Mental Boundaries and Medico‐Pedagogical Selection: Girls and Boys in the Dutch ‘School for Idiots’, The Hague 1857–1873

Drenth, Annemieke van

doi:10.1080/00309230601080600

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Intelligence testing also was pursued in other institutions, cities, and nations throughout Europe, such as the Netherlands (see, for example, Amsing & de Beer, 2009;Bakker, 2017;van Drenth, 2007), Denmark (Ydesen, 2011), Germany (Gundlach, 2013;Meskill, 2015), and Scandinavia (Hamre, Axelsson, & Ludvigsen, 2019), as well as beyond European and American borders. For example, Setlur (2014) studied the way the French and American intelligence tests arrived and were introduced by C. Herbert Rice, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis, and Venkatrao Vithal Kamat in British India.…”

Section: Views From Beyond: Historians On Intelligence Testingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biographies of a Scientific Subject: The Intelligence Test

Mülberger¹

2020

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The intelligence test consists of a series of exercises designed to measure intelligence. Intelligence is generally understood as mental capacity that enables a person to learn at school or, more generally, to reason, to solve problems, and to adapt to new (challenging) situations. There are many types of intelligence tests depending on the kind of person (age, profession, culture, etc.) and the way intelligence is understood. Some tests are general, others are focused on evaluating language skills, others on memory, on abstract and logical thinking, or on abilities in a wide variety of areas, such as, for example, recognizing and matching implicit visual patterns. Scores may be presented as an IQ (intelligence quotient), as a mental age, or simply as a point on a scale. Intelligence tests are instrumental in ordering, ranking, and comparing individuals and groups. The testing of intelligence started in the 19th century and became a common practice in schools and universities, psychotechnical institutions, courts, asylums, and private companies on an international level during the 20th century. It is generally assumed that the first test was designed by the French scholars A. Binet and T. Simon in 1905, but the historical link between testing and experimenting points to previous tests, such as the word association test. Testing was practiced and understood in different ways, depending not only on the time, but also on the concrete local (cultural and institutional) conditions. For example, in the United States and Brazil, testing was immediately linked to race differences and eugenic programs, while in other places, such as Spain, it was part of an attempt to detect “feebleness” and to grade students at certain schools. Since its beginning, the intelligence test received harsh criticism and triggered massive protests. The debate went through the mass media, leading to the infamous “IQ test wars.” Thus, nowadays, psychologists are aware of the inherent danger of cultural discrimination and social marginalization, and they are more careful in the promotion of intelligence testing. In order to understand the role the intelligence test plays in today’s society, it is necessary to explore its history with the help of well-documented case studies. Such studies show how the testing practice was employed in national contexts and how it was received, used, or rejected by different social groups or professionals. Current historical research adopts a more inclusive perspective, moving away from a narrative focused on the role testing played in North-America. New work has appeared that explores how testing was taking place in different national and cultural environments, such as Russia (the former Soviet Union), India, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Argentina, Chile, and many other places.

show abstract

Section: Views From Beyond: Historians On Intelligence Testingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Biographies of a Scientific Subject: The Intelligence Test

Mülberger¹

2020

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard (1774-1838) e Edouard Séguin (1812-1880), que outorgou ao idiota uma outra condição, a médico-higienista, na qual o ser idiota estaria mais relacionado ao uso e à produção do conhecimento. Essa conjunção apontada como existencial teve consequências diretas na vida cotidiana, pois, embora a referência ao ser idiota proviesse de sua condição de elaboração de conhecimento, sua marca subjetiva, o ser idiota, era o delimitador para sua participação na sociedade, o que viria a ameaçar sua própria existência (Van Drenth, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionunclassified

Quem são os idiotas, afinal?

et al. 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Resumo: O participante da polis, no sentido grego, era aquele que deliberava sobre a vida coletiva. À condição de manifestado desinteresse pelo Estado, os gregos denominavam Ïδιoς (idiótes), de onde deriva o termo "idiota". É na tensão entre gnosiologia e ontologia que o idiota será localizado ao longo de todo o pensamento moderno. Na atual conjuntura de sociabilidade, indaga-se: quem são os idiotas, afinal? Na condição de ensaio teórico, esta discussão pretende, a partir de uma perspectiva crítica, apontar indícios para tal condição: afirma-se que os idiotas comporiam o que se denomina maioria. Ainda mais, o estudo leva a crer que um dos desafios centrais à existência humana, desde as circunstâncias de sociabilidade da cidadania grega até as diversas transições e representações da sociedade capitalista, reside no complexo de relações indivíduo-gênero. Palavras-chave: idiota, teoria crítica, ontologia, formação humana

show abstract

Industry, Improvement, and Intellectual Disability: Finding the Hopes and Fears of Parents and Superintendents at the Pennsylvania Training School

Ruswick

Simon²

2018

J. gilded age prog. era

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article examines late nineteenth-century preadmission records taken at the Pennsylvania Training School in order to better understand the biographical and medical characteristics of persons seeking admission to this prominent school for the “feeble-minded.” It draws on those records to then explore how guardians and the superintendent assessed the likelihood and nature of educational improvement. A pioneering institution for the education of people with intellectual disability, the Training School, generally known as “Elwyn,” kept extensive biographical and etiological records that contain a previously untapped wealth of data. These records offer valuable insight into parents’ understanding of their children's disability, their hopes for improvement, and opinions of what would constitute a successful, productive life. The authors use the records to develop a statistical profile of the characteristics of applicants that superintendent Dr. Martin Barr would deem most likely to improve from instruction, and a similar profile for those deemed incapable of improvement. We situate our analysis of the records within the Gilded Age context of anxieties surrounding the state of public education and worker productivity in an industrial economy. In the field of disability studies, the article adds to our understanding of how superintendents constructed and applied the “medical model” of disability and its tension with the lived social experience of disability.

show abstract

Mental Boundaries and Medico‐Pedagogical Selection: Girls and Boys in the Dutch ‘School for Idiots’, The Hague 1857–1873

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

Biographies of a Scientific Subject: The Intelligence Test

Biographies of a Scientific Subject: The Intelligence Test

Quem são os idiotas, afinal?

Industry, Improvement, and Intellectual Disability: Finding the Hopes and Fears of Parents and Superintendents at the Pennsylvania Training School

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About