Fernald School, Eugenics, and Institutional Treatment

3A. Watch and summarize the video, “Locking Away the Feebleminded: A Shameful History.”

The video Locking Away the “Feebleminded” is a short documentary-style news story about the Fernald School, an institution in Massachusetts where children were confined under the label “feeble-minded,” even when some of them were not intellectually disabled (Maret, 2020).

The video interviews two men who were institutionalized at Fernald as children. Both men said they were given that label, but the narrator explains that some children admitted to the institution had normal or near-normal intelligence. Fernald needed some of those children to help operate the facility, which shows the label was not always based on actual intellectual disability (Maret, 2020).

The video connects this treatment to the popularity of eugenics in America. Eugenics was the false belief that the human population could be improved by controlling who was allowed to reproduce (National Human Genome Research Institute, 2026). In the video, that belief system helps explain how children could be separated from society and treated as if their lives mattered less (Maret, 2020).

The men described how Fernald used them as workers and treated that work as a priority. The video says the children received little education, and it also says Fernald needed some children to work. That makes the labor issue look worse because education was clearly not treated as the priority. One man said they were made to feel like they were “not part of the species” and “not supposed to be born,” which shows how badly the institution’s labels damaged them (Maret, 2020).

The video also exposes abuse inside the institution. According to the interviewees, the abuse was not only emotional. They described being physically abused by staff, and one of the men also described sexual abuse by attendants (Maret, 2020). The children were housed in barracks-style rooms and were sometimes labeled “moron” in their records (Maret, 2020).

If boys ran away, they were taken to Ward 22, which the video describes as the school’s detention center. One man said he was stripped naked and held in solitary confinement there. That shows punishment was also part of how the institution controlled the children. It was not just neglect or bad care (Maret, 2020).

The video also explains that the children were experimented on medically without their consent or knowledge of what was happening to them. During Senate hearings in 1994 (U.S. Senate, Committee on Labor and Human Resources, 1994), it was revealed that boys at Fernald had been given radioactive oatmeal as part of a nutrition study, while they believed they were only joining a “science club” (Maret, 2020).

After these facts became known, the video explains that many of the “victims” sued and won $60,000 each from MIT, Quaker Oats, and the federal government (Maret, 2020). However, the men the video calls “victims” still had not had their permanent records expunged or corrected. The labels placed on them when they were admitted to the institution, including terms like “moron,” remained in their records (Maret, 2020).

3B.What were the experiences of these men?

The men were exposed to mental and physical abuse that lasted longer than their actual stay at the institution. At the time of the video, they were still seen by the state, according to the video, as intellectually deficient, with no change to their standing on official paperwork (Maret, 2020). They were marginalized, treated as outcasts, and used for labor by the controlling authorities within the institution and its staff.

3C. What is the eugenics movement and where did it begin?

Eugenics was the false belief that human beings could be improved by keeping what the modern thought of the day considered undesirable humans from reproducing. It was built on the idea that some people had better inherited traits and that human value was tied to biology. Francis Galton coined the term “eugenics” in 1883, so the formal beginning was in Britain before it spread into other countries, including the United States (National Human Genome Research Institute, 2021).

Once eugenics reached America, it morphed into governmental policy. PBS explains that forced or coerced sterilization programs happened in 32 states during the twentieth century and targeted people considered “undesirable,” including disabled people, people with mental illness, poor people, immigrants, unmarried mothers, and people of color (PBS Independent Lens, 2016). That ties back into Fernald because the children in the video were living under the same kind of labeling system. Once a child was called “feeble-minded” or “moron,” the system could treat that child like a problem to control instead of a person to care for.

3D.Discuss the research that was conducted on these children.

The research stated in the video was food science research with radiation. In 1994 Senate hearings (U.S. Senate, Committee on Labor and Human Resources, 1994), it came out that MIT scientists gave radioactive oatmeal to the boys as part of a nutrition study for Quaker Oats. The boys were not told what was happening. They only knew they had been invited to join a “science club,” where they received special treatment, extra dessert, and milk.

3E. Utilizing the text, how are people with severe disturbances currently cared for and how is it different than the video?

According to the textbook, people with severe psychological disturbances are now usually treated through psychotropic medications, outpatient care, short-term hospitalization when needed, and community mental health programs. Medications discovered in the 1950s helped to reduce symptoms and led many people to be released from public mental hospitals. Currently, outpatient care has become the main form of treatment, with hospitalization reserved for shorter periods when symptoms are more severe (Comer & Comer, 2022, p. 14).

The treatments used currently are very different from what the video shows at Fernald. Fernald was not built around treatment. The children in the video were labeled, confined, poorly educated, used for labor, and abused without consent (Maret, 2020). The modern system is at least supposed to treat people as patients who need care. Fernald treated children like problems to store away and manage.