would be for him to say not only where to place each child in school, but also which child should go to high school, which to college, which into the professions, which into the manual trades and common labor. If the tester would make good his claim, he would soon occupy a position of power which no intellectual has held since the collapse of theocracy. The vista is enchanting, and even a little of the vista is intoxicating enough.
Combining the information from these genetic markers with test score data already given credence as an accurate indication of intellectual ability reduces human capacity while claiming to expand it. When tests are used as the measuring stick, all the human qualities and abilities that cannot be measured are systematically devalued.
In the model proposed by Belsky, the least resilient students get the most support. However, I have a feeling that things are likely to play out a bit differently in the real world. Once this information is available, how will less resilient students be received by various schools? What schools subject to our current accountability system will choose to embrace them? We already see schools enacting policies that effectively screen out students who lack parental support, or otherwise have shown themselves to be unfit.
What if, along with the robust test score data that we have for students, we also have them tagged according to their genetic tendency to be aggressive, or have ADHD, or use drugs? What if these genetic markers are used, as Belsky suggests, to determine which teacher students get, or who gets special support? And how long before prospective employers get this data? And medical insurers? This is a frightening prospect.
At best, the research shows that genetic composition results in tendencies towards the various conditions described. Making decisions based on these tendencies turns them into self-fulfilling prophecies. Combined with our increasingly efficient system for ranking, sorting and discarding students, following Belsky’s suggestions could allow us to easily slide into a dystopian realm.
What do you think? Should genetic markers associated with learning abilities be used to make educational decisions for children?
Deborah Duncan Owens
Frightening … and we have the Duckworth Lab leading the charge in developing protocols to implement eugenics based research …
http://publicschoolscentral.com/2014/11/29/act-data-and-grit-dont-you-want-to-know-if-your-kindergartner-has-the-right-stuff/
Deborah Duncan Owens
A Brave New World. Where will it end? Have we learned nothing from our past?
http://publicschoolscentral.com/2014/11/29/the-brave-new-world-of-big-data/
phillipcantor
Thanks for replying to this Anthony. I hope you send it in to the NYT as well. I’ll be using the Belsky article along with your response during my HS genetics unit… during which we watch the movie GATTACA… we may be closer to that future than we think. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119177/
Mary Porter
Whereas mankind owes to the child the best it has to give,
Now therefore, The General Assembly Proclaims this Declaration of the Rights of the Child
to the end that he may have a happy childhood
and enjoy for his own good and for the good of society the rights and freedoms herein set forth,
and calls upon parents, upon men and women as individuals, and upon voluntary organizations, local authorities and national Governments to recognize these rights and strive for their observance by legislative and other measures progressively taken in accordance with the following principles:
Principle 1
The child shall enjoy all the rights set forth in this
Declaration. Every child, without any exception
whatsoever, shall be entitled to these rights,
without distinction or discrimination on account of
race, color, sex, language, religion, political or
other opinion, national or social origin, property,
birth or other status, whether of himself or of his
family.
Principle 2
The child shall enjoy special protection, and shall
be given opportunities and facilities, by law and
by other means, to enable him to develop
physically, mentally, morally, spiritually and
socially in a healthy and normal manner and in
conditions of freedom and dignity. In the
enactment of laws for this purpose, the best
interests of the child shall be the paramount
consideration.
Principle 3
The child shall be entitled from his birth to a
name and a nationality.
Principle 4
The child shall enjoy the benefits of social
security. He shall be entitled to grow and develop
in health; to this end, special care and protection
shall be provided both to him and to his mother,
including adequate pre-natal and post-natal care.
The child shall have the right to adequate
nutrition, housing, recreation and medical
services.
Principle 5
The child who is physically, mentally or socially
handicapped shall be given the special treatment,
education and care required by his particular
condition.
Principle 6
The child, for the full and harmonious
development of his personality, needs love and
understanding. He shall, wherever possible, grow
up in the care and under the responsibility of his
parents, and, in any case, in an atmosphere of
affection and of moral and material security; a
child of tender years shall not, save in
exceptional circumstances, be separated from his
mother. Society and the public authorities shall
have the duty to extend particular care to children
without a family and to those without adequate
means of support. Payment of State and other
assistance towards the maintenance of children
of large families is desirable.
Principle 7
The child is entitled to receive education, which
shall be free and compulsory, at least in the
elementary stages. He shall be given an
education which will promote his general culture
and enable him, on a basis of equal opportunity,
to develop his abilities, his individual judgement,
and his sense of moral and social responsibility,
and to become a useful member of society.
The best interests of the child shall be the guiding
principle of those responsible for his education
and guidance; that responsibility lies in the first
place with his parents.
The child shall have full opportunity for play and
recreation, which should be directed to the same
purposes as education; society and the public
authorities shall endeavor to promote the
enjoyment of this right.
Principle 8
The child shall in all circumstances be among the
first to receive protection and relief.
Principle 9
The child shall be protected against all forms of
neglect, cruelty and exploitation. He shall not be
the subject of traffic, in any form.
The child shall not be admitted to employment
before an appropriate minimum age; he shall in
no case be caused or permitted to engage in any
occupation or employment which would prejudice
his health or education, or interfere with his
physical, mental or moral development.
Principle 10
The child shall be protected from practices which
may foster racial, religious and any other form of
discrimination. He shall be brought up in a spirit
of understanding, tolerance, friendship among
peoples, peace and universal brotherhood, and in
full consciousness that his energy and talents
should be devoted to the service of his fellow
men.
http://www.unicef.org/malaysia/1959-Declaration-of-the-Rights-of-the-Child.pdf
Deborah Duncan Owens
Thanks for sharing this, Mary. Our children in the U.S. deserve this. I’m left to wonder why we haven’t ratified this declaration …
http://publicschoolscentral.com/2014/11/21/so-does-the-united-states-really-love-its-children/
Mary Porter
Yes, children have human rights. Thanks for taking this question up, Deborah.
The comments on the Times suddenly closed before I could post it there, but I sent a letter.
Deborah Duncan Owens
We have to give a voice to children, who have no vote and no seat at the table when policies are made that impact their lives. They are powerless to stop their own exploitation. The Unicef Declaration of the Rights of the Child is a good place to start advocating for our most vulnerable citizens and dreamers. Thanks, Mary.
H.A. Hurley
The Third Reich was obsessed with data, record keeping, documentation, Master Race goals, purification, meeting specific genetic indicators, being FIRST, taking over the World…..at any cost or cost to the human race. Along with genecide of Jews, people with disabilities & gays were part of the Final Solution.
We should never forget!
Have we?
howardat58
“One might even imagine a day when we could genotype all the children in an elementary school to ensure that those who could most benefit from help got the best teachers.”
There seems to be a problem nowadays with determining who are the “best” teachers. Maybe they are already looking for a “teacher suitability” gene.
justine
http://www.overruledmovie.com/
justine
Deborah, please take the time to watch the documentary link I posted.
liberalteacher
All this would make a Nazi very happy. When I hear this scientist talk about how to spend scarce resources, it makes my blood boil. There should be no scarce resources when it comes to education. We rather make weapons of mass terror and destruction than education our most precious of all resources-children.
Anita Hoge
Please read our Press Release. FERPA allows DNA sequences to be shared without the parent’s knowledge or consent.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Pennsylvanians Restoring Education
Contacts:
Anita B Hoge 724-263-0474
Cheryl Boise 412-389-6896
Ryan Bannister 717-919-2122
Rich Felice 484-678-2236
December 1, 2014. Harrisburg, Pa; Pennsylvanians Restoring Education, Pennsylvania
Against Common Core, citizens of Pennsylvania, parents and students are asking
Governor Corbett to place a moratorium on the data collection in the Pennsylvania
Information Management System, PIMS, on our students in all 500 school districts. We
are asking the Governor to rescind all contracts and written agreements that the
Pennsylvania Department of Education has with any Commonwealth entity and any
outside contractor who can access personally identifiable information on our children in
violation of federal law, state policy, and Chapter 4 regulations.
We demand a moratorium on the collection of data because of contracts that have been
discovered and are signed by the Pennsylvania Department of Education to disclose personally
identifiable information, which is personal data on the students and his/her family, without the
parent’s knowledge or consent. This personally identifiable information includes information on
every student’s personality, attitudes, values, beliefs, and disposition, a psychological profile,
called Interpersonal Skills Standards and Anchors. This data has been illegally obtained through
deceptive means without the parent’s knowledge or consent through screening, evaluations,
testing, and surveys. These illegal methods of information gathering were actually fraudulently
called “academic standards” on the Department of Education website portal.
On October 22, Governor Corbett and the Secretary of Education, Carolyn Dumaresq,
requested that ALL attitude, value, and disposition requirements, labeled Interpersonal Skills
Standards, that are in violation of federal law and state policy, to be expunged from the
Department of Education website portal called SAS, Standards Aligned System. These
psychological “standards” were never vetted, nor reviewed by the State Board, nor presented to
the Independent Regulatory Review Commission, IRRC. A PennLink was sent to all 500 school
!1
districts stating that the portal had been cleansed of these affective domain standards that had
nothing to do with academic content.
This is a temporary fix. These standards and interventions continue to be forced on students
and remediated in the classroom EVERY DAY. A search on the SAS portal reveals over 2394
lesson plans that align to these now repudiated “standards.” The parents of Pennsylvania want
all affective domain standards, ALL curriculum, and related lesson plans expunged from the
classrooms, as well as from the website portal. Parents are demanding that Governor Corbett
and the Pennsylvania Department of Education cease collecting and disclosing personally
identifiable information on Pennsylvania students and their families immediately.
We have discovered that Pennsylvania continues to be the model for the nation to develop a
dossier on each citizen feeding into a national data base that collects this personally identifiable
information with the collaboration of the schools. This systemic collusion between the
Pennsylvania Department of Education and the National Center for Education Statistics created
a national ID without the knowledge of the citizens. This system boasts that “all of the
Commonwealth’s children, adolescents, and adults” will have a dossier. (CFDA-# 84.384) We
have also found that this data base in Pennsylvania is a model state for the nation to implement
a “womb to workforce” data base, ( NCES Contract: CFDS-#84.384, PR/Award
#R372A090022; grants.gov Tracking #: Grant10076087) that would start at birth and continue
until retirement which connects the Department of Labor with wages in this dossier with the
addition of the last 5 digits of the SSN or the connection to this Unique ID. (Correspondence
between Secretary of Education Gerald Zahorchak and Secretary of Labor Sandy Vito). This
creates a data base of human capital, your worth…or non-worth to the economy.
(Pennsylvania’s Workforce Data Quality Initiative Grant) (PA-WDQI)
The federal government in collaboration with Pennsylvania is developing psychological profiles
on the families of this country through the personally identifiable information collected in the
schools that will be used as a decision-making model for the future. The government wants to
know HOW you think and WHAT you think and everything about YOU. This is a government
intelligence operation using education to create a dossier on every family in this country.
Attitudes and practices of each family are unwittingly revealed in the student’s response in the
classroom and on tests through the “Special Ed Student Snap and Student Snap”
!2
(Pennsylvania State University, PennData Grant: Project Number 062-14-0-042: Federal Award
Number: HO27A130162)
This system was initiated in 2006 when every child in the entire Commonwealth was given a
unique ID that links this information to the federal government with a standardized system that
requires compliance for more information gathering. (Contract with eScholar 2006)(Deloitte
Contracting,Complete Data Warehouse, 2007) Pennsylvania Senior college students
graduating that year would now be age 28. Every person….EVERY person age 28 and under,
schooled in Pennsylvania, has a psychometric profile, an intelligence profile kept by the state of
Pennsylvania….In 10 years, every Pennsylvania schooled person, age 38 and under….In 20
years, every person age 48 and under…In 30 years, Pennsylvania will have a complete
psychographic on every person in the workforce and on every child born thereafter in the
workforce. This is an American electronic model eerily similar to East Germany’s Stasi of
yesteryear.
Governor Corbett, do you realize that your new baby grandson has been granted his own
unique national ID?
The Common Core Standards are the vehicle to nationally standardize the data collection as the
autonomy of the school is stripped from the local level and the teacher in the classroom. The
individual mandate, similar to the Obamacare individual mandate, requires students to conform
to this national agenda. (eScholar Contract) There is no privacy. Governor Corbett, this is a
federal system of control from the top down, a “backward instructional design model” bypassing
our elected state legislature. (Keystone Exams Statement of Work, Contract: Proposed
Amendments/Student CDT)(PennData, Pennsylvania State University)
The Common Core Standards, a grant from the National Center of Education Statistics, the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act, ESEA Flexibility Waiver issued by Secretary Duncan,
and an Executive Order (Executive Order12866) that was given by President Obama without
Congressional authority and without state legislative oversight mandates a national data base
and a nationalized curriculum where every state will have the exact same affective standards
and use a national test that will force everyone into compliance toward the same attitudes,
values, and beliefs. This “design down system” means that the curriculum must align to
!3
psychological standards, teachers must intervene with standardized psychological treatment
when computerized adaptive feedback identifies immediately where to intervene, and the
national test will monitor the progress to be sure every student is standardized to meet those
psychological standards. Teachers must remediate each child to insure that the students are
absorbing the standardized attitudes, values, beliefs, and dispositions.
Teachers, also monitored with a unique ID, will be held accountable to the practice of
psychology, although not state-licensed practitioners and vulnerable to malpractice issues. The
students must meet Interpersonal Skills proficiency, or teachers will be threatened with reprisal
or eventually fired. (ESEA Flexibility Waiver, Principle 1, Principle 2) The contract we have
discovered states that Common Core is a “model curriculum.” Common Core provides 2394
foolproof validated scripts with which to remediate each child’s affective domain to achieve
proficiency. We have also discovered that these Interpersonal Skills Standards are also
embedded in other academic areas of Career Education and Work, Family and Consumer
Sciences, and Health Safety and Physical Education. The test contract in Appendix B for the
Keystone Exams states, “The diagnostic assessments are intended to be easily administered
online and provide immediate feedback of students “strengths and weaknesses.”
Clearly this data collection system has utilized education funds to set up a national system of
surveillance and interventions on our students that is structured from the federal level down into
each classroom. Huge amounts of our taxpayer money have been used to fund this system of
surveillance creating a dossier on each student and his/her family for the purpose of creating
the worker desired by big business and enforced by the arbitrary authoritative state.
(Secretaries Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills, Department of Labor)
We are requesting Governor Corbett to stop the data collection.
Governor Corbett, stop the invasion of privacy.
Governor Corbett, we want legislation NOW, to protect our families, protect our children, and
protect our children’s future.
We are calling on the Attorney General to investigate the data collection.
America used to educate its children and let them create their own world. Now, we are creating their world
and forcing them to live in it. Joe Esposito, Oklahoma
Christine Langhoff
Anita – This information deserves maximum exposure. I suggest you send it to Diane Ravitch for publication on her blog, which has addressed the FERPA question at some length.
H.A. Hurley
Anita & Anthony, please send this info out on Twitter for the World to read. When Parents receive a copy of their Parent Rights related to their child’s CONFIDENTIAL RECORDS, none of this info is presented, in small print, in invisible ink…only in an Arne Gotcha & Bill Billionaire discovered tracing.
Protect your children!
What have these Billionaires done to our country?
Their children are protected.
Please send out to the World & let the public know.
John in Tennessee
See S. J. Gould’s brilliant analysis, “The Measurement of Man”, an absolutely irrefutable criticism of this type of thinking. Racism (tribalism?) again rears its very ugly head.
Monica
Regarding the use of genetic markers to sort students, Jay Belsky states, “Of course, we have a lot of research to do before that is possible”. I believe the same was said about applying Value-Added Modeling to teacher evaluation as well. A bad idea being applied badly long before all the research was (is) in. No thanks.
Jim Horn
from 2006:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2006/05/national-math-panel-and-modern-day.html
from 2009:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2009/02/kipp-reprise-from-2006-why-is-everyone.html
from 2012:
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/02/charles-murray-kipp-and-second-coming.html
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/12/kipp-chemical-reactions-and-character.html