Moron

The Training School at Vineland, formerly known as the Vineland Training School for Backward and Feeble-minded Children

MORON

mo·ron  [mawr-on, mohr-]

noun

1. Informal . a person who is notably stupid or lacking in good judgment.

2. Psychology . (no longer in technical use; considered offensive) a person of borderline intelligence in a former and discarded classification of mental retardation, having an intelligence quotient of 50 to 69.

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.