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56 Language Diversity in the Classroompaternalism, to Rainwater’s notion of ‘benign’ interventionism, toconsiderably less innocuous actions. Some have argued that it isanachronistic to consider Victorian eugenicists like Francis Galton,who coined the term ‘eugenics’ (see his Inquiries, 1883) as racist in themodern sense of the term; their principles were based upon the science ofthe day, and they ought not to be thought of as some scholarly lynchmob. Galton himself apparently began to think about eugenics in midcentury,focusing on the concept in his 1869 book on ‘hereditary genius’.The word ‘eugenics’ suggests ‘well born’ (Galton’s own synonym was‘good in stock’) and he referred to the practice as the ‘science ofimproving stock’. In all this, he and his colleagues were following avery ancient line: selective breeding and informed interference withprocreation have been discussed (at least) in virtually all societies. 1The zeal with which Galton and others pursued these matters, anenthusiasm that also animated later assessors of intelligence those whosaw the measurement of IQ as a useful screening device to maintainracial ‘standards’, and so on has quite an evangelical aura. Indeed, inhis 1869 book, Galton wrote about a ‘religious duty’ to practice eugenics,and Karl Pearson (his ‘statistical heir’) wrote about the new Galtonian‘religion’ in his adulatory biography. The religious connection has beenmost carefully explored by White (2005, 2006a, 2006b), and Higham(1955: 150) refers to Galton’s eugenics as a sort of ‘secular religion’. Thereis, as White has pointed out, a strong streak of puritanism in Galton andhis epigones, a Calvinism that consigns everyone to a predeterminedfate. In fact, he bluntly states that ‘all the early psychologists ofintelligence had puritan family roots’ (White, 2005: 428); while, at theend of his piece, he acknowledges that the correlation could becoincidental, he clearly feels that it is not.White (2006b) also considers some of the later luminaries ofintelligence assessment. The testing ethos often had religious or quasireligiousunderpinnings, in an age in which spiritual motivations weremore openly articulated than in our own, where it has neverthelessdeveloped into a highly technical branch of the larger social-scientificexercise. White’s glance at Philip Vernon and Hans Eysenck in Britain,and at Arthur Jensen and Richard Herrnstein in America, supports theidea of a generational evolution away from the puritanism of the past.Perhaps, however, it is not too far-fetched to see in the work of suchresearchers some new secularized form of devotion a zealousscientism, perhaps. In any event, if we take into even minimal accountthe tenor of the (Victorian) times and the early years of the 20th century,concerns for knowledge, for advancement and above all for human