The Wild Child

Book excerpt: Follows the capture of a young boy found living like an animal in the forest. Dr. Jean-Marc-Gaspard Itard of the National Institute for the Deaf and Dumb, Paris, believes the child can be transformed into a civilized being. The doctor removes the boy from the institute into his own home. The boy, named Victor, is divided between his longing for the wilderness and his new life with the doctor. Itard, whose teaching strategies survive today in the Montessori Method, is unsure whether he is helping a savage become human or turning a forest child into a semi-civilized idiot.