Photo Credits – s-b-conrad-inc-west-chester-university-schmucker-science-center2
To whom it may concern,
As part of the University’s commitment to inclusion as expressed in its mission statement and the Moonshot for Equity Program, we thought it fitting to bring attention to some previously overlooked publications authored by Samuel Christian Schmucker, for whom the Schmucker Science Center is named. In those publications, Schmucker espoused reprehensible ableist, racist, and sexist views associated with the eugenics movement.
The Center was named after Prof. Schmucker in 1963 “…for his outstanding teaching contributions in the field of science.”[1] Indeed, Schmucker was one of the most beloved science teachers in the formative years of West Chester State Normal School. He was recognized as a national expert in the field of evolutionary theism. Schmucker saw the purpose of science education as an education of “spirit. It is concerned with the child’s outlook on the world.” “The real purpose of nature study,” was “to uplift the moral life.”[2] This dedication to teaching made him a popular educator, and his reputation in his own field made the naming choice, at the time, an easy one. But examining his career through a modern lens reveals a pattern of concerning statements which have no place in a modern academic setting.
As a science professor at West Chester, Schmucker authored The Meaning of Evolution in 1913. In its final chapter, “The Future Evolution of Man,” the professor talks about raising the pedigree of humankind to improve the world of the future. It is a future that has eradicated people with intellectual disability. On the subject of intellectually disabled persons having children and families, he predicts “It will not be long before society will learn to protect itself against such poisoning of the human stock.” He also theorizes “It will not be long before society will see to it that such a life leaves behind it no strain cursed with its fatal weakness.”[3] He emphasized this idea again in a 1914 speech in which he proclaimed, ““The blight of feeble-mindedness is hanging over humanity. This tide must be stemmed: they must not be allowed to bring others of their kind into the world. We must segregate them, with profitable labor if possible, for life, and not for a few years.”[4] These startling comments—advocating mandatory, life-long incarceration with forced labor to eliminate intellectual disability from humanity—demonstrate that as committed to education as he claimed to be, Schmucker neglected the education of those who needed the most help.
Schmucker’s views about intellectual disability were a part of his actions and publications on race, which show white supremacist viewpoints. As early as 1913 he spoke at a New York Conference on the subject of “Race Improvement”.[5] After his retirement from West Chester from 1925, he expanded his commentary on his ideas of a racial hierarchy. His 1925 book Man’s Life on Earth is filled with racial profiling based on physical appearance, as well as racist stereotypes about how black people “are more emotional than either of the other types of people” and, in his clearest statement of white supremacy, that “The white race is probably the last evolved of the three, and also, in most respects, the most modified. It has certainly responded most rapidly to civilization, due not a little to its superior adaptability and to its inventiveness.” Finally, he claims “It is taken for granted by a great many observers that a mixture of any two of the three great races produces a hybrid with the bad qualities of both and the good of neither… There can be no question that hybrids of the dregs of each race are inferior, and it is the dregs usually that mix.”[6] This despicable caricaturization demonstrates that Schmucker is an unfitting eponym for our science building.
Schmucker’s concerns for the future of the white race also are manifest in how his writings heavily featured concerns about preserving traditional gender norms. Discussing a new “type” of woman who is more independent, he pondered “Will she reluctantly at last confess that a woman is not a man, and a woman cannot satisfactorily live a man’s life to the end?” He also posits that a woman’s life is not complete without motherhood.[7] With efforts to close achievement gaps among women and POC, these students deserve a space dedicated to a figure who shares their vision for success.
These statements were made by Schmucker in public writings and appearances, in which he identified and benefited from his standing as a professor at West Chester State Normal School. We would like to have an opportunity to publicly decry Schmucker’s eugenicist views, by renaming the building after another WCU faculty person whose career is more aligned to our stated values.
Sincerely,
Concerned Students
[4] Human Race Neglected, The Keota News, (Keota, Co, July 3, 1914).
[5] Chautauqua Calls Us, The Bourbon News (May 27, 1913). 7
Aaron Stoyack, Special to the Quad