Henry H. Goddard
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
psychologist
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and eugenicist
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
in the early 20th century. He is known especially for his 1912 work The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness
The Kallikak Family
The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness was a 1912 book by the American psychologist and eugenicist Henry H. Goddard. The work was an extended case study of Goddard's for the inheritance of "feeble-mindedness," a general category referring to a variety of mental...
, which he himself came to regard as deeply flawed, and for being the first to translate the Binet
Alfred Binet
Alfred Binet was a French psychologist who was the inventor of the first usable intelligence test, known at that time as the Binet test and today referred to as the IQ test. His principal goal was to identify students who needed special help in coping with the school curriculum...
intelligence test
Intelligence quotient
An intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several different standardized tests designed to assess intelligence. When modern IQ tests are constructed, the mean score within an age group is set to 100 and the standard deviation to 15...
into English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
in 1908 and distributing an estimated 22,000 copies of the translated test across the United States; he also introduced the term "moron
Moron (psychology)
Moron is a term once used in psychology to denote mild mental retardation. The term was closely tied with the American eugenics movement. Once the term became popularized, it fell out of use by the psychological community, as it was used more commonly as an insult than as a psychological...
" into the field.
He was the leading advocate for the use of intelligence testing in societal institutions including hospitals
Health care in the United States
Health care in the United States is provided by many separate legal entities. Health care facilities are largely owned and operated by the private sector...
, schools
Education in the United States
Education in the United States is mainly provided by the public sector, with control and funding coming from three levels: federal, state, and local. Child education is compulsory.Public education is universally available...
, the legal system
Law of the United States
The law of the United States consists of many levels of codified and uncodified forms of law, of which the most important is the United States Constitution, the foundation of the federal government of the United States...
and the military
Military of the United States
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard.The United States has a strong tradition of civilian control of the military...
. He played a major role in the emerging field of clinical psychology
Clinical psychology
Clinical psychology is an integration of science, theory and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development...
, in 1911 helped to write the first U.S. law requiring that blind
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
, deaf and mentally retarded
Mental retardation
Mental retardation is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors...
children be provided special education
Special education
Special education is the education of students with special needs in a way that addresses the students' individual differences and needs. Ideally, this process involves the individually planned and systematically monitored arrangement of teaching procedures, adapted equipment and materials,...
within public school systems, and in 1914 became the first American psychologist to testify in court that subnormal intelligence should limit the criminal responsibility of defendants.
Early life
Goddard was born in East VassalboroKennebec County, Maine
Kennebec County is a county located in the U.S. state of Maine. In 2010, its population was 122,151. Its county seat is Augusta. The center of population of Maine is located in Kennebec County, in the city of Augusta....
, Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
, the fifth and youngest child – and only son – of farmer Henry Clay Goddard and his wife Sarah Winslow Goddard, who were devout Quakers
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
. (Two of his sisters died in infancy.) His father was gored by a bull
Bull
Bull usually refers to an uncastrated adult male bovine.Bull may also refer to:-Entertainment:* Bull , an original show on the TNT Network* "Bull" , an episode of television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation...
when the younger Goddard was a small child, and eventually lost his farm and had to work as a farmhand; he died of his lingering injuries when the boy was nine. The younger Goddard went to live with his married sister for a brief time, but in 1877 was enrolled at the Oak Grove Seminary http://www.state.me.us/dps/mcja/about_acad/facility.html, a boarding school in Vassalboro
Vassalboro, Maine
Vassalboro is a town in Kennebec County, Maine, United States. The population was 4,047 at the 2000 Census. Vassalboro includes the villages of South Vassalboro, North Vassalboro, and East Vassalboro, home to the town library and sports field.-History:...
.
During this period, Sarah Goddard began a new career as a traveling Quaker preacher; she married missionary Jehu Newlin in 1884, and the couple regularly traveled throughout the United States and Europe. In 1878, Henry Goddard became a student at the Friends School
Moses Brown School
Moses Brown School is a Quaker school located in Providence, Rhode Island, founded by Moses Brown, a Quaker abolitionist, in 1784. It is one of the oldest preparatory schools in the country.-Founder:...
in Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
. During his youth he began an enduring friendship with Rufus Jones, who would go on to co-found (in 1917) the American Friends Service Committee
American Friends Service Committee
The American Friends Service Committee is a Religious Society of Friends affiliated organization which works for peace and social justice in the United States and around the world...
, which received the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...
.
Goddard entered Haverford College
Haverford College
Haverford College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college located in Haverford, Pennsylvania, United States, a suburb of Philadelphia...
in 1883, where he played on the football
College football
College football refers to American football played by teams of student athletes fielded by American universities, colleges, and military academies, or Canadian football played by teams of student athletes fielded by Canadian universities...
team, and graduated in 1887; he took a year off from his studies to teach in Winthrop, Maine from 1885-1886. After graduating, he traveled to California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
to visit one of his sisters, and stopped en route in Los Angeles
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
to present some letters of introduction at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
, which had been established just seven years earlier. After seeking posts in the Oakland
Oakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
area for several weeks, he was surprised to receive an offer of a temporary position at USC, teaching Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
, history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
and botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
. He also served as co-coach (with Frank Suffel) of the first USC football team in 1888, with the team winning both of its games against a local athletic club. But he departed immediately thereafter, returning to Haverford to earn his master's degree
Master's degree
A master's is an academic degree granted to individuals who have undergone study demonstrating a mastery or high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice...
in mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
in 1889.
From 1889 to 1891 he became principal of the Damascus Academy
Damascus Academy
Damascus Academy is/was a Quaker school in Damascus, Ohio. The school was founded in 1857 and was chartered under the laws of Ohio by the Friends' Church in 1885.The psychologist Henry H. Goddard was principal from 1889 to 1891....
, a Quaker school in Damascus, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
, where he also taught several subjects and conducted chapel services and prayer meetings. On August 7, 1889, he married Emma Florence Robbins, who became one of the two other teachers at the Academy. In 1891 he returned to teach at the Oak Grove Seminary in Vassalboro, becoming principal in 1893. In 1896 he enrolled at Clark University
Clark University
Clark University is a private research university and liberal arts college in Worcester, Massachusetts.Founded in 1887, it is the oldest educational institution founded as an all-graduate university. Clark now also educates undergraduates...
, intending to study only briefly, but he remained three years and received his doctorate in psychology in 1899. He then taught at the State Normal School
West Chester University of Pennsylvania
West Chester University of Pennsylvania is a public university located in West Chester, Pennsylvania, about miles west of Philadelphia. It is one of the 14 state universities of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education . West Chester was ranked 69th in the Master's Universities ...
in West Chester, Pennsylvania
West Chester, Pennsylvania
The Borough of West Chester is the county seat of Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 18,461 at the 2010 census.Valley Forge, the Brandywine Battlefield, Longwood Gardens, Marsh Creek State Park, and other historical attractions are near West Chester...
until 1906.
Vineland
From 1906 to 1918 Goddard was the Director of Research at the Vineland Training School for Feeble-Minded Girls and BoysVineland Training School
The Vineland Training School is a non-profit organization in Vineland, New Jersey with the mission of educating the developmentally disabled so they can live independently. It has been a leader in research and testing....
in Vineland, New Jersey
Vineland, New Jersey
Vineland is a city in Cumberland County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 60,724...
, which was the first known laboratory established to study mental retardation
Mental retardation
Mental retardation is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors...
. While there, he is quoted as stating that "Democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
, then, means that the people rule by selecting the wisest, most intelligent and most human to tell them what to do to be happy." [Italics are Goddard's.]
At the May 18, 1910 annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-Minded, Goddard proposed definitions for a system for classifying individuals with mental retardation based on intelligence quotient
Intelligence quotient
An intelligence quotient, or IQ, is a score derived from one of several different standardized tests designed to assess intelligence. When modern IQ tests are constructed, the mean score within an age group is set to 100 and the standard deviation to 15...
(IQ). Goddard used the terms moron
Moron (psychology)
Moron is a term once used in psychology to denote mild mental retardation. The term was closely tied with the American eugenics movement. Once the term became popularized, it fell out of use by the psychological community, as it was used more commonly as an insult than as a psychological...
for those with an IQ of 51-70, imbecile for those with an IQ of 26-50, and idiot for those with an IQ of 0-25 for categories of increasing impairment. This nomenclature
Nomenclature
Nomenclature is a term that applies to either a list of names or terms, or to the system of principles, procedures and terms related to naming - which is the assigning of a word or phrase to a particular object or property...
was the standard of the field for decades. A moron, by his definition, was any person with mental age between eight and twelve. Morons, according to Goddard, were unfit for society and should be removed from society either through institutionalization, sterilization, or both. What Goddard failed to see was that his bias against morons would greatly influence his data later.
Goddard's best-known work, The Kallikak Family
The Kallikak Family
The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness was a 1912 book by the American psychologist and eugenicist Henry H. Goddard. The work was an extended case study of Goddard's for the inheritance of "feeble-mindedness," a general category referring to a variety of mental...
, was published in 1912. He had studied the background of several local groups of people which were somewhat distantly related, and concluded that they were all descended from a single Revolutionary War
American Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
soldier. Martin Kallikak first married a Quaker woman. All of the children that came from this relationship were "wholesome" and had no signs of retardation. Later it was discovered that Kallikak had an affair with a "nameless feeble-minded woman The result of this union led to generations of criminals. Goddard called this generation "a race of defective degenerates". While the book rapidly became a success and was considered to be made into a Broadway play, his research methods were soon called into question; within ten years he came to agree with the critics, and no longer promoted the conclusions he had reached.
Goddard was a strong advocate of eugenics. Although he believed that "feeble-minded
Feeble-minded
The term feeble-minded was used from the late nineteenth century in Great Britain, Europe and the United States to refer to a specific type of "mental deficiency". At the time, mental deficiency was an umbrella term, which encompassed all degrees of educational and social deficiency...
" people bearing children was inadvisable, he hesitated to promote compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization
Compulsory sterilization also known as forced sterilization programs are government policies which attempt to force people to undergo surgical sterilization...
– even though he was convinced that it would solve the problem of mental retardation – because he did not think such a plan could gain widespread acceptance. Instead he suggested that colonies should be set up where the feeble-minded could be segregated.
Goddard established an intelligence testing program on Ellis Island
Ellis Island
Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...
in 1913. When he published the results in 1917, Goddard stated that his results only applied to immigrants traveling steerage and did not apply to people traveling in first or second class.
This program has been misreported as rejecting an estimated 80% of immigrants
Immigration to the United States
Immigration to the United States has been a major source of population growth and cultural change throughout much of the history of the United States. The economic, social, and political aspects of immigration have caused controversy regarding ethnicity, economic benefits, jobs for non-immigrants,...
as "feeble-minded" and resulting in an exponential increase in deportation
Deportation
Deportation means the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. Today it often refers to the expulsion of foreign nationals whereas the expulsion of nationals is called banishment, exile, or penal transportation...
s. In fact, Goddard wanted to test whether his classification system for mental defectives was as accurate among immigrants as it was among native-born Americans. He therefore tested a pre-selected group of 35 Jewish, 22 Hungarian, 50 Italian, and 45 Russian immigrants who had been identified individually as falling between “feebleminded” and “obviously normal” in intelligence.
Goddard found that his tests successfully categorized better than 80% of these pre-selected groups, working about as well as they did for native-born Americans, and equally well for all the tested groups (83% in Jewish people
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
, 80% in the Hungarian sample, 79% of Italians
Italian people
The Italian people are an ethnic group that share a common Italian culture, ancestry and speak the Italian language as a mother tongue. Within Italy, Italians are defined by citizenship, regardless of ancestry or country of residence , and are distinguished from people...
, and 80% of the Russians
Russians
The Russian people are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries....
). Goddard never claimed that 80% of all Jewish immigrants, or any other immigrant group, was “feebleminded”. Rather he claimed that feeblemindedness could be detected in an unbiased and valid way using psychometric testing.
The Immigration Act of 1924
Immigration Act of 1924
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the National Origins Act, and Asian Exclusion Act , was a United States federal law that limited the annual number of immigrants who could be admitted from any country to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already...
was strongly influenced by American eugenics' efforts. It restricted numbers of immigrants from "undesirable" racial groups. Upon signing the bill into law, President Calvin Coolidge
Calvin Coolidge
John Calvin Coolidge, Jr. was the 30th President of the United States . A Republican lawyer from Vermont, Coolidge worked his way up the ladder of Massachusetts state politics, eventually becoming governor of that state...
commented, "America must remain American."
Goddard also publicized purported race-group differences on Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
IQ tests (Army Alpha and Beta) during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
(the results were, even in their day, challenged as scientifically inaccurate, and later resulted in a retraction from the head of the project, Carl Brigham
Carl Brigham
Carl Campbell Brigham was a professor of psychology at Princeton University's Department of Psychology and pioneer in the field of psychometrics. His early writings influenced the eugenics movement and anti-immigration legislation in the United States, but he later disowned these views...
) and claimed that the results showed that Americans were unfit for democracy. He was one of the many scientists (including Francis Galton
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton /ˈfrɑːnsɪs ˈgɔːltn̩/ FRS , cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician...
and Lewis Terman
Lewis Terman
Lewis Madison Terman was an American psychologist, noted as a pioneer in educational psychology in the early 20th century at the Stanford University School of Education. He is best known as the inventor of the Stanford-Binet IQ test...
) whose work was used to defend the scientific racism
Scientific racism
Scientific racism is the use of scientific techniques and hypotheses to sanction the belief in racial superiority or racism.This is not the same as using scientific findings and the scientific method to investigate differences among the humans and argue that there are races...
movement in Europe and the United States.
Later career
In 1918 he became director of the Ohio Bureau of Juvenile Research; in 1922 he became a professor in the Department of Abnormal and Clinical Psychology at the Ohio State UniversityOhio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly referred to as Ohio State, is a public research university located in Columbus, Ohio. It was originally founded in 1870 as a land-grant university and is currently the third largest university campus in the United States...
, a position he held until his retirement in 1938. His wife Emma died in October 1936; they had no children. He received an honorary law degree from Ohio State in 1943, and an honorary degree from the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
in 1946. In 1946 he was among the supporters of Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
's Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists
Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists
The Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists was founded by Albert Einstein and Leó Szilárd in 1946. Its aims were to warn the public of the dangers associated with the development of nuclear weapons, promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy, and ultimately work towards world peace, which was...
.
By the 1920s, Goddard had come to candidly admit that he had made numerous errors in his early research, and regarded The Kallikak Family as obsolete. It was also noted that Goddard was more concerned about making eugenics popular rather than conduting actual scientific studies. He devoted the later part of his career to seeking improvements in education, reforming environmental influences in childhood, and working toward better child-rearing practices. But others continued to use his early work to support various arguments with which Goddard did not agree, and he was constantly perplexed by the fact that later generations found his studies to be dangerous to society. Henry Garrett
Henry Garrett
Henry Edward Garrett was an American psychologist and segregationist. Garrett was President of the American Psychological Association in 1946 and Chair of Psychology at Columbia University from 1941 to 1955...
of Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
was one of the few scientists to continue to use The Kallikak Family as a reference.
Goddard moved to Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara, California
Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Situated on an east-west trending section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States, the city lies between the steeply-rising Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean...
in 1947. He died at his home there at age 90, and his cremated remains were interred with those of his wife at the Vineland Training School.
In August 1977, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
premiered a situation comedy
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...
called The Kallikaks http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075521/, which depicted the comic misadventures of an Appalachian family that moved to California and feuded with another family named the Jukes; the series lasted only five episodes. A June 8, 1987 cartoon in The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
provided a further update to the concept, depicting "The Jukes and Kallikaks Today."
Publications
- The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-MindednessThe Kallikak FamilyThe Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness was a 1912 book by the American psychologist and eugenicist Henry H. Goddard. The work was an extended case study of Goddard's for the inheritance of "feeble-mindedness," a general category referring to a variety of mental...
(1912) - Standard method for giving the Binet test (1913)
- Feeble-Mindedness: Its Causes and Consequences (1914)
- School Training of Defective Children (1914)
- The Criminal Imbecile: An Analysis of Three Remarkable Murder Cases (1915)
- Psychology of the Normal and Subnormal (1919)
- Human Efficiency and Levels of Intelligence (1920)
- Juvenile Delinquency (1921)
- Two Souls in One Body? (1927)
- School Training of Gifted Children (1928)
- How to Rear Children in the Atomic Age (1948)