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The How, The Why, And The Wherefore Of The Training Of Feeble-Minded Children

Creator: Martin W. Barr (author)
Date: September 1899
Publication: Journal of Psycho-Asthenics
Source: Available at selected libraries

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Shall we turn these irresponsibles loose to undo the work of the past and redouble that of the future? Surely history would not write our names among the wise. Experience, and indeed every consideration for the individual and for society, points to the absolute necessity of permanent sequestration, and this, too, coupled with every means that science under wise legislation may dictate to stem the torrent of inherited ill and to forbid the increase of this pernicious element; meas-ures which, freeing the unfortunate from the bondage of pas-sion as well as that of a keeper, would secure greater happi-ness in permitting greater freedom of intercourse between members of a community.

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The colony idea now working itself out will shortly give sufficient data upon which to form an opinion, and, if successful, will doubtless give a practical solution to this problem.

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I do believe that under wise direction and national provis-ion, such a colony or colonies might be made almost self-sup-porting, and also be an encouragement by giving definite aim to the work in the various training schools; and it does seem to me, that these settlements of simple childless folk scat-tered up and down throughout the land, these victims of the follies and the vices of the past, who must themselves be in a certain sense always children, finding their happiness in con-genial occupations and quiet pleasures, would in time have an influence for good greater and more far reaching, because more subtle, than the frown of penitentiary walls. Protected from the world and the world from them, these children of the na-tion, instead of as now, its standing peril, would be a constant object lesson, at once a reproof and a warning to guide us to that "statelier Eden of simpler manners, purer laws" which the twentieth century shall usher in.

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