Thomson, Gerald. “‘Through no fault of their own’: Josephine Dauphinee and the ‘Subnormal’ Pupils of the Vancouver School System, 1911-1941.” Historical Studies in Education 18, no.1 (Spring 2006): 51-73.

This article features the career of Miss Josephine Dauphinee, the very first teacher in British Columbia to teach segregated classes of “feeble-minded” children. I believe that today, these children would simply be those with learning disabilities, and those with other mental and physical disabilities. Dauphinee believed strongly in the theory and practice of eugenics, and this article focuses on that idea as well.

It is clear through the author’s use of primary documents, including newspaper articles, that Dauphinee was revered and held in high regard in the education community, and that this opinion of her was relatively constant until her death in the 1970s. I was surprised by this, as her beliefs, by today’s standards at least, are quite shocking. She was touted as a “pioneer teacher of Vancouver’s retarded children” (52) even though her purpose for teaching these children was not to help them, but to “isolate them like a contagious disease” because they were seen a social threat. The tone used by the author of the article seems to agree with my less-than-positive opinion of this woman. It is important to note, however, that she was not alone in her opinion; it seemed to be a popular way of thinking in both Canada and the US in the early 20th century. This mentality seems incredibly different from the attitudes popular today, and when I was in elementary school in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Children of all levels of intellect were part of every classroom, although some did have trained professionals assigned to them to help.

I was also shocked to find out about the sterilization act that was passed in British Columbia, and in other provinces in Canada. This seems so outlandish and bizarre, that our government actually passed an act allowing the sterilization of human beings to exist. Who was determining who was eligible for this? There must have been many people sterilized against their will at the hands of unqualified people.