4/4: Shocking, heart-breaking: 4/4: Marilyn Brookwood, THE ORPHANS OF DAVENPORT: Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War over Children's Intelligence, by Marilyn Brookwood @MarilynBrookwo1 @wwnorton.
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 18 February 2023
⏱️ 10 minutes
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1937
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4/4: Shocking, heart-breaking: 4/4: Marilyn Brookwood, THE ORPHANS OF DAVENPORT: Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War over Children's Intelligence, by Marilyn Brookwood @MarilynBrookwo1 @wwnorton.
https://www.amazon.com/Orphans-Davenport-Depression-Childrens-Intelligence/dp/1631494686
The fascinating―and eerily timely―tale of the forgotten, Depression-era psychologists who launched the modern science of childhood development.
“Doomed from birth” was how the psychologist Harold Skeels described two toddler girls at the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home in Davenport, Iowa, in 1934. Their IQ scores, added together, totaled just 81. Following prevailing eugenic beliefs of the times, Skeels and his colleague Marie Skodak assumed that the girls had inherited their parents’ low intelligence and were therefore unfit for adoption. The girls were sent to an institution for the “feebleminded” to be cared for by “moron” women. To Skeels and Skodak’s astonishment, under the women’s care, the children’s IQ scores became normal.
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS Eye in the World. I'm John Bachelors. |
| 0:06.8 | Marilyn Brookwood is the author of the new book The Orphans of Davenport. |
| 0:10.5 | Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War over Children's Intelligence. |
| 0:14.4 | Harold Skills and Marie Scodak have now proved that their observation from 1930s are very |
| 0:22.5 | much in K-inch in shape in the 1960s when they revisit these children who were placed |
| 0:28.6 | in loving homes and developed very quickly, having escaped the idea that they would be |
| 0:35.3 | trapped in an orphanage forever as they were called feeble-minded, they were called |
| 0:39.6 | imbeciles, they were called moronces, were terms used by eugenicists. |
| 0:44.0 | What happened to the eugenicists? |
| 0:45.6 | Chiefly what happened is the crimes of the Second War. |
| 0:49.8 | Chiefly what happened? |
| 0:50.8 | Although there were crimes in all directions, sterilization was routinely practiced in the |
| 0:55.3 | 1930s and 1940s, people who were isolated or schizophrenic were treated as some but like |
| 1:03.1 | criminals, all of this happened. |
| 1:04.9 | But Marilyn eugenicists disappeared, people stopped talking about it. |
| 1:10.5 | Has there been any effort to very carefully go back in places like Stanford or Columbia |
| 1:16.7 | or the University of Illinois, University of Michigan and identify those who pro-offered |
| 1:22.6 | the Ohio State University, Marie Scotex alma mater and to go back over the eugenicists |
| 1:28.5 | and identify their prejudices and make it clear that the faculty went awry. |
| 1:35.2 | Do they talk about it today, Marilyn? |
| 1:37.2 | No, sadly there hasn't been that kind of an effort. |
| 1:41.4 | What happened after the revelations of what the Nazis had done in concentration camps was |
... |
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