The Tragic Case of Genie Wiley: the Story of Feral Children
Feral Children are children who are brought up with inadequate contact with other human beings and can instead, be raised outside in the wild through possible animal activities. Such isolation is either done intentionally or by fate in which something may have happened to the parent(s). In terms of nurturing, feral children can benefit positively from rehabilitation by introducing or reintroducing human behaviors to them and slowly having then shown how to fit into society well with proper care. The Case of Genie Wiley is an example for this essay. She was a thirteen-year-old feral child in the year of 1970 (Her name was protected for her innocence) who was badly abused with very little human contact from her family in which she was found in a small room that she had spent majority of her life of solitude in. She was restrained to a high potty chair and was very malnourished.
Feral children do not know or barely even know anything about physical love, mental care, and social behavior all from a human caretaker. In nature, a feral child would grow and biologically be themselves physically by inherited traits through their actual parents but would not demonstrate any form of self-sufficiency other than what they are self-taught through observational and physical learning itself (such as when to take shelter when it is hot and cold for survival).
When Genie Wiley's parents were arrested for abuse, a team of psychologists (notably James Kent) and language experts (notably Susan Curtiss) began rehabilitating Genie, to help her physically, to assist her in forming words, and to help strengthen her mental capabilities.
When she arrived at the University of California in Los Angeles through the funding of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), both teams had observed that she had a “strange bunny walk” and was incapable of straightening her arms and legs and she only knew her name and a few words, one of which was the word “sorry”. When Kent evaluated her, he described her as 'the most profoundly damaged child I've ever seen … Genie's life is a wasteland.' During the evaluations she was mainly silent due to her mental capacity and her tests resulted her brain level as someone who is a one-year-old. The rehabilitation team worked on her further as time went on and saw improvements to where she was able to use the toilet and was able to dress herself. Months later, she progressed further in development physically, but mentally, her language was still impaired.
When Curtiss treated Genie on language skills, Genie learned more “single words and eventually began putting two words together.” One year later, Genie started joining three words together seldomly, however this was the highest she would ever achieve as she never achieved “language explosion” due to her later age and cruel childhood. After NIMH had stopped her fundings, Genie went on to live with a psychologist named David Rigler whom which he had introduced her to music and Genie showed communication through her drawings. Later, she moved to a foster care in California where she still resides today. In conclusion, nurturing a feral child seems to fit best over nature because a child needs to learn through examples and teachings from other humans to conform to society.
