OT: Connecticut Training School for the Feebleminded

[Pudge]

I guess I am just not in the right place.

I was asked about land near UConn and remembered friends working at the Mansfield Training School. Yes I then looked it up ... the original name was "Connecticut School for Imbeciles" ... and the changed it to the above titled Feebleminded reference. Of course, for OUR conservative friends ... we had no Political Correctness back then. We have advanced beyond these names. As it is on Route 44 ... if you went Left, you got to the place for Feebleminded & Right got you to ... Providence College.

 

[ctchamps]

I guess I am just not in the right place.

I was asked about land near UConn and remembered friends working at the Mansfield Training School. Yes I then looked it up ... the original name was "Connecticut School for Imbeciles" ... and the changed it to the above titled Feebleminded reference. Of course, for OUR conservative friends ... we had no Political Correctness back then. We have advanced beyond these names. As it is on Route 44 ... if you went Left, you got to the place for Feebleminded & Right got you to ... Providence College.

Now were you clever enough to think of this as a play on the abbreviation PC for political correctness and the college or was this a just a Providence dig?

I thought you were making a humorous jest at us Boneyarders when I saw the title.

 

[Pudge]

Kind of a Rohrshach Test.

I was being tongue in cheek ... but I am amused that (according to Wikipedia) this was the name for Mansfield.

And YES ... If we vote again for the Name of OUR Thing here: This is MY entry.

 

[Waquoit]

I see what you did there.

 

[Palatine]

Idiot, moron and imbecile were medical terms a century ago. They described three levels of mental retardation which is also a medical term. They were replaced by the terms, educable, trainable and non-trainable. Currently there are five levels of mental retardation, borderline, mild, moderate, severe and profound. Feeble minded it was also once an accepted medical term, I believe it was replaced by mental retardation and then by intellectual disability as the term that covered all levels.

When these words were applied, they simply were labels. They acquired the stigma after they came into common use.

 

[storrsroars]

I wonder if Dr. Frankenstein worked there.

Not kidding.

Carl Frankenstein: The Development of the Feebleminded Child.

Creepy, eh?

 

[art4life]

I'm having one helluva an awful day & this post just cheered me right up!

 

[freescooter]

There is an old story, not sure how much is true and how much is made up, but in the era before GPS a recruit was driving up to UConn on Rt 44. He had never been to Eastern Connecticut before and wasn't sure he was on the right road. He came into what was clearly an institution and so he stopped rolled down a window and yelled to one of the people walking down the road, "Am I at the University of Connecticut?" The person, a resident, replied,"NO, this is Mansfield Training School. You have to show improvement to graduate from here."