Kaspar Hauser and the Wolf-Children

Abstract Ifitard fell short of achieving his stated goal to civilize Victor, Victor taught Itard what Itard needed to know to forever change the lives of the blind and deaf It is comforting to think that our failures may become successes; less so that probable or seeming successes may become failures. Itard’s hope to show the influence of education on a human being previously untrained and unaccustomed to human ways was not met. Victor was not to become socialized as a human being, despite Itard’s teaching and Madame Guerin’s life-long care. Itard worked for five years at the project, and Madame Guerin cared for Victor as boy and man for thirty; however, neither enabled Victor to enter the socialized and civilized activities of humankind. What Itard and Victor accomplished would serve as an example and a promise of what might be done for those born with sensory and mental defects. Victor did not change society’s attitude toward these unfortunates, to be sure, any more than Itard singlehandedly invented Braille, sign language, and ways for the sensory-deprived to communicate both with one another and with those with frill capacity for speech, seeing, and hearing. Yet Itard and Victor inspired later generations to take seriously the problem of how to communicate with those unable to do so in usual ways. Even more than this, the recent work that teaches apes communication owes much to Itard, and he, in turn, to the example of Peter, the wild-boy.