Idiot into ape

Abstract

Charles Darwin's correspondence with Dr. John Down indicates that both men thought of people with mental retardation as being akin to humanity's evolutionary predecessors. Recent attempts to teach people with mental retardation to use the computer languages taught to apes show that this conceptualization of mental retardation has remained an unspoken and perhaps unformulated element in public and professional attitudes to people with disabilities ever since. Refuting this conceptualization points the way to a more productive approach to the conditions now classified as ‘mental retardation’.

Citation

Borthwick, C. (2000), "Idiot into ape", Altman, B.M. and Barnartt, S.N. (Ed.) Expanding the Scope of Social Science Research on Disability (Research in Social Science and Disability, Vol. 1), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 31-54. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3547(00)80004-4