1. Nature vs. Nurture
Genie: The Wild Child

2. I just want a hug!!!
Germany: 13th Century. King Fredrick II wanted to know what language a child would speak if he was not taught. King ordered that foster parents of orphaned children bring the babies to the Royal Court and raise them without speaking and without playing with them. The Results: We don’t know what if any language the children would have spoken…they all died due to lack of attention.

3. Dancing with Wolves
1801: A twelve year old boy is found in the woods outside Aveyron, France. He had apparently been raised by wolves. “Victor” as the boy came to be known acted more like a wolf than a human.

4. Victor
Dr. Jean-Marie Itard took on the Task of trying to “humanize” Victor. Initial results were promising… Victor became more well-mannered, but after five years it was determined that he could not longer “learn.” Victor never became a fully functional human being, and died at age forty in Paris. What Failed? Nature or Nurture?

5. The Great Debate
John Locke Jean-Jacques Rousseau

6. Locke
Argued that babies are born without knowledge or skills of any kind. We enter the world as blank slates upon which experience writes. Our development is directed by the stimulation received through experience and education.

7. Rousseau
Claimed that Human-beings are hardwired from birth with all our predispositions and abilities. We are unsophisticated when we enter the world, but we are also not innocent and good. We are born as “noble savages”

8. Somewhere in the Middle
In reality, complex skills are shaped by both our biological inheritance and our life experiences. Your heredity gives you potential, but it is your experience that determines how, and how much of that potential is realized. How do we know this? - Identical Twins separated at birth!