The Boys in the Bunkhouse: Chapters 1-4

               The opening chapters of the book, The Boys in the Bunkhouse, function as an introduction to the overarching story of the book; the story of men, “the boys”, who suffer from intellectual disabilities. The book is the story of how these men were treated by their families and society. These first few chapters take a lot of time to describe the different men that the book follows. “The boys” are named, described, and quoted. Their backgrounds are mentioned, their family life before the state school, and their personalities. Even some of their family members have been interviewed to help give the reader a better sense of who these men are. The author of this book lets the reader know more about these men in the first few chapters of their story then most people have probably cared to known about them their whole lives. While the reader learns about the men in the first few chapters, they also begin to learn how they have been neglected, scorned, abused and been looked down on by society and their families. One example of this is that the state school some of the boys attended in Texas, when they were younger, was a “renovated” POW camp. Or that when they left the state school many of the boys ended up working on T.H’s farm doing work, inseminating turkeys, that no one else wanted to do.

               One thing that really stuck out to me while starting The Boys in the Bunkhouse is how society’s view of these men, with intellectual disabilities, never really changed over time, even though our standards for how to help people with this type disability changed. The book shows that in our early history people with intellectual disabilities were treated very poorly, especially in some of the state schools. People were afraid, confused, and ashamed about people with intellectual disabilities. They looked down on people with this struggle and hid them away in institutions or state schools. Even later, when the movement came to integrate intellectually disabled people into society, I feel like, in general, society still held similar views on people with this disability. From reading about T.H’s turkey farm it seems like the move to “integrate” these men into society still pivoted around what was best for a community or and individual, the “normal” members of society, so to speak. When our society was at a loss of what to do with intellectually disabled men and women, we hid them away so we would not have to deal with them. When it became more appropriate (and convenient) to “integrate” these men and women into society, we did this by giving them lower standards of living then the rest of society, the work no one wanted to do, and less pay for this work. I feel like society is still not always thinking about what is really best for these men and women, unless it is also best for everyone else. The descriptions of these men in the book brought these individual men to life for me. They became more than just a group of people labeled as disabled or intellectually impaired. They had families, personalities, and stories. I think we get to see this individuality and uniqueness of the men in the story The Boys in the Bunkhouse. Consequently, we need to remember this is true with all people who have been put into groups labels, or categories by our society.