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By general consensus,
Jean Piaget stands as the central theorist in contemporary child
study. He developed a whole field of cognitive development, observed
regularities in children’s performances that no one has noted before him.
His theory concerns how the child thinks, how thinking changes from
infancy to adolescence, and how the changes reflect an interesting series
of structured stages.
Although Piaget set clear
stages of cognitive development, which continues to be useful to
contemporary child educators, he omitted to say that cognitive development
is not an automatic process. The fact is that the child will not reach any
of these stages without proper education. Contrary to the animal, the
human being only knows, and can only do, what he/she has learned. This
fundamental principle is confirmed by studies
that compared children who were raised in an enriched learning environment
and children who were raised in a deprived learning environment. This
principle is further confirmed by stories of feral children.
Experiment at the
Glenwood State School
Research has shown that
an enriched learning environment can dramatically increase IQ, whereas a
deprived learning environment can lead to a decrease in IQ.
A particularly
interesting project on early learning involved 25 children in an
orphanage. These children were seriously environmentally deprived because
the orphanage was crowded and understaffed. Thirteen babies of the average
age of 19 months were transferred to the Glenwood State School for
retarded adult women and each baby was put in the personal care of a
woman. Skeels, who conducted the experiment, deliberately chose the most
deficient of the orphans to be placed in the Glenwood School. Their
average IQ was 64, while the average IQ of the 12 who stayed behind in the
orphanage was 87.
In the Glenwood State
School the children were placed in open, active wards with the older and
relatively brighter women. Their substitute mothers overwhelmed them with
love and cuddling. Toys were available, they were taken on outings and
they were talked to a lot. The women were taught how to teach the babies
and how to elicit language from them.
After 18 months, the
dramatic findings were that the children who had been placed with
substitute mothers, and had therefore received additional teaching, on
average showed an increase of 29 IQ points! A follow-up study was
conducted two and a half years later. Eleven of the 13 children originally
transferred to the Glenwood home had been adopted and their average IQ was
now 101. The two children who had not been adopted were
reinstitutionalized and lost their initial gain. The control group, the 12
children who had not been transferred to Glenwood, had remained in
institution wards and now had an average IQ of 66 (an average decrease of
21 points).
More telling than the
increase or decrease in IQ, however, is the difference in the quality
of life these two groups enjoyed. When these children reached young
adulthood, another follow-up study brought the following to light: “The
experimental group had become productive, functioning adults, while the
control group, for the most part, had been institutionalized as mentally
retarded.”
Feral Children and What
We Learn from Them
Probably the best-known story of feral children is that of the two girls,
Amala and Kamala, who were raised by a she-wolf. In 1920 the reverend J.
A. L. Singh saw a mother wolf and cubs, two of which had long, matted hair
and looked human. After considerable preparation and difficulties, the two
human creatures were captured. They turned out to be two girls whose ages
were assessed by Singh at about eight years and one and a half years
respectively.
The creatures were taken to
an orphanage in Mindapore, India, where the Reverend and his wife were
stationed. Singh described them as “wolfish” in appearance and behavior.
They walked on all fours and had calluses on their knees and palms from
doing so.
They were fond of raw meat and stole it when the occasion presented
itself. They licked all liquids with their tongues and ate their food in a
crouched position. Their tongues permanently hung out of their thick, red
lips, and they panted just like wolves. They never slept after midnight
and prowled and howled at night. They could move very fast, just like
squirrels, and it was difficult to overtake them. They shunned human
society altogether. If approached, they made faces and sometimes bared
their teeth. Their hearing was very acute and they could smell meat at a
great distance. Furthermore, while they could not see well during the day,
they could orientate themselves very well at night. In September 1921 both
girls became ill, and Amala, the younger, died.
There are many other stories of feral children in the literature, among
others the story of a boy who lived in Syria, who ate grass and could leap
like an antelope, as well as of a girl, who lived in the forests in
Indonesia for six years after she had fallen into a river. She walked like
an ape and her teeth were as sharp as a razor.
These stories do far more than just to confirm the important role of
education. They actually show that a human being not only can but must
be educated to become a human being at all. A bear does not have to
learn to be a bear; he simply is one. A duck needs no lessons in
duckmanship. And an ant leads a perfectly satisfactory life without any
instruction from other ants. Even when isolated from birth, animals
usually retain clearly recognizable instincts. A cat that is raised among
dogs, will still behave like a cat. He won’t try to bite the postman.
There are only a few exceptions, such as the lion cub, which would not be
able to hunt the wildebeest when raised in isolation.
Man, however, enters this world very poorly equipped. The knowledge a
child needs to become fully human is not dormant. Everything the child
eventually knows, or can do, must be learned. This of course excludes
natural body functions, such as breathing, as well as the reflexes, for
example the involuntary closing of the eye when an object approaches it.
Everything else, however, must be learned.
Therefore, whenever you encounter the term “cognitive development,” always
keep in mind that it is not an automatic process.
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