The Orphans of Davenport: Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War over Children's Intelligence [Hardcover]

Doomed from birth was how 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 Skodaks astonishment, under the womens care, the childrens IQ scores became normal.The fascinatingand eerily timelytale of the forgotten Depression-era psychologists who launched the modern science of childhood development. Gripping, meticulously researched.... The bracing revelation of Brookwoods book is that these essential lessons in countering the effects of neglect and disadvantage came frighteningly close to disappearing without a trace. Excellent.... The quiet courage of the Iowa researchers illuminates this story, not least when others admit that they failed to rise to the same challenge.... In chronicling a major intellectual battle of the 20th century, The Orphans of Davenport offers scientists a cautionary, timeless tale about groupthinks power to subvert the dispassionate analysis of new findings. Brookwood makes her book debut with a revealing and thoroughly researched history of the long and fierce controversy about whether intelligence is inherited or influenced by environment . . . . A substantive contribution to the history of psychology. A remarkable unsung history, told with empathy, nuance, and a knack for character-driven storytelling. A triumph of empathetic scholarship, a story whose charactersfrom the children to the brave scientists who advocated for their caremake for truly compelling, and sometimes heartbreaking, reading. The importance of Marilyn Brookwoods story extends well beyond its midwestern locale, exposing as it does the dl#