The Kallikak Family by Henry Herbert Goddard

Author:Henry Herbert Goddard [Goddard, Henry Herbert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781297089633
Google: H-tJrgEACAAJ
Publisher: Creative Media Partners, LLC
Published: 2015-02-17T05:48:42+00:00

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CHAPTER IV

FURTHER FACTS ABOUT THE KALLIKAK FAMILY

Although the foregoing facts, figures, and charts show conclusively the difference between good heredity and bad and the result of introducing mental deficiency into the family blood, yet because it is so difficult actually to appreciate the situation, because facts and figures do not have flesh and blood reality in them, we give in this chapter a few cases, graphically written up by our field worker, to show the differences in the types of people on the two sides of the family. These are only a few of the many, but are fairly typical of the condition of things that was found throughout the investigation. On the bad side we have the type of family which the social worker meets continually and which makes most of our social problems. A study of it will help to account for the conviction we have that no amount of work in the slums or removing the slums from our cities will ever be successful until we take care of those who make the slums what they are. Unless the two lines of work go on together, either one is bound to be futile in itself. If all of the slum districts of our cities were removed to-morrow and model tenements built in their places, we would still have slums in a week’s time, because we have these mentally defective people who can never be taught to live otherwise than as they have been living. Not until we take care of this class and see to it that their lives are guided by intelligent people, shall we remove these sores from our social life.

There are Kallikak families all about us. They are multiplying at twice the rate of the general population, and not until we recognize this fact, and work on this basis, will we begin to solve these social problems.

The following pictures from life have been prepared by our field worker, Miss Elizabeth S. Kite, and besides giving an idea of the family, they will also show something of her method, and enable the reader to judge of the reliability of the data.

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