Good Intentions, But…

[SARN Memo for September 16, 2009]

In the mid 1800s, social reformer Dorothea Dix took a field trip. She wanted to know how people with disabilities were being treated. So she traveled across New England. She visited jails, poor houses, and prisons. What she found was cruelty and neglect.

Dix said that more asylums were needed. She thought these would provide better care. Many states did just that. They hoped big institutions would make life better for people. It didn’t work out that way. Widespread abuse continued.

1. Quote from Dix
2. Group Discussion: Good Intentions
3. Resource

• Respond to this memo!

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1. Quote from Dix

“I have seen more than nine thousand idiots, epileptics, and insane in these United States… bound with galling chains, bowed beneath fetters and heavy iron balls, attached to drag-chains, lacerated with ropes, scourged with rods… abandoned to the most loathsome necessities or subject to the vilest and most outrageous violations.” (Dorothea Dix, 1848)

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2. Group Discussion: Good Intentions

Talk about how good intentions don’t always work out. In the example above, states built institutions to help people with disabilities, to end abuse. But it did not work out that way. Many people were abused in these institutions over the years.

Ask members to give an example of a well-intended action of their own that did not work out, or about a policy that did harm when the intention was to do good.

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3. Resource

Saints Sinners and Special People
Negative attitudes about people with disabilities have often led to segregation, ridicule, and violence. Learn about this old and ongoing problem and what you can do to change things for the better.

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