Eugenics; Eugenics -- United States; Euthenics -- United States
Then, one by one, the school may take up and foster the qualities of the
Super Man. Physique must come first. It is blatant mockery to speak of
educating minds that dwell in anæmic bodies. Every boy and girl has a
right to a strong, well knit frame, and the school must teach the best
methods of securing it. Mental grasp--the power to see and judge a
situation or combination of facts, may also come through the school. In
fact, the school course, as at present organized, aims to secure that and
little else. As the science of education advances, the same material which
now comprises the entire course will be taught in less time and in wiser
ways, so that the child shall be free to learn some of those other things
so important to his soul's welfare. Aggressiveness and concentration are
methods rather than ends, and can be made a part of every game, every
competition, and every study, so that the child absorbs them as he absorbs
the atmosphere, without knowing that they become a part of his being.
Whether the school can instill sympathy and inspire vision is a question
that the future alone must decide. Both may be given by individual
teachers, and both may be possible to the school, though, if the home is
doing its work, these things will come more effectively there than through
the school. Most or all of the essential qualities of the Super Man can
and will come through a well organized and properly directed educational
system.
The government--providing the machinery of state administration,
furnishing the school, the playground, and the library; affording an
opportunity for the exercise of citizenship and the expression of those
advancing ideas which must gradually remold the social institutions of
each age in response to the demands of the new generation--affords one of
the most potent forces for the development of the Super Man.
The school is the big home; the government is the big school. The child
leaves the home, and enters the school; leaves the school and enters the
state. In the home he is acted upon; in the school he, himself, begins to
act; but in the government he is the sole actor--he is the state. A home
must be higher than the children; the school must be more advanced than
the pupils; but the state reflects exactly the character of its citizens.
It is in the state that the Super Man, crystallizing his convictions and
beliefs into the form of legislative enactments, must prepare the way for
the Super Race.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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