Eugenics facts for kids
Eugenics is a social and political philosophy. It tries to influence the way people choose to mate and raise children, with the aim of improving the human species.
Eugenics rests on some basic ideas. The first is that, in genetics, what is true of animals is also true of man. The characteristics of animals are passed on from one generation to the next in heredity, including mental characteristics. For example, the behaviour and mental characteristics of different breeds of dog differ, and all modern breeds are greatly changed from wolves. The breeding and genetics of farm animals show that if the parents of the next generation are chosen, then that affects what offspring are born.
Negative eugenics aims to cut out traits that lead to suffering, by limiting people with the traits from reproducing. Positive eugenics aims to produce more healthy and intelligent humans, by persuading people with those traits to have more children.
In the past, many ways were proposed for doing this, and even today eugenics means different things to different people. The idea of eugenics is controversial, because in the past it was sometimes used to justify discrimination and injustice against people who were thought to be genetically unhealthy or inferior.
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Images for kids
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G. K. Chesterton, an opponent of eugenics, in 1905, by photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn
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Karl Pearson (1912)
