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H. F. Perkins |
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H. F. Perkins |
In 1926, the Eugenics Survey invited Dr. George K. Pratt, Assistant Medical Director of the National Committee of Mental Hygiene, to conduct a survey of mental deficiency and emotional problems in Vermont school children. Dr. Pratt assembled a team of psychologists, led by psychiatrist Dr. H. E. Chamberlain, to administer IQ and personality tests to over 1000 public school children in the city of Burlington, the towns of Morrisville and Springfield, and rural schools in Essex County, and to students in the State School for the Feebleminded, the Vermont Industrial School, and Burlington special education classes. The team also evaluated how well Vermont public schools and state institutions met the educational needs of mentally and psychologically handicapped pupils.
In 1926, Professor Perkins expected
the survey to confirm and justify the Eugenics Survey's search for
degeneracy in Vermont families of mixed racial ancestry and thereby
explain Vermont's high rate of draft rejections. In fact they did not.
Instead, the NCMH team found the incidence of mental deficiency comparable
to the national average, with the same or lower incidence of problems
among children of immigrants than among children of American parentage.
The NCMH team found fault with educators, however, who graded, promoted,
or retained students according to personality or social behavior rather
than their intellectual development and who failed to appreciate the poor
physical health of many students as a major factor in school failure.
While Perkins privately notified Charles Davenport of their negative findings concerning the alleged inferiority of "immigrant stocks," he did not publicize the NCMH findings in Vermont. Only in 1938 did he admit the error of his earlier thinking:
"[The NCMH findings] seemed conclusively to disprove practically the only suggestion which had been made in an attempt to determine the cause of the 'high incidence' of feeble-mindedness among young men of Vermont. This suggestion was that one of the largest groups of people of foreign derivation appeared frequently to be of low mentality. Dr. Chamberlain's observations did not in the least bear out this solution nor for that matter the conclusions of the war draft examiners."
H. F. Perkins, "Resumé if an Eleven Year's Study," pp. 14-15The Vermont Commission on Country Life Subcommittee on the Handicapped and the Department of Public Welfare, however, used the NCMH findings to promote state-wide mental hygiene and special education programs. The NCMH reports provide an inside view of life in Vermont institutions in the 1920s and reveal the cultural biases of mental tests of the period. In these documents, C.A. = chronological age; M.A.= mental age, as determined by standards established by psychologists who devised the tests.
