Social Darwinism and Eugenics (3)

Question 1

What did Charles Darwin publish in 1859?

Answer 1

His theory of evolution.

Question 2

What did the theory of evolution propose?

Answer 2

It showed that in the animal world, species were continually evolving or changing. He proposed that this process occurred because of the ability of better-adapted species to flourish at the expense of less-well adapted one.

Question 3

Who coined the term ‘survival of the fittest’?

Answer 3

Herbert Spencer

Question 4

What did Herbert Spencer and other social scientists do?

Answer 4

Applied Darwin’s there to humans, and called it Social Darwinism.

Question 5

What did the creators of Social Darwinism believe?

Answer 5

They believed that the various human races were at different in the process of evolution.

Question 6

What did Social Darwinism seem to offer and explanation for?

Answer 6

It seemed to offer a scientific explanation for the unequal levels of technology in different parts of the world.

Question 7

What did Social Darwinists believe?

Answer 7

That there was a hierarchy of races, and that the Europeans were the most advanced because they had developed better technology and had conquered large parts of the world.

Question 8

How did they use Social Darwinism to justify colonisation?

Answer 8

They used this belief to justify colonial expansion, believing that Europeans had a right to take land and force other people to work for them. They saw it as part of the process of the survival of the fittest.

Question 9

How was Social Darwinism a misunderstanding of Darwin’s theory?

Answer 9

Darwin believed that a whole species was constantly adapting to changing environments in the process of evolution. He did not suggest that there were superior societies, cultures or races.

Question 10

True or false

Social Darwinists applied their theories within their own societies.

Answer 10

True

Question 11

What did Social Darwinists believe about disabled people?

Answer 11

People with physical disabilities, or who were less intelligent, were at a lower level of development.

Question 12

What did they believe in class-conscious Britain?

Answer 12

People thought that working-class people were less able than those from the upper classes.

Question 13

How did Social Darwinists apply their ideas to capitalism within the USA?

Answer 13

They thought that the ‘fittest’ (the successful businessman) had triumphed over the unfit (the poor worker) because of differences in ability, not differences in opportunity.

Question 14

Where does the word Eugenics come from?

Answer 14

Greek, and it means ‘good genes’.

Question 15

Who first developed Eugenics?

Answer 15

Francis Galton

Question 16

What idea did Galton promote?

Answer 16

It was wrong to protect the underprivileged and weak in society, since this went agains the principles of evolution and the survival of the fittest. Only those with good genes should be supported.

Question 17

How did Eugenicists believe it was possible to produce better human beings?

Answer 17

By using the right kind of social policies.

Question 18

Who did they encourage to have children?

Answer 18

People who had the right physical and mental characteristics should be encouraged to have children. In this way they thought that the quality of the general population would improve.

Question 19

Many people, even in democracies, such as ___,____ and ___ ____ accepted the theories of eugenics.

Answer 19

Britain
Sweden
United States

Question 20

What policies prevented ‘racial decline’?

Answer 20

Positive policies to improve health, fitness and nutrition, hoping to prevent racial decline through better diet, fresh air and regular exercise.

Question 21

How was evident the government supported these policies to improve health etc?

Answer 21

They build public swimming pools and sports grounds, promoting fitness as a national duty.

Question 22

True or false

Women who were considered healthy were encouraged to have children

Answer 22

True

Question 23

How did the government support healthy women?

Answer 23

Set up maternity clinics and family programmes.

Question 24

There was also support for eugenics in countries like ___,____, and ____.

Answer 24

China
India
Brazil

Question 25

Eugenicists believed those with bad genes should be ___ from having children.

Answer 25

prevented

Question 26

What were eugenicists alarmed about?

Answer 26

That social groups who were viewed as inferior, such as the poor, had high birth rates.

Question 27

What did eugenicists try do, to reduce high birth artes among ‘inferior’ social groups?

Answer 27

Encouraged them to practise contraception and birth control. In some cases they supported compulsory abortion or sterilisation, or prohibited sexual relations among people they believed were unfit to become parents, such as mental patients or criminals.

Question 28

What is sterilisation?

Answer 28

Surgery which makes it impossible to have children.

Question 29

What did the law passed in 1913 in Britain entail?

Answer 29

Locked away mentally ill people in institutions to prevent them from having children.

Question 30

What cheaper alternative did some countries use to try to prevent the inferior from having children?

Answer 30

Forced Sterilisation

Question 31

What did Scientific Racism and Social Darwinism lead to?

Answer 31

Led people to believe that some races were ‘fitter’ than others, when in fact human beings are all the same species, which continues to develop and adapt to different environments.

Question 32

Eugenics was used to encourage the breeding of ‘____’ races and to limit that of ‘___’ ones.

Answer 32

Superior

Inferior

Question 33

What did they believe about racial mixing?

Answer 33

It led to the tainting of superior races to inferior ones.

Question 34

What did Eugenicists ideologies about racial mixing lead to?

Answer 34

Led to laws prohibiting sexual contact across races, and in extreme cases, to policies of genocide, such as the extermination of the Herero in Namibia and the Jews in Nazi Germany.

Question 35

What is Eugenics?

Answer 35

Eugenics-the study of or belief in the possibility of improving the qualities of the human species or a human population, especially by such means as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesirable traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics).

Question 36

What is Social Darwinism ?

Answer 36

Social Darwinism is a loose set of ideologies that emerged in the late 1800s in which Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was used to justify certain political, social, or economic views.