Feral children: the 'Wild child' and popular culture'

• "The strange case of Kaspar Hauser" (Germany, late 19th century?) made into a movie called The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser by Werner Herzog.

• "Wild Child of Aveyron" (France); made into a movie by Francois Truffaut.

• Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: Mowgli and the animals; Disney version.

• Another 'wild child' found in India by missionaries a couple decades ago; no more heard from since.

• "Genie" a girl found in L.A. who had been tied up like an animal in a garage; linguists wanted to study her case to see what language could be learned; others wanted her to be protected from the evil linguists, etc. Website mentions 'acute social deprivation' as a reason for not having acquired language.

• Nell, originally a stage play called Ideoglossia, with a young woman who has language, but it's not any language anybody can figure out. The State takes over, to "protect" her (and study her), and a medical doctor tries to protect her from the evil State.

• Issues:
  1. If children do not learn language by the age of 6, they usually don't learn--the in-built capacity for language acquisition seems to shut down. Can such children be retrained?

  2. The Rescuer again: people who try to "save" these unfortunate creatures (such as we've seen with the deaf, or Liza Doolittle), or other people such as autistic persons, savants, etc.

  3. The strengths of the 'disabled' person--sometimes have abilities that "able-bodied' people don't have.