The Wild Boy of Aveyron
...the development of a child. The boy has fits of terrible anger and slept with the sun. Without adult guidance the boy had grown up as an animal and behaved as such. He lived a very primitive life eating berries, nuts and other things he found. This instinct for survival also clearly supports the nature side of the argument. Jean Itard, a French physician, took the boy into his care. The physician thought that the boy’s behavior was a result of lack of guidance. Itard tried to teach the boy how to speak, dress, and civilize the young man. The boy learned many things such as dressing and even recognizing letters of the alphabet, but sadly Itard stopped the experiment because of lack of progress. The boy’s inability to learn to speak proves that there actually are sensitive points in development. If we do not learn certain things at these sensitive points then learning a skill could be extremely difficult or eve...