What do you think?
Rate this book
The Girls and Boys of Belchertown: A Social History of the Belchertown State School for the Feeble-Minded
During much of the twentieth century, people labeled "feeble-minded," "mentally deficient," and "mentally retarded" were often confined in large, publicly funded, residential institutions located on the edges of small towns and villages some distance from major population centers. At the peak of their development in the late 1960s, these institutions―frequently called "schools" or "homes"―housed 190,000 men, women, and children in the United States.
The Girls and Boys of Belchertown offers the first detailed history of an American public institution for intellectually disabled persons. Robert Hornick recounts the story of the Belchertown State School in Belchertown, Massachusetts, from its beginnings in the 1920s to its closure in the 1990s following a scandalous exposé and unprecedented court case that put the institution under direct supervision of a federal judge. He draws on personal interviews, private letters, and other unpublished sources as well as local newspapers, long out-of-print materials, and government reports to re-create what it was like to live and work at the school. More broadly, he gauges the impact of changing social attitudes toward intellectual disability and examines the relationship that developed over time between the school and the town where it was located.
What emerges is a candid and complex portrait of the Belchertown State School that neither vilifies those in charge nor excuses the injustices perpetrated on its residents, but makes clear that despite the court-ordered reforms of its final decades, the institution needed to be closed.
The Girls and Boys of Belchertown offers the first detailed history of an American public institution for intellectually disabled persons. Robert Hornick recounts the story of the Belchertown State School in Belchertown, Massachusetts, from its beginnings in the 1920s to its closure in the 1990s following a scandalous exposé and unprecedented court case that put the institution under direct supervision of a federal judge. He draws on personal interviews, private letters, and other unpublished sources as well as local newspapers, long out-of-print materials, and government reports to re-create what it was like to live and work at the school. More broadly, he gauges the impact of changing social attitudes toward intellectual disability and examines the relationship that developed over time between the school and the town where it was located.
What emerges is a candid and complex portrait of the Belchertown State School that neither vilifies those in charge nor excuses the injustices perpetrated on its residents, but makes clear that despite the court-ordered reforms of its final decades, the institution needed to be closed.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
224 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 2012
2 people are currently reading
122 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 19, 2012
Institutional history at its best: the life and death of a concept, "the feeble-minded," and an institution for those referenced by the concept, originally conceived in 1848 to improve the lot of family members often kept like animals with bars and stanchions--as in Robert Frost's "A Servant to Servants." Their educability was a new idea, one which faded with the fears of neighbors--especially the fear of breeding and undermining the race or as it would come to be seen, the gene pool. Occasional irony, as when the legislature debated purchasing the land for the State Farm-School, "The prospect of two cellars full of fresh manure there for the taking carried the day."
Law Professor Hornick's account of the legal cases leading to the shutting of the school is precise and intricate, to a layman. The law seemed to
reflect the changing ideas of "handicap" and "mainstreaming." The school's college-like campus and farm productivity, as well as production in rugs and scarfs and shoe repair, should impress.
Law Professor Hornick's account of the legal cases leading to the shutting of the school is precise and intricate, to a layman. The law seemed to
reflect the changing ideas of "handicap" and "mainstreaming." The school's college-like campus and farm productivity, as well as production in rugs and scarfs and shoe repair, should impress.
November 30, 2022
Robert Hornick's non-fiction book, The Girls and Boys of Belchertown was one I chose because of personal questions. The subtitle, A Social History of the Belchertown State School for the Feeble-Minded, points to an institution, a couple of towns to the southeast of my home, about which I had almost no information.
The first time my mother spoke about Orrell, I learned that he was her brother and six years younger. She recounted how he was thought feeble-minded as a child and therefore was sent to the Belchertown State School. In other words, institutionalized. It was only after a number of years that someone discovered he was merely deaf. I don't recall if anyone attributed this to an illness which either he or his mother (my grandma Keyes) had had. I do know that when he got hearing aids, a number of years later, he developed a love of baseball--so my mother gave him a radio. At least those are the good parts of Belchertown for my uncle: baseball, visits from my mother and the ability to communicate.
I read the book accompanied by two kinds of wonderings. First, as a teacher myself, what was my uncle's experience there in learning? And second, could I find information about his stay there, other than whatever he dictated to whomever wrote his letters to my mother. As I later learned from census records, he had never attended any school prior to arrival at the state school.
The second kind of questions had to do with learning about the way such schools were seen as an example of how the cultural concepts of the period played a part in--and reflected--how those who attended it were widely seen, categorized, and treated.
Philosophically, in the planning stages, Belchertown was intended to be a self-sufficient entity, like a town within a town. The students would learn important and useful skills in farming and support work. And from the cultural beliefs of the 1920s, its practices were seen as enlightening children whose physical or mental short-comings hampered traditional learning. Further, the school was a benefit to the town which grew as a result of the school. State funds provided many new jobs, from construction of dorms and service buildings to farming on its more than 200 acres. It also was a source of local pride with its stated intention of sharing experimental farming techniques to showcase for farmers in the area.
The school intended to increase the school-to-town connections in additional ways. Since many of the school residents worked on the farms and orchard, produce was a shared interest with the town. Further, the school created events to which families of residents and townspeople were invited. An annual fourth of July parade was instituted with themed "floats" on truck beds. These were made and ridden by the school residents. Likewise they presented dramas, plays and other types of performances.
Some parents who had a family member at Belchertown became activists on behalf of their children and took on a PTA-like role. They established a Belchertown State School Friends Association, planned events for birthdays, holidays and family visits. In 1947 the school purchased a carousel from a local amusement park for the children which was maintained by funds from other towns and organizations. It had 42 hand-carved horses by Stein & Goldstein of Brooklyn, New York. (Here's a an S&G sample from a park in Pueblo City, Colorado.)
However, over the decades as the demand for enrollment increased as families in neighboring towns grew, more and more students attended. While the school's population grew, spaces for education, such as reading rooms, changed into dorm-style bedrooms. As a result, educational offerings became less about academics and more about vocational training. Likewise as the population grew, management became an issue and learning had to be in groupings based on what the children could do--their mental age, if you will. These mental ages had names that today would never pass muster but were part of their apparently public annual reports.
I have greatly simplified the interplay of the times, the politics of the state and town, the need for education for an increasing segment of the population and the state-allotted budget which had trouble accommodating more and more workers to deal with more and more admissions. Add to this,
the great variability from the series of the school superintendents in their leadership styles.
Beginning in the 1970s, there were a number of consecutive close looks at Belchertown by increasingly bigger--and important-- groups. First it was by parents, then the press, state governance, and finally a class action lawsuit, Ricci v. Greenblatt. Damning discoveries came to light. Here's the official list:
The revelations closed the Belchertown State School in 1992. The residents were moved to various sorts of community care by the state. In the decades since then, several possible uses and purchaser's plans have fallen through and the buildings have become the site of vandalism and arson. Most recently a suspicious fire occurred there in 2017. As the book ended I was grateful that Orrell had not spent his entire life there. I knew this because one of his letters mentioned that he was "boarded out" meaning that he left the school and was given a place in someone's home. This process was part of a family care program mentioned in the book. Although Belchertown was not the only place with similar intentions at its origins that failed its responsibilities in human rights, it was certainly one which made the wider public aware of the lack of responsibility to families who gave their children into their trust.
I don't have any evidence that my mother knew much of what the book showed. However I can't imagine that a town so near ours could fail to be a topic of discussion in the region over years. That likely made Orrell's death harder to bear.
His death left me with different kind of question: Do records still exist that might give me any sense of his time there? I'm wondering, might Mr. Hornick, the author, know where or how to ask?
The first time my mother spoke about Orrell, I learned that he was her brother and six years younger. She recounted how he was thought feeble-minded as a child and therefore was sent to the Belchertown State School. In other words, institutionalized. It was only after a number of years that someone discovered he was merely deaf. I don't recall if anyone attributed this to an illness which either he or his mother (my grandma Keyes) had had. I do know that when he got hearing aids, a number of years later, he developed a love of baseball--so my mother gave him a radio. At least those are the good parts of Belchertown for my uncle: baseball, visits from my mother and the ability to communicate.
I read the book accompanied by two kinds of wonderings. First, as a teacher myself, what was my uncle's experience there in learning? And second, could I find information about his stay there, other than whatever he dictated to whomever wrote his letters to my mother. As I later learned from census records, he had never attended any school prior to arrival at the state school.
The second kind of questions had to do with learning about the way such schools were seen as an example of how the cultural concepts of the period played a part in--and reflected--how those who attended it were widely seen, categorized, and treated.
Philosophically, in the planning stages, Belchertown was intended to be a self-sufficient entity, like a town within a town. The students would learn important and useful skills in farming and support work. And from the cultural beliefs of the 1920s, its practices were seen as enlightening children whose physical or mental short-comings hampered traditional learning. Further, the school was a benefit to the town which grew as a result of the school. State funds provided many new jobs, from construction of dorms and service buildings to farming on its more than 200 acres. It also was a source of local pride with its stated intention of sharing experimental farming techniques to showcase for farmers in the area.
The school intended to increase the school-to-town connections in additional ways. Since many of the school residents worked on the farms and orchard, produce was a shared interest with the town. Further, the school created events to which families of residents and townspeople were invited. An annual fourth of July parade was instituted with themed "floats" on truck beds. These were made and ridden by the school residents. Likewise they presented dramas, plays and other types of performances.
Some parents who had a family member at Belchertown became activists on behalf of their children and took on a PTA-like role. They established a Belchertown State School Friends Association, planned events for birthdays, holidays and family visits. In 1947 the school purchased a carousel from a local amusement park for the children which was maintained by funds from other towns and organizations. It had 42 hand-carved horses by Stein & Goldstein of Brooklyn, New York. (Here's a an S&G sample from a park in Pueblo City, Colorado.)
However, over the decades as the demand for enrollment increased as families in neighboring towns grew, more and more students attended. While the school's population grew, spaces for education, such as reading rooms, changed into dorm-style bedrooms. As a result, educational offerings became less about academics and more about vocational training. Likewise as the population grew, management became an issue and learning had to be in groupings based on what the children could do--their mental age, if you will. These mental ages had names that today would never pass muster but were part of their apparently public annual reports.
"Under the nomenclature of the day (derived from the Stanford-Binet test [published first in 1919]), there were three categories of feeble-minded persons: Idiots (mental age less than 3 years), imbeciles (mental age from 3 to 7 years) and morons (8 to 12 years). The next two levels of intelligence, in ascending order, were "borderline" and "dull normal." (p. 31)
I have greatly simplified the interplay of the times, the politics of the state and town, the need for education for an increasing segment of the population and the state-allotted budget which had trouble accommodating more and more workers to deal with more and more admissions. Add to this,
the great variability from the series of the school superintendents in their leadership styles.
Beginning in the 1970s, there were a number of consecutive close looks at Belchertown by increasingly bigger--and important-- groups. First it was by parents, then the press, state governance, and finally a class action lawsuit, Ricci v. Greenblatt. Damning discoveries came to light. Here's the official list:
overcrowding
grossly inadequate furnishing of buildings
unsanitary lavatories and inadequate bathing facilities that lack privacy
unclean and unsanitary buildings and facilities
pest infestation
delayed repairs
inadequate clothing
lack of medical and dental treatment
lack of proper food and nutritional services
insufficient preventive health services
lack of physical therapy services
insufficient preventive health services
poor psychological services
insufficient speech pathology/audiology services
regimented impersonal environment
shortage of staff
lack of personal hygiene
brutality of the environment
aberrant sexual climate
denial of basic civil rights
improper restraint and punishment
knowing denial of treatment. (p.106-7)
The revelations closed the Belchertown State School in 1992. The residents were moved to various sorts of community care by the state. In the decades since then, several possible uses and purchaser's plans have fallen through and the buildings have become the site of vandalism and arson. Most recently a suspicious fire occurred there in 2017. As the book ended I was grateful that Orrell had not spent his entire life there. I knew this because one of his letters mentioned that he was "boarded out" meaning that he left the school and was given a place in someone's home. This process was part of a family care program mentioned in the book. Although Belchertown was not the only place with similar intentions at its origins that failed its responsibilities in human rights, it was certainly one which made the wider public aware of the lack of responsibility to families who gave their children into their trust.
I don't have any evidence that my mother knew much of what the book showed. However I can't imagine that a town so near ours could fail to be a topic of discussion in the region over years. That likely made Orrell's death harder to bear.
His death left me with different kind of question: Do records still exist that might give me any sense of his time there? I'm wondering, might Mr. Hornick, the author, know where or how to ask?
February 25, 2020
Interesting history of the Belchertown State School. I went to third and fourth grade on the campus, starting the same year the "school" closed, in two buildings that used to be women's dorms. This book is pretty balanced in that it highlights the good, bad, and ugly... Though I have a feeling there is a lot more ugly than the book acknowledges. It can be repetitive at times, but is otherwise an informative read.
August 11, 2025
One of the most comprehensive and depressing books I've ever read about a historical subject. I really have no complaints on format, information, citations, images, etc.
March 15, 2017
A DMH director once said that the only difference between the Belchertown state school and Auschwitz is there are no gas chambers at Belchertown. We all know the horrific history of many state schools and mental health hospitals. This book is a well written account of both the good and the bad (way more of that) of Belchertown. The account of parents having to leave their "feeble minded" or disabled child there because that was the recommendation of the day is heart breaking and then knowing the conditions they were kept is just horrifying. Not anything new to hear but still stories worth telling and hopefully history doesn't repeat itself in the future.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews