Moron
The Training School at Vineland, formerly known as the Vineland Training School for Backward and Feeble-minded Children
Apparently the word moron was coined by psychologist Henry Herbert Goddard of the Vineland Training School for Feeble-Minded Girls and Boys. The word itself is much uglier than one would think as it is rooted in the early 20th Century eugenics movement as well as “biotruths” that are embedded in racial considerations. Goddard’s research concluded that 15,000 school children in New York City were “feeble-minded” and prefered the options of either segregation or sterilization. It is difficult to formally address his research without fully examining his methodology, but on the surface the 15,000 number seems a bit high…though I don’t know how it stands comparatively to total public school students per capita in 1913 New York City. It’s also highly unlikely that class, or socioeconomic status, was recognized as a major factor in determing intellectual capabilities. I’ll come back to this topic later in a blog post titled “Moron part II”, which I think is also the name of the upcoming sequel to the Tom Green masterpiece Freddie Got Fingered.
cumberland relics 
This is very interesting, I had no idea that the man who coined the word moron wanted to sterilize 15,000 children who were considered “feeble minded”. The only thing is I wish you had explained this a little more. Just give a little more information/ background information next time but overall very good and I like your page over all.
I love the beat of this blog. This post is really intriguing and I would have liked to keep reading. I wish you didn’t stop there! Hopefully I’ll learn more about the Vineland Training School for Backward and Feeble-minded Children in the next post.
Excellent. Well organized, well written piece on an interesting topic. I’d be fascinated to learn Goddard’s methodology for labeling 2 percent of New York’s school children feeble-minded. Everything about this piece begs for more information. Goddard’s intentions of segregation and sterilization were justifiable in his day, when “progress” of the human race became popular in the wake of Charles Darwin’s work. Theories of evolution were used to justify Hitler’s extermination of the Jews and Stalin’s famine-genocide of Ukraine.
Moron Part II ought to be a lengthy post.
I really like how you went to this location and examined its history, a history that not many people may know and then branched that piece of history into a larger moment in our history that we are not proud of. This post was short but very informative in terms of the historical aspects. You also link well on each of your posts that I saw. My only suggestion would be to not throw which post number it is for class into your title/headline.
Interesting topic. Never knew that before.
I like your use of humor here, but even more I appreciate how you were able to construct an interesting post, even to non-history buffs, while staying respectful of your topic. I would enjoy reading something like this once a week.
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For a current, and comprehensive, treatment of the role of the Vineland Training School and Henry Herbert Goddard on the American eugenics movement, see the Facebook companion page for the book Good Blood, Bad Blood: Science, Nature, and the Myth of the Kallikaks (http://www.facebook.com/goodbloodbadblood). Includes lots of pictures related to Vineland and its historical role in eugenics.
Ridiculous misrepresentation of the training school and the philosophy. The Vineland Traning School provided models for enclaves and independent living that are in wide use today. The terminology for those with disabilities evolved as knowledge increased. Keep in mind that at the time, little to anything was known about mental retardation. The Vineland Training School is to be credited with paving the way for the future of diagnosis and applicable therapy.