This audiobook about an institution for intellectually disabled girls and women in Davenport, Iowa, engages, shocks, and informs. Narrator Susie Berneis empathetically shares this true story about our evolving understanding of childhood development and the question of nature versus nurture. The story may surprise listeners with how little was once understood about childhood development in the early twentieth century, particularly a child’s intellectual abilities. Listeners may be shocked by how the “feebleminded” were once treated. Berneis engagingly shares the stories of women, often just girls, who were institutionalized and the unsung researchers and psychologists who bucked the prevalent belief that children inherit their parents’ low intelligence. There is great empathy in the account of this important moment in our understanding of childhood development. J.P.S. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine
“Doomed from birth” was how psychologist Harold Skeels described two toddler girls at the Orphans' Home in Davenport, Iowa, in 1934. Following prevailing eugenic beliefs, Skeels and his colleague Marie Skodak assumed that the girls had inherited their parents' low intelligence and sent them to an institution for the “feebleminded” to be cared for by “moron” women. To their astonishment, under the women's care, the children's IQ scores became normal. This revolutionary finding, replicated in eleven more “retarded” children, infuriated leading psychologists, all eugenicists unwilling to accept that nature and nurture work together to decide our fates. Recasting Skeels and his team as intrepid heroes, Marilyn Brookwood weaves years of prodigious archival research to show how after decades of backlash, the Iowans finally prevailed. In a dangerous time of revived white supremacy, The Orphans of Davenport is an essential account, confirmed today by neuroscience, of the power of the Iowans' scientific vision.
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The Orphans of Davenport: Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War Over Children's Intelligence
“Doomed from birth” was how psychologist Harold Skeels described two toddler girls at the Orphans' Home in Davenport, Iowa, in 1934. Following prevailing eugenic beliefs, Skeels and his colleague Marie Skodak assumed that the girls had inherited their parents' low intelligence and sent them to an institution for the “feebleminded” to be cared for by “moron” women. To their astonishment, under the women's care, the children's IQ scores became normal. This revolutionary finding, replicated in eleven more “retarded” children, infuriated leading psychologists, all eugenicists unwilling to accept that nature and nurture work together to decide our fates. Recasting Skeels and his team as intrepid heroes, Marilyn Brookwood weaves years of prodigious archival research to show how after decades of backlash, the Iowans finally prevailed. In a dangerous time of revived white supremacy, The Orphans of Davenport is an essential account, confirmed today by neuroscience, of the power of the Iowans' scientific vision.
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The Orphans of Davenport: Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War Over Children's Intelligence
The Orphans of Davenport: Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War Over Children's Intelligence
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Product Details
BN ID: | 2940173331434 |
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Publisher: | Dreamscape Media |
Publication date: | 07/29/2021 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
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