Below is a link to an abridged version of Dr. Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture.”
After viewing this video, would you say that your views on death and dying have changed at all? If so, in what way(s)? What lessons can we learn from this man facing his own mortality square in the face?
By the way, if you want to watch the original lecture, you can also find it on the web, but it is over an hour long. Dr. Pausch’s own website (including the lecture) can be found here:
www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/
Please answer the question above. Additionally look at the attachment and reply to each verbiage posted.
Morgan,
And welcome to week seven. This week was exceptionally rough for me to read about with having two children of my own. I know that people that abuse others, and especially to this extent are not well but I cannot understand. I have difficulty with guilt when I spank my almost four year old and that barely leaves a red mark, so this level of abuse is insane.
While there isn’t much known about Genie today in the 70s when scientists were conducting tests, there was little to no improvement on her ability to learn language or process emotions in the way a normal child would. I think there is a lot to say about the importance of when children learn language and to process emotions. Genies was tortured and restrained by her father since she was a toddler. She wasn’t allowed to make sound and was talked to like a dog through growls and barks. I don’t know definitively, but children have to learn to process emotion regulation and language at a young age. They take cues from their parents and learn how to process these from positive and negative reinforcement. Additionally, they are taught how to redirect these emotions and not let them become unbearable.
From what I could tell between the two cases, while the children in the second case were not disabled in the same way that Genie was, they seemed to have more trouble with physical development than mental development because of being locked in confinement with now light or physical activity. They interacted with each other and their mother and I think would have a better chance of emotional and language development.
Im not sure if I understood the question correctly for looking at cues from educators. I think this means how can they identify these cues of abuse or maybe it means what can they do to help educate them. I think some cues that they can take is to be calm, loving and compassionate. I think of Helen Keller and how she learned. While she was not abused, due to her being deaf and blind, she was cut off from the outside world. She had animalistic tendencies initially but she began to learn and was hungry for learning. This was through countless hours of patience and compassion from her teacher. This is what all children need regardless of what level of disability they’re at.
Jonathan,
Sad reading this week in the Time article at
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1738293,00.html
. It’s definitely heartbreaking to see that insane level of abuse directed toward anyone, but especially children so very young. “Genie,” as well, appeared to fare no better as she never gained language, at least not a proper first language.
That fact is a fascinating circumstance, when divorced from all of the other circumstances in “Genie’s” life. The simple fact that, because she was discovered when she was 13 years old, she actually could not learn a language properly. Why is that, though? Well, I have a bit of a theory in this regard. If my undergraduate recall is still good, and I can’t quite remember but it may also have been noted somewhere in Crain (2016), children are essentially born with far more neurons than they need, and the neurological connections they strengthen throughout the first few years of life are those that will not get eliminated during the neuron culling that happens. In fact, before babies curtail the number of neurons that they have, they can recognize animals by faces. In addition, in this period children also make the memory storage transition from visual memories to language-based ones (Crain, 2016), which also may be part of why most people cannot remember anything before about 3 years old.
Unfortunately, it’s clear from the case of “Genie” that, during that period, due to complete lack of stimulus from nearly anything, her brain must have gotten rid of many neurons, including the ones that process language, leaving her, for want of a better word, “feral.” It’s unclear from the Time article what amount of language the3 Fritzls developed, although it is clear they were heavily abused and will carry some effects of that together.
So, what does this mean for the way people learn language? If we acknowledge that there are critical times for language development, as Chompsky says, it is up to parents and educators to provide the proper stimulus in order to encourage the child to grow in language and keep those neurological connections strong. If I may relate a personal anecdote, I have a 6-year-old daughter who is learning two languages, sort of (she’s much better at English than any other language; it’s pretty clearly her first). Since she was born, my wife has spoken to her only in one language, and I another. While she does not do much producing of her secondary language, she appears to understand the great majority of what I say to her and can readily translate for her mother, who speaks only English. Her grasp of English is exemplary. My wife and I chose to do this after reading studies that noted all the things I mentioned above; key times for neurons, stages of language and grammar development, and so forth.
Learning the lesson of the Fritzls and Genie can teach us quite a bit about childhood development, especially with regards to language and how important it is to expose developing children to language as much as possible. It is, however, very sad that this was the way we had to learn it.
Vanessa,
Genie’s final outcome of not being able to acquire a new language tells us that, indeed, there are critical developmental periods in childhood for language and emotional development. As Genie became older and specialists attempted to teach her English, she was unable to. Even through years of multiple different therapy styles, and after living with her mother for a few months, she still could not develop language skills. This signifies the importance to being introduced to language early on in childhood, both hearing and practicing it. When one is not around language during the developmental stage, it renders them unable (or extremely difficult) to learn. The same can be noted for emotional development as well. The Fritzl’s were able to emotionally and linguistically develop because they were able to listen to television and interact with each other during their younger stages, when development was crucial. It is easier for them to reincorporate linguistically and emotionally into society because they essentially have some groundwork already laid out for them as they went through their developmental stages. Educators can have a better understanding of when to teach language to children. Additionally it is important for educators to realize from these cases that emotional development is important as well from a young age, and in classroom settings should encourage proper emotional expression and development as well.