The Kite Report - the Kallikak Family

[MikeBickerson]

ADHDing my way through Google tonight, and found the full text of the Kite Report. This was part of the fraudulently done study by the Vineland Training School on the piney "Kallikak Family" in the early 1900s. It branded all pineys as degenerates, and was brought to fame in Henry Goddard's The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness published in 1912 that became a cornerstone of the eugenics movement.

Today morons; yesterday colonial outcasts, "disowned" Friends, land pirates, Hessians, Tory refugees, revelers from Joseph Bonaparte's court at Bordentown, and other sowers of wild oats
by Elizabeth S. Kite
Of the training school at Vineland, New Jersey

Between the coastal plane and the fertile land east of the Delaware River lies 2,000 square miles of almost pure sand. Beginning in Monmouth County it extends southwest through Burlington, Ocean and Atlantic Counties. It was originally covered with a splendid growth of pines, interspersed with iron-producing bog lands. This primeval wealth of New Jersey was long ago exploited, and there was left only a scrubby growth that but slowly replaces the timber of the past, while modern science is turning the low hollows into marvelously productive cranberry bogs.

Anyway, it was interesting, so I thought I'd share.

http://www.disabilitymuseum.org/dhm/lib/detail.html?id=2181&&page=1

 

[RednekF350]

I love the opening statement, "Today morons...."
Being deemed a moron isn't so bad, considering that a moron has the higher level of intelligence when compared to an imbecile or idiot.

I always found it interesting that all three of those terms have IQ values associated with them.
My mother and several teachers would often call me an imbecile when I behaved badly. My father was more apt to call me a moron. Thankfully, they never deemed me an idiot.

And who can forget the A.A.M. Local 6-7/8 ?

 

[Teegate]

I love the opening statement, "Today morons...."
Being deemed a moron isn't so bad, considering that a moron has the higher level of intelligence when compared to an imbecile or idiot.

I always found it interesting that all three of those terms have IQ values associated with them.
My mother and several teachers would often call me an imbecile when I behaved badly. My father was more apt to call me a moron. Thankfully, they never deemed me an idiot.

And who can forget the A.A.M. Local 6-7/8 ?

Now I know what to call you the next time I see you

 

[Samuel Avery-Quinn]

If you're around New Brunswick, Rutgers Special Collections has the Elizabeth Kite papers, including (if I remember correctly) her autobiography. The Training School at Vineland, under Goddard, released a series of similar reports: https://books.google.com/books?id=t...v=onepage&q="vineland training school&f=false