Inside Out: The Social Meaning of Mental Retardation

Joan Shanks was a freelancer living in Montreal.

Professors Robert Bogdan and Steven J. Taylor, both of Syracuse University, have compiled an excellent and provocative book describing what it means in this society to be labelled “mentally retarded.” The authors argue that calling children “mentally retarded” simply gives society an excuse to lock them away in what are little more than warehouses. While continuing to recognize differences between people in terms of intellectual ability, they believe that mental retardation is a myth.

“By focusing on people’s ‘retardation’, we lose sight of their humanity.” They challenge the view that the retarded have less need for human kindness and attention, for stimulating tasks to perform, and above all for education and training to equip them to function efficiently in the outside world.

Ed Murphy, slow in his mental and physical development, was sent to an overcrowded state school because his parents died and no one wished to care for him. Pattie Burt was an abused child who was abandoned by her mother. Their stories are different, but they are alike in describing the overcrowding, the boredom, the regimentation, the cruel and demeaning discipline, and the total lack of privacy. As Pattie Burt stated, “I felt like I was an animal.”

There was almost a total lack of formal education; the inmates who could function were used as a source of cheap and convenient labour to look after those who were incapable of caring for themselves. There was an abysmal lack of preparation for the outside world; nobody told Ed that he would have to find a job or even how to fill out a bank form. In an institution, “everybody does your thinking for you so you don’t have to exercise your brain.”

“The stories of the powerless — the judged — add an important dimension to the study of mental retardation.” This excellent book, well documented with references to previous studies, should be essential reading for anyone associated with the “mentally retarded.” It is a disturbing revelation to a society which is, at best, indifferent to the anguish and deprivation of those members considered to be “different.” As Ed Murphy stated, the retarded person’s main struggle is “to realize that he is a human being.” This struggle belongs to all of us.