Machines v. Morons

Educators were very wrong when they thought that the machine age would simplify life for morons and imbeciles by making it easier to train them to make a living at routine machine jobs. A specialist in training subnormal youngsters, Director Emily T. Burr of New York City's Vocational Adjustment Bureau has concluded after long experience that machines are actually squeezing morons out of jobs.

Dr. Burr, who reported her findings at The Woods Schools (for "exceptional" children), Langhorne, Pa., learned that it takes a moron (mental age eight to twelve) or an imbecile (mental age three to seven) at least two years to learn a machine operation that an average worker can learn in a few weeks. What alarms Dr. Burr is that one by one the jobs at which subnormal people are most successful--such as wrapping packages, egg candling, simple clerical work--have been taken over by machines.

But the future of the moron is not completely dark. The war has temporarily created jobs for morons: they are filling in as errand boys and girls, waiters, elevator operators, nurses' aides. And when it comes to a choice between a well-adjusted moron and an unstable individual of normal intelligence, Dr. Burr would pick the moron every time. She underlines her point by citing the case of Jenny, 20, a girl of high-grade intelligence who announced one day that she had lost her job as nurse's aide in a maternity hospital. She was asked why. Said Jenny: "Oh, you know they don't like to have you drop babies over there."

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