From the diaries of Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard, The Wild Child is a movie made in 1970, with a setting in France from the18th century, and based on a child who had lived in nature his whole life without any human contact. Itard, a well known French doctor for working with deaf-mutes, had taken in this feral child under his care for the purposes of his studies on the child’s intellectual and social education. Given the time period of the movie Itard had taken the “wild-child” in under his own care, and helped teach the child to be more civilized, even though he went against the beliefs of how mentally retarded children were to be taken care of during the 18th century. Although most of the medical doctors who had been in contact with the feral child felt that he, who could not speak, and exhibited violent behavior to others, was mentally retarded and proved to have no hope for becoming civilized. Itard had proven them wrong using both positive and negative reinforcement techniques that helped the “wild-child” improve drastically and become more civilized. Having the ability to teach a mentally retarded child who had not been exposed to civilization was one of the main messages of both the movie and also one of Itard’s main goals. Although succeeding at many techniques that he had done with the “wild-child” ranging from identifying everyday objects, dressing on his own, writing words, to spelling words, he still believed he was unsuccessful due to the fact that the child had not b...
How far would a parent go to ensure the comfort of their child? What if the child had a mental disability? Children with autism can be difficult to deal with and it can be easy to misconstrue a parent’s intentions toward their disabled child. According to Petra Kuppers’s essay “Dancing Autism: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and Bedlam,” an autistic child has a, “distanced view of the rules that make up love, relationships, need, and care,” and therefore can be more challenging to raise (Kuppers 193). Christopher is one such example of an autistic child. In Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Christopher’s father is portrayed in a negative light, but actually proves himself to be an outstanding father.
An excellent example of this view of the mentally handicapped can be found in John Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men, with the character Lennie. The other characters in this novel such as George and Curley treat Lennie as if he were a child all throughout the novel. George never lets him do any of the talking when t...
A few of the misconceptions that people have of feral children stem from Disney’s romanticization of these movies. The films are praised for their fun and uplifting stories, the tales of boys who were raised by animals and eventually rejoined society, because they find the love of their lives. Although these are children movies and should not be taken as academic, most individuals are not well informed about feral children, so they tend to use Disney’s portrayal of feral children and try to apply it to reality. Within these classic childhood movies lies a traumatic reality for some children that are inaccurately represented, such as; In The Jungle Book, wolves raised Mogli, but he socializes with multiple species in the jungle. Wolves are pack animals they stick together, they may have slight interaction with other animals, but surely they would not leave their home for them. He was able to walk bipedally while only occasionally walking on all fours, this has never been true in an animal reared feral child. Animal reared children adopt the motor skills that their caregiver has shown them, so in Mogli’s case he should have solely walked quadrupedally. The last inaccurate representation is the idea that Mogli could form a romantic attachment to a human girl, because he was raised in the wild he has had no interaction with humans, he was not socialized
Sometimes a character may be pushed over the edge by our materialistic society to discover his/her true roots, which can only be found by going back to nature where monetary status was not important. Chris McCandless leaves all his possessions and begins a trek across the Western United States, which eventually brings him to the place of his demise-Alaska. Jon Krakauer makes you feel like you are with Chris on his journey and uses exerts from various authors such as Thoreau, London, and Tolstoy, as well as flashbacks and narrative pace and even is able to parallel the adventures of Chris to his own life as a young man in his novel Into the Wild. Krakauer educates himself of McCandless’ story by talking to the people that knew Chris the best. These people were not only his family but the people he met on the roads of his travels- they are the ones who became his road family.
“Babies”. Is a documentary made by the Thomas Balmés. It offers a window on the lives of four infants in four completely different cultures. This is not a usual kind of documentary; there are no narration, no subtitles and actual dialogue was very minimal. The film explores childhood rituals, enculturation, socialization and parenthood. I will try to explore each of these themes and try to make the case that behaviors, values and fears are learned not something congenital. It has, in my opinion, comparative perspectives and different methods in rearing children in different societies. It achieves this by cutting the scenes in certain ways to show the differences between these different children. For example, in one part of the film, both Bayarjargal (the Mongolian child) and Mari (the Japanese child) were playing with their pet cats and then the two scenes were edited to a shot of Ponijo (the Namibian child) looking interested in flies. The four children developed in somewhat similar ways. However, there are differences in their behaviors due to the enculturation by seeing their parents or siblings who were doing what they thought to be the norms and the obvious landscape in which they are brought up. Two of the kids were born in rural areas (Namibia and Mongolia) and two were born in urban areas (the United States and Japan). The mothers of these infants were interviewed and chosen to be in the film
The child has not been perceived like an individual until the work of eighteen century philosophers Locke and Rousseau, who expressed their thoughts on paper about the child's ability to interact with the surrounding world (Cunningham, 1993). The research on child development has commenced followed by the observational work of changing behaviours in organisms by Charles Darwin.
Born To Be Wild by Drew Fellman is a short documentary about orphaned orangutan in Indonesia and elephants in Kenya. The orphanages were built by two independent organizations with the sole aim to help preserve species, and to help orphans
"History Autism - Important Facts Involving the History of Autism." Articlesbase. ArticlesBase.com, 2011. Web. 22 Mar 2011. .
Through journal entries, highlighted passages, stories of people’s encounters, and personal experiences, author Jon Krakauer attempts to reconstruct the life of a young transcendentalist man named Chris Johnson McCandless in the biographical novel Into the Wild. McCandless was a 24-year-old young man who completely severed his connection to the world, his family, and all of his tangible possessions in hope to survive off the land in Alaska. In the two years that led to his Alaskan Odyssey McCandless created a new life for himself and lived by the name Alexander Supertramp, in hope to leave his old life behind. Krakauer starts his novel “Into the Wild” by bluntly revealing to the audience that he had only survived 113 days and his remains were found two weeks after preceding his death. Rather than focusing on McCandless death, Krakauer focused on his life. Although Krakauer is biased, he proves to be a credible biographer and proves the assertions he made in his authors note.
In April of 1992 a young man named Chris McCandless, from a prosperous and loving family, hitchhiked across the country to Alaska. He gave $25,000 of his savings to charity, left his car and nearly all of his possessions. He burned all the cash he had in his wallet, and created a new life. Four months later, his body was found in an abandoned bus. Jon Krakauer constructed a journalistic account of McCandless’s story. Bordering on obsession, Krakauer looks for the clues to the mystery that is Chris McCandless. What he finds is the intense pull of the wilderness on our imagination, the appeal of high-risk activities to young men. When McCandless's mistakes turn out to be fatal he is dismissed for his naiveté. He was said by some to have a death wish, but wanting to die and wanting to see what one is capable of are too very different things. I began to ask myself if Chris really wasn’t as crazy as some people thought. Then I realized it was quite possible that the reason people thought he was crazy was because he had died trying to fulfill his dream. If he had walked away from his adventure like Krakauer, people would have praised him rather than ridicule. So I asked the question, “How does Krakauer’s life parallel Chris McCandlesses?”
A hundred years later, Goerge Fredrick Still, a British child professor talked in his lectures about certain abnormal behavior in children’s. He expended on the description from Christen by ...
K. (1995). Feral children and clever animals: Reflections on human nature. New York: Oxford Univ Press.
I watched the documentary “Secret of the Wild Child”, on a girl who was in isolation from birth to thirteen years old. Her name was Genie and is referred to as a feral child. This means she was without human contact from a young age, and has no experience of human care, social behavior, and, of the human language. Feral children are often known as being raised as animals and therefore imitating their behaviors. However, a child who is severely neglected is also considered a feral child. During the time she was discovered, around 1970, there was a major debate in the field of psychology. The famous nature verses nurture argument, meaning does genetics play a greater role in development or does one’s environment. In the case of Genie, the real focus was on her language development and deciphering if there was a critical age to learn a language.
In the Wikipedia the definition of a feral child is a human being that was raised in an isolated environment away from human interaction from an early age, and has no familiarity of human behavior, human care and human language. Feral children are completely different from other children. They were born and raised in a different environment. The guardians the feral children had were abusive and unloving towards them. The pain and abandonment they felt is something no one should ever go through, especially young innocent children. These feral children don’t have the opportunity to learn the basic stuff like other children do. The first years growing up as a child have a huge impact on our development like learning some language skills, eating
This paper will discuss the extreme cases of feral children. Feral children known as wild child, are children who has lived in an isolated environment from human contact from a very young age. This leaves the child vulnerable with little or no experience with the basic needs to socialize or survive in society. This information on feral children allows us to see their point of view on how humans will behave if culture doesn’t exist. These children are normally taken in by animals living in the wilderness. Feral children don’t have to be raised by animals. Therefore, there have been severe cases where parents will confine their children from the world. When parents abandon their child from an early age, this