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“Not Simply Bad and Incorrigible”: Science, Morality, and Intellectual Deficiency
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 February 2017
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In the United States, the vast majority of individuals labeled as retarded fall under the category of educable mental retardation. These persons are described as “functionally handicapped” because they are without signs of organic disorder or brain pathology. Furthermore, they are drawn almost exclusively from poor families, often of minority origin, an attribute that makes educable mental retardation unique among modern special education classifications and which has made it the subject of controversy since the late 1960s.
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References
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