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Social Darwinism
Contributing teacher:
Daniel Kotzin
Time period: 1890–1910
Overview
Professor Casey Blake focuses on Social Darwinism, providing a good historical background for this simulation on educational reform at the end of the nineteenth century. Blake demonstrates how political conservatives and liberals interpreted and applied the theories of evolution and natural selection, first propounded by Charles Darwin (1809–82), to American society in the late nineteenth century. The resulting set of beliefs, known as Social Darwinism, gave rise to new ways of thinking about American society, the problems it confronted, and solutions proposed for their eradication.
Social Darwinists spanned the political spectrum, with divergent views on the individual and his role in society. Conservatives defined the individual in terms of his or her standing in the hierarchical social order, each individual or group of individuals being naturally superior or inferior to the others. The conservative strand of Social Darwinism posited that neither social reform nor government intervention could erase social inequality, itself a rule of natural law.
The liberal or progressive strand of Social Darwinism viewed human beings as products of their particular environments or cultures. They believed that attempts to improve the living and working conditions of the poor would strengthen the country as a whole, by raising the living standards of the greatest number of citizens. While much of the discussion about Social Darwinism took place among social scientists, popular understanding of their theories seeped into mainstream American culture, influencing industry leaders, educators, and artists.
The Assignment
In this simulation, students will recreate and examine the late-nineteenth-century debates about American society that were influenced by Social Darwinist thought. There will be seven groups of equal numbers participating. Each group will collectively develop one historical character, who represents a particular Social Darwinist point of view. One group, for example, will be assigned to represent Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), while another group will represent Henry George (1839–97), and so on.
The arena for the simulation is a fictitious gathering in the year 1890 of the annual convention of a fictitious Association of American Educators (AAE). The seven historical characters (listed below) that you will assign are invited speakers to the conference, where they will address a special session on the topic of how to reform American education. Each speaker, understandably, presents a different perspective on the subject. While not all of them are social scientists, they have published their views on the subject. The goal of this session is to gather information for the AAE's policy statement on whether to reform American education, as well as the consequences on American society of doing so.
During the 1890s, as rising numbers of southern and eastern European immigrants entered the United States and sought access to public education, the U.S. government commissions the fictitious AAE to issue a policy statement with guidelines for elementary teachers and administrators. This statement is to address ways in which students of many diverse backgrounds, religious traditions, and languages are to be organized in a classroom and taught in a manner consistent with American notions of citizenship. Questions that should be addressed by students in the simulation are given below.
Historical Characters (7) and References
Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919)
A fabulously successful iron and steel magnate, Carnegie believed that natural selection would benefit American society by allowing the most able citizens to direct industrialization and the creation of wealth. In his book The Gospel of Wealth (1900), Carnegie also advocated large-scale private philanthropy by those who had attained such wealth, writing that "a man who dies rich dies disgraced."
Carnegie, Andrew. "Wealth." North American Review 148 (June 1889): 653–64.
 You can read the text of "Wealth" at Lloyd Benson's Past Connections Web site.
Henry George (1839–97)
A journalist concerned about the increasing divide between the rich and poor in the United States, George saw in America's system of private land ownership the seeds of inequality. He proposed a "single tax system" levied only on land, and the abolition of taxes on earned income, as a way to address disparities in wealth and opportunity.
George, Henry. Progress and Poverty. New York: D. Appleton, 1881.
You can read Chapter One of Progress and Poverty
at the Henry George Institute's Web site.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)
One of the most influential and prolific writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Gilman criticized the "cult of domesticity" for its repression of intellectual vigor and civic discrimination against American women. She rejected the conservative version of Social Darwinism advocated by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) and others, believing instead, like Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913) and other progressives, in the capacity of human beings to plan and direct their own destinies. Because she advocated that women be admitted to the professions, Gilman promoted two novel ideas to supplant a mother's household duties: the establishment of professional child-care facilities for child-rearing and of mass kitchens for communal meals.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Women and Economics. Boston: Small, Maynard, 1898.
You can read the text of Women and Economics
at the Celebration of Women Writers Web site.
Orison Swett Marden (1850–1924)
Born to a poor New England farm family, Marden founded Success Magazine in 1897, which boasted one of the largest reading audiences in late-nineteenth-century America. An optimist who coined the phrase, "Where there is a will, there is a way," Marden celebrated the virtues of hard work and perseverance. Summing up his philosophy, he once wrote, "The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself. It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone."
Marden, Orison Swett. The Miracle of Right Thought. New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1910.
You can read excerpts from The Miracle of Right Thought
at the Cornerstone Books Web site.
Hannah Solomon (1858–1942)
Solomon founded the first national association of Jewish women in America: the National Council of Jewish Women, which operated according to her motto, "Woman's sphere is the whole wide world." Active in Chicago reform efforts, Solomon supported woman's suffrage and worked with Jewish immigrants, helping them through housing and public-health reform activities to adapt to American culture and society. Throughout her career, Solomon believed that a woman's primary responsibility was to her family; she believed that Jewish mothers were important standard-bearers for the Jewish faith and culture.
Solomon, Hannah. "Organized Jewish Womanhood." The American Hebrew, 31 May 1895.
You can view an image of "Organized Jewish Womanhood" at the Jewish Women's Archive Web site.
William Graham Sumner (1840–1910)
One of the most famous American social philosophers of the late-nineteenth century, and highly influenced by the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, Sumner believed that natural laws as rigid as those governing the physical world determine social reality. The strongest people always rise to the top, he argued. Sumner admitted that government-sponsored welfare programs would ease the difficulties encountered by the poorest Americans, but he warned that such aid would ultimately degrade a healthy society by ensuring the survival of its weakest and least-productive members.
Sumner, William Graham. What Social Classes Owe Each Other. Harper and Brothers, 1883.
You can read an excerpt from What Social Classes Owe Each Other
, from The Search for a Scientific Culture.
Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913)
A pioneering American sociologist who was largely self-educated, Ward developed a theory of sociology based on stages of human development, in which human beings learn to take actions based on reason and the anticipation of consequences.
Ward, Lester Frank. "Mind as a Social Factor." Mind 4 (October 1884): 563–72.
You can read an excerpt from "Mind as a Social Factor", in
The Search for a Scientific Culture.
Discussion Questions
During the simulation, each group will send its team to the front of the class. A designated speaker will present the views of the group's character in a five-minute speech. The remaining students will then answer questions in character from the audience, who should take the collective role of educators attending the conference session. The simulation will work best if the students, whether as invited speakers or as educators in the audience, generally hold corresponding views of their own original characters. When all groups have given their presentations, a debate will take place among conference attendees, and a draft statement on "whether to reform American education in view of assimilating foreign students and the consequences on American society" will be prepared. To ensure that all students participate, teachers should communicate that a student's grade will reflect his or her participation in the oral portions of the simulation.
Because the goal of the conference is for students to produce a statement informed by Social Darwinist thought, there are several questions that students should address in character during the conference. (Note: Until the 1890s, most Americans were native-born, English-speaking Protestants. Over the next forty years, the composition of the American population changed dramatically as millions of mostly Catholic and Jewish immigrants arrived to work in America's growing industries. The immigrants brought with them their own religious and cultural traditions, sometimes retained political allegiance to their home country, rarely spoke English well, and were often quite poor.)
1. How does your conception of Social Darwinism shape your opinion about the approach American educators should take to educate the great numbers of children from many different religious, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds? Should education stress themes of American history, the English language, and the American work ethic? Or should education promote cultural pluralism as an asset of American strength?
2. As an educator who has listened carefully to the various Social Darwinist views presented at the conference, how do you conceptualize American citizenship? What constitutes a good American, and how can the public school systems help to shape the citizens of the future, given their broad diversity and unfamiliarity with the American way of life? In other words, how should education be structured to create American citizens?
3. What solutions do you offer to educators who have students from different socioeconomic backgrounds with different levels of ability?
4. Do you think an individual's ability in the classroom is based on biology or environment? How does that influence your thinking about changes that should occur in America's classrooms?
The simulation should take two days, in order to have seven presentations as well as follow-up discussions. An extra day for preparation will be needed.
Students should be assigned their historical character and reading (one of the seven) about a week before the day reserved for preparation. Afterward, students should be asked to write a brief paper that summarizes and, as much as possible, synthesizes the material. Some of the readings are more explicit about Social Darwinism than others. You might want to communicate to students that they should interpret the readings in terms of Social Darwinist thinking. It is important that students clearly understand the arguments of their character. Return the papers a few days before preparation day so that students have time to correct their papers.
On preparation day, students will choose their group's speaker. Together they will draft a speech that clearly addresses the main points of their character. They must not simply summarize their readings (although they should be encouraged to use the papers they wrote to help in this process). Rather, the speech should provide the audience with an enlightened understanding of Social Darwinism from the character's perspective, along with an argument advocating that the AAE include their own interpretation of Social Darwinism in the policy statement. In preparation, groups should try to anticipate the questions they will receive from the audience and devise appropriate answers.
After the presentations and questions, the simulation should culminate with a paper, so students should be encouraged to take notes throughout the simulation. The paper should compare and contrast their own character's perspectives on Social Darwinism with those of the other characters. Finally, a discussion comparing the issues brought up at the AAE conference with ways in which Social Darwinism is discussed in their textbooks will help students determine the extent to which their fictitious conference mirrored the debates that actually occurred at the end of the nineteenth century.
Here are some questions teachers may want students to address in their papers:
1. Would you characterize your character as having a liberal or conservative view of Social Darwinism, and why?
2. Describe the ways in which your character was similar to other characters. Describe the ways in which your character was different from others.
3. Was the AAE statement influenced by the thinking of your character? How?
4. Based on your observations of the simulation, and the historical reading you have done about Social Darwinism, how closely did our simulation debates mirror those that actually took place in the late nineteenth century?
Concluding Remarks
The goal of this simulation is for students to discover the various overlapping and perhaps contradictory strands of Social Darwinism in America at the end of the nineteenth century. It is helpful to compare and contrast the opinions of the Social Darwinists in an effort to understand their impact on American society. Please think of these suggestions as a guideline for the simulation and adapt it to your particular classroom.
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