The Influence of Eugenic Thinking on Special Needs Assessment Procedures - A Historical and Cross-Cultural Study (ca. 1930-1960)
Till Neuhaus
Bielefeld University, Germany
Chair(s): Michaela Vogt (Bielefeld University)
Almost all school systems utilize assessments to sort students into different academic levels, often determining the kind of instruction and educational placement children receive. Also, numerically speaking, such assessments often times address children with borderline cognitive capabilities – historically, diverging names have been used to characterize this group (i.e. feeble-minded, cretins etc.) – and determine whether a child is still ‘normal enough’ or ‘too divergent’ (cf. Neuhaus & Vogt 2024). Needless to say, cognitive ability constitutes itself in relation to external demands, such as economic structures, demands articulated in schools etc. and is thereby a rather fluid factor (cf. Füssel 1987, 24). These state-organized assessment procedures draw from an extensive history of eugenics by either utilizing subtests which have a eugenics background (i.e. IQ-test, cf. Zenderland 2001) or by being influenced on other levels (i.e. Germany’s ‘Überprüfungsverfahren’ originating in 1940, cf. Vogt & Neuhaus 2023). Eugenics can be considered the transfer of biologically minded paradigms, based on hereditary principles, to social circumstances (Garver & Garver 1991, 1110). Francis Galton, the originator of eugenics, explicitly targeted the ‘feeble-minded’ to be addressed by eugenic measures (Lowe 1998, 648). In the eugenic line of thought, the betterment of the human race (Gejman & Weilbaecher 2002, 217) can be established by hindering certain groups to procreate (negative eugenics) and/or by encouraging the supposedly high-quality people to procreate (positive eugenics). In eugenic terms, the rather contingent group of the ‘feeble-minded’ falls into the category of the former with schools and/or further educational facilities as one central locus of identification. This symposium will compare the historical relationship between eugenics and assessment practices in schools in four nations located in three continents: Germany, Italy, the USA, and Ecuador. A historical comparison of Eugenics in different countries will demonstrate that this ideology traveled worldwide (Weindling 2012, 487), maintaining some core features but also incorporating local flavors. Such 'local flavors' can be incorporation of race-related issues in certain geographies but also questions of colonial dynamics, gender, and/or political/religious affiliation. In Germany for instance, eugenics gained momentum in the 1930s through totalitarian politics and incorporated the idea of the Aryan race. At roughly the same time, in the United States, eugenic practices were used within a liberal democratic political framework to deny access to schools; here rather addressing issues of race by targeting African Americans. Each paper will contextualize eugenics and its role in educational testing practices in each country's cultural/ historical/ political context, demonstrating how eugenics thinking unfolded in different contexts and how it has affected the realization of assessment procedures. Drawing from a repertoire of qualitative content analysis (Mayring & Fenzl 2019), historical contextualization (Cowen 2014), and international-comparative methodology (Tröhler 2023), the presentations will conclude with a discussion comparing and identifying commonalities and differences between countries.
Presentations of the Panel
Special Needs Assessment Procedures and the Third Reich - How National Socialism has influenced the Identification of the 'Feeble-Minded'
Till Neuhaus, Michaela Vogt
Bielefeld University
Prior to the emergence of National Socialism, Germany had a long history of identifying and schooling cognitively weak students in seperate settings, namely the 'Hilfsschule' (cf. Füssel 1987, 24). This history ranges back to the 1820s and clearly illustrates that the group of academically/cognitively weak students can be considered the result of external changes, such as industrialization, more extensive demands regarding academic skills etc. (cf. Brill 2019, 102). From its early days onwards (ca. 1820), the Hilfsschule developed from a practicioners' project - teacher who observed that the current state and mode of schooling does not help this subgroup of students (cf. Moser 2016) - to a more sophisticated endeavor with specialized methods, modes, and legal backlog (cf. Gebhardt 2021, 22). This specialization also went hand in hand with more sophisticated models of disability - often stemming from medicine and/or psychology (Moser & Frenz 2022, 22; Tenorth 2006) - as well as modes of identification, such as the early IQ-tests (cf. Wolf 1973). All of these influences also manifested themselves in the educational realm. Despite their obvious flaws, the newly established tests (mostly Binet-Simon-tests) and methods were supposed to evaluate children as objectively, reliably, and scientifically as possible (cf. Esping & Plucker 2015) and further professionalize the field of identifying and treating cognitively weak students. These efforts and dynamics have been influenced by an external shock, namely the emergence of National Socialism in Germany in 1933. One of the earliest laws being passed by the Nazis in 1933, was the Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses [law for the inhibition of hereditary disease] - a law with obvious eugenic tendencies but which also considered a 'law of the guild' in the Hilfsschule (cf. Hänsel 2018, 30). Combined with structural dynamics regarding the teachers' union - the teachers of the Hilfsschule were by far the largest group, yet received prior to National Socialism the smallest compensation; by bringing the formerly independently operating unions (i.e. of blind student teachers) in line, this dynamic shifted and gave more power to teacher of the Hilfsschule -, National Socialism opened a window of opportunity for some powers who wanted to expand and ameriolate the role of Hilfsschule and their teachers (cf. Hänsel 2006). These dynamics also manifested themselves in the identification processes employed to determine which students were assigned to Hilfsschule. By comparing versions of the former assessment methods (Binet-Simon tests from the early 1930s) to the later established procedure (the Magdeburger Verfahren from 1940 onwards, cf. Lenz & Tornow 1942), this paper will identify how the identification process has changed. Further, it will be attempted to synchronize these changes with the larger dynamics at play, namely the institutional as well as ideological changes. By doing this, this paper hopes to illustrate which 'local flavors' have been added to the assessment procedures in Germany during National Socialism and which facets have already been there prior. Also, this paper will make a case for the transfer of competences during that time, from psychologists to special needs teachers.
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Brill, W. (2019): Die Situation der schulischen Integration von Kindern mit Behinderung in Deutschland. In: Italian Journal of Special Education for Inclusion, 7(1), 101-120.
Esping, A., & Plucker, J. A. (2015): Alfred Binet and the Children of Paris. In: S. Goldstein, D. Princiotta, & J. A. Naglieri (Hrsg.), Handbook of Intelligence: Springer, 153-161.
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Gebhardt, M. (2021): Inklusiv- und sonderpädagogische Pädagogik im Schwerpunkt Lernen. Eine Einführung (Version 0.4). Universität Regensburg. https://doi.org/10.5283/e-pub.45609
Hänsel, D. (2018). Die Etablierung des Begriffs Sonderpädagogik im Nationalsozialismus. IJHE Bildungsgeschichte–International Journal for the Historiography of Education, 8(1), 26-41.
Hänsel, D. (2006). Die NS-Zeit als Gewinn für Hilfsschullehrer. Julius Klinkhardt.
Lenz, G. & Tornow, K. (1942): Das Magdeburger Verfahren. München: Deutscher Volksverlag.
Moser, V. (2016): Die Konstruktion des Hilfsschulkindes – ein modernes Symbol zur Regulation des Sozialen?. In: Groppe, C., Kluchert, G., Matthes, E. (Hrsg.) Bildung und Differenz. Springer VS, Wiesbaden, 255-276.
Moser, V. & Frenz, S. (2022): Profession und normative Ordnungen in der Entstehung der urbanen Hilfsschule. In: Moser, V. & Garz, J.T. (Hrsg.): Das (A)normale in der Pädagogik. Bad Heilbrunn: Julius Klinkhardt Verlag, 17-50.
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Italian Eugenics and the Disabled
Simonetta Polenghi, Anna Debè
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore
Italian eugenics wasn’t a unified theory and was not in line with US and German eugenic. The discourse about “regenerating” the people started after political unity (1861), when the necessity of ameliorating the health of the poor was connected with the will of educating the illiterates imbuing them with patriotic feelings (Bonetta 1990) and bore the germs of future Italian eugenics. C.Lombroso linked genius to mental pathology and was optimistic in the dynamic possibility of improving human progress also by folly and eccentricity. G.Sergi, father of Italian anthropology, knew personally Galton. He refused a biological approach to races and connected the character of races to their cultural and sociological traits of civilization. He refused the idea of Aryan superiority and claimed civilization was born in the Mediterranean, with Euro-African great ancient civilization. Crossbreeding among races could be beneficial (Italians being the results of centuries of crossbreeding). But his social Darwinism considered a policy of repression ad (ri)education of the insane, criminals, vagabonds, beggars as necessary (a social artificial selection). The psychiatrist E.Morselli reject the superiority of Aryanism, too, but the inferiority of “negro” people was a common trait (Mantovani 2004).
Italian eugenics was officially born after the 1912 First international eugenics congress and developed after WW1. It was a mixed movement with doctors, psychiatrists, biologists, anthropologists, sociologists, statistics, demographists, etc. The advocates of biological racism, sterilization and euthanasia of incurable feeble minded were a minority, soon blocked by Mussolini, who refused a policy of birth control and launched a natalist demographic campaign in 1927. Morselli implicitly referring to Lombroso, had contested that such a “decimation of the social body [would] risk the disappearance of a Byron, a Leopardi, an Aesop”. He, as the majority of eugenists and the Duce, supported a policy of prevention, social medicine, hygiene, welfare for children, protection of motherhood, special schools. German racism was opposed by most eugenicists: Italians belonged to a Latin/Mediterranean stock with a spiritual/cultural unity, rather than a biological one. Lombroso, Lamarck, Evola were inspiring beacons. Birth control, sterilization and euthanasia of the disabled were never approved – given the influence of the Catholic Church and Pius XII’s encyclical “Casti connubii”, 1930 (Maiocchi, 2004). Father A.Gemelli, a scientist and a psychologist, strongly rejected racism (but supported a theological anti Semitism). N.Pende theorized a “biotypology” as a Catholic and Latin model of eugenics, refusing biological determinism as “subjective and unscientific” (Gillette 2002, p.96). S. De Santis, father of the Italian child psychiatry and a Montessori affiliate, contested racism as unscientific and promoted special schools (cf. Cicciola et al. 2014). Fascist propaganda discriminated Africans and (later) Jews, but disabled Italians could be ‘regenerated’ through education and work. The presentation will show the tensions/contradictions of Italian eugenics and how good practices were often not adequately implemented in institutes for the disabled (Cappellari, De Rosa 2003; Raimondo, Gentili 2020). Besides, the contradictions of Italian eugenic (especially after the Anti Jews laws of 1938 and the acceptance of Arianism) left a pernicious influx also after WW2 (Cassata 2011).
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Cappellari, G.P., De Rosa D. (2003). Il padiglione Ralli: l'educazione dei bambini anormali tra positivismo e idealismo, Milano, Unicopli
Cassata, F. (2011). Building the new man. Eugenics, Racial Scinece and Genetics in Twentieth-Century Italy. Budapest Central European University Press
Lombardo, G.P., Cicciola, E. (2006) The Clinical Differential Approach of Sante De Sanctis in Italian ‘Scientific’ Psychology,” Physis, 43 (1–2), 443–457
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De Sanctis, S. (2002). L’educazione dei deficienti, Colaci A.M. (ed). Lecce, PensaMultimedia (or.ed.1915)
Gillette, A (2002). Racial Theories in Fascist Italy. London-New York, Routledge
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Mantovani, C. (2004). Rigenerare la società. L’eugenetica dalle origini ottocentesche agli anni Trenta. Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino
Raimondo, R., Gentili, C. (2020), Bambini e ragazzi negli ospedali psichiatrici tra Otto e Novecento: un’indagine tra le carte dell’Istituzione Gian Franco Minguzzi di Bologna. Rivista di Storia dell’Educazione 7(2): 109-119.
Tracing Ecuadorian Historical Threads and Redefining Humanity in Special Educational Needs Assessment
Maria Jose Viteri Paredes
Bielefeld University
Ecuador is a plurinational, multicultural, and multi-ethnic nation where the understanding of inclusion revolves around acknowledging and integrating diverse identities. Despite this, in the early 20th century, when eugenic thinking arrived in Latin America, it strengthened immigration and miscegenation restrictions, resulting in the categorization of citizens as healthy/unhealthy and measuring children’s mental and physical abilities at educational institutions. Nevertheless, according to Stern (2016), Ecuador’s eugenic history, its implications on the nation’s development, and its influence on the educational system remain unexplored. Combined with the significant research gap regarding the inclusion of students with ‘special educational needs’ in the Ecuadorian educational context (Caballero, 2023), it consequently merits to deep dive into the origins of the assessment procedures for determining students with SEN and analyzing which historical, cultural, political, and social factors influenced its development. Two core questions guide this inquiry: How did eugenic thinking shape Ecuador’s educational assessments, and what is the role of official legal documents in constructing the ‘identity’ of ‘students with SEN’? The methodology intertwines historical analysis with document and discourse analysis (Morgan, 2022), aligning with the difference theory approach (Butler, 1993) and subjectivation analysis (Pfahl & Traue, 2022). Findings revealed that the conceptualization of ‘students with SENs’ is, in essence, perpetuating and reinforcing discriminatory educational practices through the continual pedagogical delineation of ‘typical’ students. This perpetuation gives rise to distinctive associations and disparities owing to the persistent juxtaposition of ‘students without NEEs’ and ‘students with NEEs’ in order to define them. Tracing Ecuador’s educational journey unveils a history marred by discrimination, exclusion, and stigmatization since the colonial period. The Catholic Church and the influence of eugenic ideologies in defining humanity and who deserves education set a precedent, excluding those deemed ‘not human,’ such as individuals with disabilities. Furthermore, the DisHuman concept (Goodley et al., 2016) challenges traditional notions of human identity, urging a reconsideration of how individuals navigate their existence, continually evolving and enacting their humanities. The role of education must adapt to the evolving reality, acknowledging and embracing the uniqueness of each student. In essence, this abstract illuminates the intertwined history of eugenics, exclusion, and discrimination in Ecuador’s educational narrative. By exploring the roots of current challenges, it calls for a reevaluation of educational values and structures.
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Caballero, E. (2023). Educational Dropout of Students with NEE in the City of Portoviejo. International Journal of Social Science and Human Research, 6, 2223–2228.
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Morgan, H. (2022). Conducting a Qualitative Document Analysis. The Qualitative Report, 27(1), 64–77.
Pfahl, L. & Traue, B. (2022). How Subjectivation (Analysis) Works. In S. Bosančić, F. Brodersen, L. Pfahl, L. Schürmann, T. Spies & B. Traue (Eds.), Following the Subject. (pp. 289–316). Springer VS.
Stern, A.M. (2016). Eugenics in Latin America. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History.
The United States' Tacit Usage of Eugenics in Special Needs Assessment
Federico Waitoller, Özge Ersan
University of Illinois, Chicago
The presentation offers a comprehensive exploration of the enduring impact of eugenics on testing practices within the historical and contemporary landscape of the United States. Through an intricate examination of the historical origins of eugenics, dating back to the 19th and 20th centuries, the presentation illuminates how ideologies aimed at enhancing the human gene pool have profoundly shaped the development and application of intelligence testing methodologies in schools. These ideologies, rooted in the belief in improving the genetic quality of the population, have significantly influenced educational systems and schooling practices, thereby leaving an indelible mark on the trajectory of education in the country. Drawing from Intersectionality Theory (Crenshaw, 1989), the presentation endeavors to dissect the intertwined nature of ableism and racism within the framework of eugenics. By delving into this intersectional lens, the presentation elucidates how eugenics not only targeted individuals with disabilities but also disproportionately affected marginalized communities, such as Blacks, women, and immigrants with disabilities (Connor & Ferri, 2013). This intersectional analysis underscores the complex layers of discrimination and oppression embedded within the historical discourse and practices of eugenics, highlighting the intersecting axes of power and privilege that perpetuated its influence. Furthermore, the presentation ventures into the contemporary repercussions of eugenics on teaching and assessment methodologies in educational settings. Through a critical lens, it examines how the legacy of eugenics continues to reverberate in current pedagogical practices, often manifesting in implicit biases and discriminatory attitudes toward students with disabilities. By unpacking this historical continuum, the presentation sheds light on the persistent challenges faced by individuals with disabilities in accessing equitable education and inclusive learning environments. Moreover, the presentation scrutinizes the legal dimensions of eugenics within the realm of education, particularly in the context of court cases about the inclusion of students with disabilities. By analyzing the rationales presented in these legal proceedings, the presentation underscores the enduring influence of eugenics on judicial interpretations and decisions concerning disability rights and accommodations in education. This legal scrutiny unveils the systemic barriers and prejudices entrenched within institutional frameworks, thereby emphasizing the urgent need for transformative policy interventions and advocacy efforts to dismantle the legacy of eugenics and foster inclusive educational practices. In essence, the presentation serves as a comprehensive exploration of the multifaceted influence of eugenics on testing practices, schooling systems, and legal frameworks in the United States. By interrogating the historical roots and contemporary manifestations of eugenics through an intersectional lens, the presentation aims to provoke critical reflection and dialogue on the entrenched inequalities and injustices perpetuated by this insidious ideology. Ultimately, it calls for concerted efforts toward fostering inclusive and equitable educational environments that uphold the dignity and rights of all individuals, regardless of their abilities or background.
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Connor, D. J., & Ferri, B. A. (2013). Historicizing Dis/Ability: Creating Normalcy, Containing Difference. In M. Wappett & K. Arndt (Eds.), Foundations of Disability Studies (pp. 29-67). New York: Palgrave Macmillan US.
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. In D. K. Weisberg (Ed.), Foundations of feminist legal theory (pp. 383-395). Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
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