Isolated children/Feral Children/Human nature - Writers Forum

Trevor Miller · 09-12-2007, 05:48 PM

1. What do you think about feral children? Not necessarily children raised by animals, but human beings that have grown up whithout human intervention...either by language deprivation, or complete isolation? I am not asking what you think ethically towards this type of treatment, but what you think the results might be, or what you know the results to be.

2. What does this show of human nature? What do you believe about human nature? What do these results and observations show?

3. What sources did you get the information from? Do you know of any experiments and the results? ex. books, websites, stories etc. (I only know of a few stories here and there, a book called The forbidden Experiment by Roger Shattuck. I have heard rumors of this in the long list of supposed Nazi experiments, but I would like facts.)

Thank you for your time,
Trevor

p.s. I also posted this in the debate forum...so if you would rather throw your opinions into that mess, go ahead.

Hodge · 09-12-2007, 05:51 PM

FeralChildren.com | Feral children: isolated, confined, wild and wolf children

Trevor Miller · 09-12-2007, 06:03 PM

Oh, come on now Hodge. I could have done that myself (actually, I have done that myself) Lets see your views on the matter...that flawless opinion of yours...

Thanks though,
Trevor

Creator · 09-13-2007, 05:11 AM

That's interesting... In one case I read from a book.. There was a feral man who lived with wild tigers from young and as an adult he was able to walk with tigers unharmed...

Oh yah will staying with animals affect the baby's ability to walk on twos... since we walk on two cause we kinda like we were taught or something?

Trevor Miller · 09-13-2007, 04:53 PM

I don't know creator. It seems (from what I have read) that anything not shown to the child during a certain time period is either hard to learn, or impossible to learn later in life.

If you take fancy to the evolution theory, then no...humans did not originally walk on two feet. But if you believe otherwise then maybe we have always walked on two feet, and it is simply a part of our nature.

This poses the question...can we learn much more at a young age than we teach our babies now? How do we know we aren't simply teaching out of the "norm" or typical rather than the babies potential?

Mike C · 09-14-2007, 12:55 AM

Ooh, what a can of worms. Such an interesting subject. There are many books about it, and people argue back and forth about the language acquisition aspect. I think Chomsky covers it some, as does Klein, google 'language acquisition theory' or somesuch. My wife just completed her doctorate (education) and she covered a lot of this, and i helped with her research.

Trevor Miller · 09-14-2007, 04:28 PM

Thank you Mike.

Mike C · 09-14-2007, 05:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trevor Miller

This poses the question...can we learn much more at a young age than we teach our babies now?

Yes, is the simple answer, but it's more complex than that. You should read my wife's thesis. You can force knowledge into small minds, but at the expense of learning ability in slightly later years. Hothousing can be counter-productive.