*The State Boys' Rebellion*--book review
Thanks to Lisa,*, last time I visited the library I went to the front desk and picked up the books that I'd requested ahead of time. No, this is not the ideal way to use a library--I love browsing and looking--but it *is* ideal when you have two cakesniffers** in tow. My favorite of the lot I've read so far is _The State Boys' Rebellion_. It's nonfiction and therefore all the more disturbing; it's about the thousands of children who weren't even mentally "retarded" at all, but who got assigned to state schools for "feebleminded" children. The book describes the indescribably horrific conditions of these schools, the awful torture that the patients/students endured, and the social issues surrounding uncomfortable ideas of our not-too-distant past about eugenics and other equally awful ideals.
I could say more, but I need to go to bed--I've been meaning to write a little about this book for a while, though. Reading about the abuse (no, it really is torture) of children is not something I'd *choose* to do, but it was reading I needed to do.
*I know how to link to her blog, but not to the exact day when she listed a bunch of books. Hmm.
*see Lemony Snicket if you haven't already.
I could say more, but I need to go to bed--I've been meaning to write a little about this book for a while, though. Reading about the abuse (no, it really is torture) of children is not something I'd *choose* to do, but it was reading I needed to do.
*I know how to link to her blog, but not to the exact day when she listed a bunch of books. Hmm.
*see Lemony Snicket if you haven't already.
posted by Anonymous at 8:56 PM
3 Comments:
Sounds interesting... where is/are the institutions and when did this all take place? (If you say last year, I'm going to throw up.) In social work school a group I was in did a presesntation about Willowbrook School, which Geraldo Rivera (the one you know) did an expose on in the early'80s. Totally repulsed me to think of people treated like that in our day and age. Makes a person wonder how this happens, esp when you can't blame it on the ignorance of society at large (ie, in the 1800s, they didn't have the science to understand mental illness/retardation/etc)... scary.
oooh, I'm so glad you liked my recommendation (actually it's a "planned" recommendation, since I haven't even read it yet!) It's on my 2007 To Be Read Challenge list (http://breakingfourth.blogspot.com/2006/11/2007-tbr-challenge.html)
By the way, if you want to link to a particular post, you find the post, click on the title, and then copy the address bar for that particular post. Then create a link for that! :)
LCS: yes, it's the same generation as the Willowbrook scandal--I mean, information about the main school/boys the author describes here grow up in a school very much like that. The author mentions the general societal awareness of these horrible institutions that grew in the 1970s or so. The boys he documents here are now older men--but our generations overlap.
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