Reality
Feral children lack the basic social skills that are normally learned in the process of enculturation. For example, they may be unable to learn to use a toilet, have trouble learning to walk upright and display a complete lack of interest in the human activity around them. They often seem mentally impaired and have almost insurmountable trouble learning a human language. The impaired ability to learn a formal language after having been isolated for so many years is often attributed to the existence of a critical period for language learning, and taken as evidence in favor of the critical period hypothesis.
There is little scientific knowledge about feral children. One of the best-known examples, the “detailed diaries” of Reverend Singh, who claimed to have discovered Amala and Kamala (two girls who had been “brought up from birth by wolves”) in a forest in India, has been proven a fraud to obtain funds for his orphanage. Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim states that Amala and Kamala were born mentally and physically disabled.
Read more about this topic: Feral Child
Famous quotes containing the word reality:
“I knew very well that this hope was chimerical. I was like a pauper who mingles fewer tears with his dry bread if he tells himself that at any moment a stranger will bequeath to him his fortune. We must all, in order to make reality more tolerable, keep alive in us a few little follies.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Growing up means letting go of the dearest megalomaniacal dreams of our childhood. Growing up means knowing they can’t be fulfilled. Growing up means gaining the wisdom and skills to get what we want within the limitations imposed by reality—a reality which consists of diminished powers, restricted freedoms and, with the people we love, imperfect connections.”
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“Sir Charles: Aren’t you drinking?
Princess Dala: I don’t drink.
Sir Charles: Never?
Princess Dala: I’m quite content with reality, I have no need for escape.
Sir Charles: Well, I enjoy reality as much as the next man, it’s just in my case, fortunately, reality includes a good stiff belt every now and then.”
—Blake Edwards (b. 1922)