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September 28, 2005
Genie
After we googled Genie in class the other day, I was so intrigued by what I found that I went online later in the day to find out more. I went to the website feralchildren.com and found many more stories of children who had been made to live in isolation as well as children who had been raised by animals (one of them was a boy who was raised by gazelles and was caught by an army jeep while running 50 kph!). All of the children that lived in isolation since they were young never learned to talk, even after they were discovered, just like Genine. I also found out that many children who were lost in the wild and lived there in isolation for many years actually lost the ability that they once had to talk. Some of them could also no longer even laugh or cry. I think the whole idea of the critical period is so interesting, even after seeing the movie of Genie and reading all these stories, it is still strange to me to think that we cannot learn language after we have passed a certain age. It is hard to imagine that our brains could change so much in such a short period of time (compared to a normal lifespan). Language is so important that I don't know why our brain does not allow it to learn it after we have passed the critical period. I was especially suprised to see that children who had once been able to talk had completely lost that ability after having lived alone for a number of years. How can we loose the ability to do something that is so incredibly important in our everyday lives? I found the story of Genie and of these other children so interesting, I would encourage everyone to go to the feral children website and read some more stories of children similar to Genie.
Posted by lcismardin at September 28, 2005 10:04 PM