The psuedo science that poisons society

(First published by News24, South Africa)

Pseudo-science, advancing racist, gender and ageist discrimination is a major problem that continues to be widely promoted on digital media. And one important area where it has a malign influence is on parental attitudes and on government policies, especially regarding children and education.

Yet if we wish to build a saner society and not waste the potential of millions of children, we need to understand where these mistaken ideas originate, how phoney they are and what terrible damage they have done and can do. Some of the best examples can be found in South Africa, especially after 1948, and in certain regions of the United States. All of of these — and other — societies suffered as a result of such policies, but the prime sufferers, the most damaged by the process everywhere, were — and remain — young children.

Apartheid supporters and US segregationists firmly believed that racial domination by a “white” group was based on scientific fact. In Britain, social class distinctions were justified in the same way, along with institutions that reinforced this idea. Behind the “science” that promoted such hierarchies of “race”, often conflated with class, lay a flawed and crude interpretation of the laws of heredity discovered between 1856 and 1863 by the biologist priest, Gregor Mendel. He found — working with peas — that certain characteristics of different plants that were propagated (effectively interbred), were transmitted to the new organisms.

In 1859 Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species was published, providing solid evidence of the unity of humanity and the unity and gradual evolution of all life on earth. It was the same year that John Stuart Mill published his treatise On Liberty that argued for individual freedom. The theories of Darwin ands Mill ran counter to the then established order.

What soon followed was a distillation. of Darwin’s ideas into a simplistic “survival of the fittest” concept that was quickly adopted by those supporting racial, class and gender, supremacy. They gained support from social scientists in several countries, whose theories supported the existing order. These theorists began, in the early decades of the last century, to exercise extensive influence over government policies concerning especially migration, enforced sterilisation and education. Even countries with liberal images such as Sweden and Canada, practiced, without consent, the sterilisation of women deemed “unsuitable” for breeding.

A distorted version of Mendel’s “laws”, known as social Darwinism, emerged and was adopted in the form of what Darwin’s cousin, the polymath Francis Galton, called eugenics. This theory maintained that intellectual superiority and, therefore, the right to rule and to dominate, was inherited.

In practical political terms, the belief in eugenics served to reinforce the claim that “racial” and class hierarchies were “natural”, something that should be maintained, promoted and fought for. These arguments followed in the tradition of the Scottish anatomist, Robert Knox, who, in 1850, published a crude, pre-Darwinian treatise entitled: The Races of Men — a fragment. In it, he maintained that humanity was divided into separate species in an order of superiority. At the apex were the (white), “Saxons”, with black Africans at the bottom. In between were Celts (the Irish), “Jews and Gipsies” (sic). Also “Chinamen, Kaffres, Red Indians, New Zealanders” (Maori?) who, “like all other animals” faced “a limited course of existence” before becoming extinct.

Such ideas persisted as social Darwinism took root. But what eugenics in the 19th and early 20th Century lacked was a means to “scientifically” assess levels of intellectual superiority and “feeble-mindedness”. Alfred Binet in France, Lewis Terman in the United States and Cyril Burt in Britain were among the psychologists who, in the early years of the last century, came up with a useful answer: IQ (intelligence quotient) testing. It was the tool eugenics required to provide a scientific veneer to what was often crude bigotry.

Burt, whose work had a profound influence throughout Britain and its then empire, which included South Africa, was subsequently shown to have falsified his data. After his death in 1971, investigations indicated that he was a fraud. But strong vestiges of these ideas survive today in various forms of racism and gender bias. At the same time, the debunking of evolutionary theory still attracts numbers of adherents, mostly among fundamentalist Christian sects.

At all levels, arguments continue to rage about that ill-defined concept, intelligence. God given? Genetically pre-determined? Largely environmentally constructed? Or a combination of “natural” (genetic) ability and the environment? The problem here is that such questions would only make sense if it was clear what was being asked about: what is intelligence?

A reasonable definition comes from David Wechsler, originator of a series of tests that are still in widespread use today. He defined intelligence as: “[The] global capacity of the individual to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with his environment.”
Studies, especially over the past 50 years, have shown clearly that, given equal opportunities, children of whatever background will exhibit equivalent levels of capacity to act purposefully, to think rationally and to deal effectively with the environment; that social and material inequality — poverty — damages, distorts and destroys inherent abilities in communities. Yet despite the evidence, the simplistic binary, intelligent or stupid, remains in common currency. And levels of “intelligence”, and conversely, stupidity, are sometimes measured by various tests that can have horrendous consequences.

But, on the basis of existing knowledge, as well as on moral grounds and the law, children everywhere should be accorded equal human rights. As such, they should be provided with the best possible conditions to develop, to the maximum, their potentials. To do so requires a child-centred approach, free of dogma. It also implies that self generated play, the educational work of children, is an essential part of the developmental process for every individual.

Evidence to date reveals that the guidance of adults, when sought, should not prescribe answers, but should, instead, encourage questioning, critical analysis and thinking. This means that caregivers should be aware of, or trained, in the needs of the child based on an acceptance that all human beings, including children, have equal rights.”

Most of us would realise that, without adequate knowledge and training, we would be a danger to others if we drove a car, motorbike, tractor or truck on a public road. Yet without much knowledge, training or available assistance — and South Africa provides good examples — many often elderly women can, through circumstance, find themselves being in sole care of one or more children with little or no support outside of an inadequate grants system. These young people are, as educationalist Jonathan Jansen has noted: “…the children of the poor who are warehoused in non-educational environments until their tired parents come home from work.”

At least in most cases, children in such situations are generally better off than those in the thousands of child-headed households, a tragic consequence not only of the recent pandemic, but also of the ongoing scourge of HIV and AIDS. But all children, in terms of international agreements and such documents as the South African Bill of Rights, have the right to basic education. And that includes adequate nutrition which is an essential part of early childhood care and education (ECCE).

This is one factor of human life that, at a practical, official, level has been neglected almost everywhere. Plentiful lip service has been paid but, over the past century and more, official aid and support has been paltry to say the least. And so, a quarter into this 21st Century, we, in a still basically food secure world, face the reality of starving masses and the potential of millions of children being almost everywhere wasted.

• Barbara and Terry Bell are the authors of the recently published Children — Our future.