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Anthropometrics in the U. S. Bureau of Education: The Case of Arthur MacDonald's “Laboratory”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

James B. Gilbert
James B. Gilbert*
Affiliation:
University of Maryland, College Park
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Extract

In early 1892, Arthur MacDonald, a young docent in applied ethics from Clark University in Wocester, Massachusetts, traveled to Washington to assume the duties of specialist in education “as preventive of pauperism and crime” for the United States Bureau of Education. Hired by the Hegelian philosopher and Commissioner of Education, William T. Harris, he quickly won the approval and praise of his superiors. By the middle of the decade, however, Harris became aware of several disturbing tendencies in his new clerk-specialist. Instead of gathering material for use by educational experts, MacDonald was accumulating “laboratory instruments” for the study of anthropometrics (the measurement of physical characteristics and speculation about their effects upon psychology). Worse, some of the material MacDonald presented to the department, and some which he published in outside books and articles, showed that he was advocating controversial theories of criminology inspired by Cesare Lombroso in Italy and Alphonse Bertillon in France. MacDonald thought he had found a direct link between physical appearance and criminality, insanity, and poverty, in other words, a system of physical stigmata. On the basis of this, he proposed to reorient education from its traditional emphasis upon development toward considerations of hygiene.

Type
Article
Information
History of Education Quarterly , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , Summer 1977 , pp. 169 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © 1977 by New York University 

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References

Notes

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