The general tendency towards more state-organized formal schooling in 19th-century Europe (Westberg et al., 2019) overlapped with a growing interest in “abnormal” children and the question of their educability (e.g., Van Drenth & Myers, 2011). After the mid-19th century, the conviction prevailed that compulsory education should also apply to intellectually and physically “abnormal” children. For this purpose, in various European countries special educational facilities were set up to complement conventional primary school (e.g., Borsay & Dale, 2012). Among the different groups of intellectually and physically “abnormal” children identified and categorized since the turn of the 19th century were the so-called “idiots.” In the German-speaking world, a uniform medical classification of “idiocy” (Idiotie) was established in the second half of the 19th century (Hofmann, 2017). Under this umbrella term, three degrees of intellectual impairment were identified: “feebleminded” (schwachbegabt), “imbecile” (schwachsinnig), and “stupid” (blödsinnig). The question of educability was central to this classification, as only individuals belonging to the first two categories were considered to be educable. The classification of “idiocy” provided the framework for the establishment of these different types of facilities. In so-called asylums, “stupid” children received food and care, but no formal education. “Imbecile” children were sheltered and educated in special institutions, and “feebleminded” children were assigned to special classes. In the proposed paper, I will present a Swiss case study on special classes for “feebleminded” children and the categorization of pupils as “abnormal” or “normal” in association with these classes. My analysis, which is based on sources produced in everyday school life, focuses on the allocation of young children to special classes and the role teachers and educational practices played in this process. After entering primary school, Swiss children were observed, and their performance was assessed by their teachers during the first grade. At the end of first grade, those pupils whose intellectual development was deemed “abnormal” were transferred to a special class. My premise is that the one-year-long trial period, during which thousands of children of the same age were observed in school, had shaped the notion of “normal” and “abnormal” intellectual child development. It was the everyday interaction of teachers with their pupils that was crucial when it came to “making up” intellectually “abnormal” people (Hacking, 2002, pp. 99–114) in Switzerland at the turn of the 20th century.

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