Until the 1840s, "idiocy" was considered incurable, but this changed after S駵in's work in Paris showed intellectual improvements with special education in children classed as "idiots," sparking an optimistic flurry of asylum building throughout Britain and the western world. With the concentration of "idiot" children in purpose-built asylums, children's behaviour increasingly came under scrutiny by the newfound medical, psychiatric and education specialists. Early optimism soon faded, as overcrowded institutions failed to meet expectations and the rise of eugenics over the succeeding decades resulted in the discourse on intellectual disability becoming progressively more negative. The introduction of mandatory elementary schooling across England in 1870 placed large numbers of poor and working-class children under surveillance for the first time and led to a plethora of new definitions and stratification of intellectual disability. Despite the touting by religious organizations of a Christian duty to provide for people with disabilities, motives for the development of special education were not solely compassion and humanitarian concerns. By the fin-de-si裬e special education had evolved from an educative ideal of improving the prospects of intellectually disabled children to segregating those children classified as "feeble-minded" and "idiots" as a measure to reduce crime and degeneracy in the population. This paper traces the shift in discourses of idiocy and feeble-mindedness, proposing suggestions for why this shift occurred and how this history has shaped the current state of special education for children with intellectual difference.