A 主要な scientist says the poor should be paid NOT to have children. Have we learnt nothing from history?

AN EMINENT Danish psychologist has 刺激するd a 熱狂的興奮状態 by 説 poor women should be paid to stop having children ーするために 増加する the 割合 of intelligent people in the 全住民.

Professor Helmuth Nyborg, Dean of the Psychology 学校／設ける at Aarhus University, says he is worried that 高度に educated women are choosing to 延期する having children while いっそう少なく educated women are having many more.

Since he believes that 知能 is hereditary, he thinks women at the 底（に届く） of society should be 活発に dissuaded from 再生するing, while the workload of intelligent women should be 減ずるd to encourage them to have bigger families.

Professor Nyborg has raised the spectre of eugenics, the doctrine which 支持するs selective 産む／飼育するing so that 望ましくない hereditary 特徴 are 結局 eradicated from the 全住民.

This repugnant doctrine, which 涙／ほころびs up the belief that every human 存在 has intrinsic 価値（がある）, was discredited after Hitler's 協議事項 of racial 'purification' led to the 大破壊／大虐殺. Indeed, the notion that biology 決定するd people's personalities （機の）カム to be regarded with 激しい 疑惑 for the same 推論する／理由.

So the 仮定／引き受けること that 知能 was hereditary, which had been around since 早期に in the 20th century, became 広範囲にわたって frowned upon.

However, it 爆発するd once more into the 最前部 of 審議 in 1994 with the 出版（物） of The Bell Curve, a 調書をとる／予約する by the American 研究員s Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray.

This 原因（となる）d uproar by arguing that intelligent people 一般に behaved 井戸／弁護士席, while unintelligent people behaved 不正に, and that some 民族の groups were いっそう少なく intelligent than others.

The Bell Curve's 統計（学） were 広範囲にわたって 非難するd as 深く，強烈に 欠陥d. Now, however, Professor Nyborg has taken its 核心 argument a 行う／開催する／段階 その上の.

But as other Danish 専門家s have pointed out, his 根底となる 仮定／引き受けること is 誤った.

Yes, there is a genetic 構成要素 to int elligence - but it is only one 構成要素. The idea that 知能 is 直す／買収する，八百長をするd, and so impervious to any outside 影響（力）, is wrong. It can be 高めるd or 減らすd by a host of factors, such as 適する 栄養, education or family circumstances.

In other words, while an element of 知能 is passed on biologically from parents to children, other elements are not. So if surrounding circumstances are favourable, the children of poor parents - who themselves may or may not be intelligent - can become 高度に educated.

Indeed, there are many, many examples of 有望な people who come from the lowest social classes (not to について言及する stupid people from the upper classes).

That's why the low 期待s of so many schools in poor areas are such a スキャンダル, 正確に because good schooling can make all the difference in raising children out of the disadvantage of their backgrounds.

So it follows, therefore, that even if unintelligent women were to stop having children, this would not 減ずる the 割合 of unintelligent people in the 全住民; on the contrary, it might 妨げる as many 潜在的に intelligent children from 存在 born.

Some might find it strange that such a distasteful suggestion, with its historical 関係 to Hitler's extermination 政策s, should have surfaced in Denmark, one of the most 進歩／革新的な societies in the world.

In fact, the Leftwing Scandinavian countries were 熱中している人s for eugenics 井戸／弁護士席 into the last century, because the doctrine was associated principally with the 進歩／革新的な 知識階級 who believed in the perfectability of mankind.

Invented in Britain in the late 19th century, it was a 支配的な creed の中で 'enlightened' Victorians who assumed that social 改良 depended upon 産む／飼育するing out 望ましくない racial or social 特徴 so that only the fittest should 生き残る.

輸送（する）d to the U.S., these eugenic doctrines were 広範囲にわたって 促進するd by the American エリート, so that by the Twenties, thousands of people regarded as having low 知能 were 存在 強制的に sterilised and many more institutionalised or 否定するd the 権利 to marry.

It was the American eugenists who invented the notion of the 優越 of the Nordic 'Aryan' race, and it was their ideas which Hitler 熱望して 吸収するd and transformed into his extermination programmes.

Professor Nyborg （人命などを）奪う，主張するs that 'Hitler didn't believe in eugenics', wanting instead to 皆殺しにする individual groups. But this is 簡単に untrue.

ひどく 影響（力）d by the American eugenists, Hitler started sterilising people with congenital illness in 1934, and then 殺人d tens of thousands of mentally and 肉体的に handicapped people - やめる apart from his extermination programmes against the Jews, gipsies, homosexuals and others he みなすd unworthy of 存在.

Professor Nyborg may 井戸／弁護士席 recoil from such an 協会, but his 発言／述べるs are にもかかわらず in line with that whole way of thinking which so catastrophically disfigured the last century, and in which so many 'enlightened' people were 巻き込むd.

Indeed they still are, since the 'planned parenthood' movements - whose UN-sponsored 第三世界 birth 支配（する）／統制する programmes and 昇進／宣伝 of women's contraception and abortion '権利s' in the West are a touchstone for modern 進歩／革新的なs - sprang from 正確に the same eugenist thinkers in Britain and America.

It is, however, these women's 権利s which 現実に 嘘（をつく） at the heart of Professor Nyborg's 関心s. As he says, educated women are having より小数の children. That surely is the real problem, because it is 原因（となる）ing countries across the developed world to experience a 減少（する） in the birth 率 of advantaged babies.

The real 危機 直面するing Western countries, however, is not a 赤字 in the 国家の 在庫／株 of 知能. It is a 普及した 決裂／故障 in norms of behaviour. Professor Nyborg 会談 about mothers at the 底（に届く） of the social heap who 'are not able to manage even the simplest 仕事s'. This is indeed one of our gravest problems.

The 解答, though, is not to stop the poor having children but to alter patterns of behaviour - patterns which have been so disastrously 促進するd by those very educated people whom Professor Nyborg extols.

For it is the 知識階級 which has 促進するd the idea that all types of family are as good as each other, that no stigma should be 大（公）使館員d to 選び出す／独身 motherhood or that cohabitation is as good for children as marriage.

The result is family disintegration which 傷つけるs everyone, but does the most 壊滅的な 害（を与える） to those lowest social classes where the consequent emotional havoc produces the 決裂／故障 in behaviour that Professor Nyborg identifies.

Indeed, it is family disintegration which 燃料s the 教育の underachievement or 完全な 失敗 which leaves so many children from the lowest social classes unable to develop their 知能.

At the same time, there is something 特に 不快な／攻撃 about Professor Nyborg's equation of 知能 with moral 価値（がある）. One does not have to be intelligent to be an upstanding human 存在.

There are plenty of people who are not 特に 有望な but who are a lot more decent, and make a far better 握りこぶし of bringing up their children, than others who have a lot of brain 力／強力にする but are somewhat deficient in the personal 責任／義務 department.

The educated classes make a fetish of 知能. This leads some of them to 支持する a draconian approach に向かって those they think don't 所有する it.

The result is that they えり抜く the poor for 罰 while neatly 避けるing 直面するing up to the need to 取り組む irresponsible behaviour, 含むing their own.

It's not 知能 that 事柄s. It's behaviour, stupid!

m.phillips@dailymail.co.uk