The Mind of a Child / L’Esprit d’un Enfant
Synopsis
In 1985 only two Indigenous children graduated from the Vancouver school district. Many were dropping out as early as grade 5. Why? The school district hired Lorna Wanosts’a7 Williams, an Indigenous educator from nearby Mount Currie who had been sent to one of the many residential schools as a child, for help.
Children removed to residential schools are like children orphaned by war. Lorna turned to Israeli psychologist Reuven Feuerstein, an educator who spent years working with children who lost their families but survived the Holocaust.
“Reuven began his work with children who had lost everything,” Lorna recalls: “children who had lost their families, children who had lost their histories, children who had lost their languages.”
Feuerstein’s exploration of the fundamental role of the family in cultural transmission and the cognitive development of children meshed with Lorna’s desire to help the families of Mount Currie–and teachers generally–to rediscover and celebrate the powerful role they have in the education of children.
“While the background for this film is tragic,” filmmaker Gary Marcuse recalls, “the story it tells is optimistic as it explores effective ways to assess, treat and heal children affected in similar ways by poverty, racism and war.”
“It is almost impossible to sit through The Mind of a Child and not be moved by the simple philosophy of an elderly scholar from Israel, and how his philosophy is touching the hearts and minds of children half a world away… The Mind of a Child, Gary Marcuse’s thought-provoking, dramatic documentary about the teachings of child psychologist Reuven Feuerstein, practically burns with inspiration. Feuerstein’s philosophy is being used to help disadvantaged aboriginal and African-American children learn how to learn, despite decades of racism, poverty and violence.”
— Alex Strachan, The Vancouver Sun
Director's Statement
Re: Deposit of film and video project at the University of Victoria Archives, Spielberg Archives at Hebrew University, and Feuerstein Institute in Jerusalem.
The Mind of a Child
Working with children affected by poverty, racism, and war. (60 min, 1994)
Selected Awards:
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Gemini: Canada Award
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National Educational Media Network: Silver Apple
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Houston: Chris Award
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Saskatchewan: Golden Sheaf
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BC: Leo Award
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American Indian Film Festival: Certificate of Merit
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MediaNet Munich: Special Jury Prize
Relevance to Lorna Wanosts’a7 Williams’ work: The Mind of a Child project, which focuses on the work of Lorna Wanosta’a7 Williams, has a strong regional connection and also captures a key moment in the history of residential schools in Canada, reaching back to 1972 when aboriginal educators began to re-examine the impact of the schools and to take charge of education in their communities. Lorna and the Mt. Currie community, located in the Pemberton Valley, were early leaders in this movement.
What follows is a brief overview of the film, a brief bio of Lorna Wanosts’a7 Williams, my own bio and some comments about the wider relevance of the story. I’m also attaching the video jacket from the film and a summary of the physical description of the fond. As a former member of the Canadian oral history association and a past contributor to the BC and national archives, I’ve always been conscious of the possibility that some projects may eventually be archived and have kept meticulous records.
Even though this film dates from 1994 it remains relevant and we still sell copies from our website and it is streamed online by the NFB.
Additional Information
Overview
Lorna’s research led her to Israel and the work of psychologist Reuven Feuerstein, founder of the Hadassah-WIZO-Canada Research Institute which became the International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential (ICELP) and is known as the Feuerstein Institute. In the 1940s Feuerstein, at the age of 19, was in charge of thousands of orphaned children arriving in Palestine who had survived the war but were cut off from family and lived on the street for much of their childhood. Many were troubled. Feuerstein’s response was to re-create the support of a family and then, as shown in the documentary, pay close attention to the educational needs of each individual child. He also developed tools to reinforce the abilities of the children by helping them to develop essential cognitive skills that they would otherwise have gained in childhood through cultural transmission.
Lorna brought these tools back to Canada. More than 1000 teachers, psychologists, speech language pathologists and counsellors took workshops led by Lorna which strengthened their ability to assess and support the children in their classrooms. Lorna and the First Nations aides she trained also worked to restore parenting skills and build confidence for adults who had been incarcerated in residential schools during their childhood with few role models.
Lorna’s later work at the University of Victoria where she held the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Knowledge and Learning also focused on the importance of Indigenous languages in the transmission of culture and the development of children.
Biographies in Brief
Lorna Wanosts’a7 Williams
Lorna Wanosts’a7 Williams is Lil’wat from Mount Currie. She held the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Knowledge and Learning and was an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education and Department of Linguistics at the University of Victoria. Throughout her career she has held a number of senior positions, notably as the Director of Aboriginal Education at the University of Victoria and the Director of the Aboriginal Enhancements Branch in the British Columbia Ministry of Education. She received an honorary doctorate from SFU in 2016 and the Order of Canada in 2019.
Reuven Feuerstein (1921-2014)
Born in Botosan, Romania and grew up in a family of nine children. His father was a Jewish scholar. Reuven was teaching disturbed children in Bucharest at the beginning of World War II. He later escaped to Palestine where he worked with thousands of children, many of them orphans who had lived on the street during the war. His evolving belief in the critical importance of cultural transmission in the cognitive development of children was further confirmed in his work with Moroccan, Berber and Ethiopian children immigrating to Israel after the war. By the time this documentary was made more than 30,000 teachers worldwide were applying his ideas to education and to autistic spectrum and Down syndrome evaluation and treatment.
En Français: L’Esprit d’un Enfant
Comment travailler avec des enfants marqués par la guerre, le racisme et la pauvreté
Comment les enfants apprennent-ils à s’adapter — et non seulement à survivre — dans des quartiers où la violence est quotidienne? Que peuvent-ils vraiment apprendre dans des écoles où le personnel enseignant ne croit plus en eux?
Ce documentaire captivant donne un aperçu du travail patient et efficace de Lorna Williams, une éducatrice qui a entrepris de venir en aide aux jeunes autochtones canadiens, parmi lesquels les taux de décrochage scolaire et de suicide sont excessivement élevés.
Ses recherches l’ont amenée à s’intéresser aux idées de Reuven Feuerstein, un psychologue israélien dont la carrière avait débuté auprès d’enfants qui avaient survécu à l’Holocauste.
Inspirée par le travail de Reuven Feuerstein, qui s’appuie sur une profonde compréhension des modes d’apprentissage des enfants, Lorna Williams a lancé au Canada un programme d’enseignement axé sur la mise en valeur de l’intelligence et des capacités existantes des élèves, ainsi que sur l’acquisition de nouvelles compétences.
Lire la suite (Read More)
Les mêmes méthodes se sont avérées utiles auprès d’enfants ‘ à risque ‘ des quartiers défavorisés de Washington. Adaptées par Lorna Williams, la théorie de l’’ expérience raisonnée ‘ et les méthodes pédagogiques de Reuven Feuerstein ont fait l’objet d’une recommandation de la Commission royale sur les peuples autochtones.
Transmission culturelle et culture dure
La théorie de Feuerstein sur l’expérience raisonnée, qui est présentée ici, s’appuie sur l’observation du développement cognitif d’enfants qui se trouvent sous la direction d’adultes. Même s’ils appartiennent à des cultures diverses, les enfants acquièrent les mêmes capacités fondamentales qui permettent d’organiser et de traiter des quantités considérables d’information sensorielle. Ils apprennent par exemple à se comporter, à agir et à s’adapter à de nouvelles situations.
Les enfants qui sont coupés de leur culture peuvent manquer de certaines capacités essentielles B aptitude à la pensée logique et mathématique, autorégulation, orientation spatiale, sentiment de compétence, aptitudes sociales complexes et sens du passé et de l’avenir.
Les enfants des quartiers défavorisés qui viennent d’une * culture dure + ont des problèmes d’apprentissage lorsque des enseignants qui n’aiment pas leur comportement et ne comprennent pas leurs antécédents s’en désintéressent et refusent de reconnaître les connaissances et l’expérience qu’ils apportent en classe.
Outils pédagogiques
L’apprentissage d’un enfant peut et doit se poursuivre longtemps après l’adolescence. Feuerstein et ses collègues ont élaboré toute une série d’outils qui permettent d’évaluer les enfants et de faciliter leur apprentissage. Dans une trentaine de pays, des milliers d’enseignants emploient des méthodes telles que le mécanisme d’évaluation du potentiel d’apprentissage ou le programme de perfectionnement instrumental qui sont décrits dans le documentaire.
Produit par Face to Face Media Ltd., en association avec l’Office national du film du Canada, avec la participation de Téléfilm Canada et en association avec British Columbia Film et Knowledge Network/Open Learning Agency.
Film Details
MEDIATED LEARNING EXPERIENCE
Mediated learning is a unique approach to education that was developed by Prof. Reuven
Feuerstein. With the help of the teacher or parent students learn to acquire behavior
patterns, awareness and strategies that become important tools they can apply to other
areas of learning, both in the classroom and the world around them. Through this
program students begin to think about the world around them rather than being
restricted to dealing with in their direct and concrete presence.
MLE involves human interaction, with hands on training. This helps ensure structural
cognitive Modifiability. All one-on-one lessons are taught using the FIE instruments, no
computers or books used. This enables the student to incorporate a great variety of
orientations and strategies into their behavioral repertoire. As a result students begin to
become clear in strategies for learning and constitute the ability for higher order in
mental operations.
Awards
- Winner: Gemini Canada Award (1997) – Honours excellence in mainstream television programming which best reflects the racial and cultural diversity of Canada.
- Silver Apple Documentary – National Educational Media Network (Oakland)
- Chris Award Educational Documentary – Columbus International Film & Video Festival
- Golden Sheaf Multicultural / Race Relations – Yorkton Short Film and Video Festival
- Leo Award Best Documentary – British Columbia Motion Picture Association
- Silver Award Cultural Documentary – Charleston International Film & Video Festival
- Finalist Ethnic and Cultural Documentary – Houston Worldfest
- Certificate of Merit – American Indian Film Festival, San Francisco
- Special Jury Prize – MediaNet (Munich)
Credits
Producer / Director / Writer:
Gary Marcuse
Associate Producer/ Consultant:
Lorna Williams
Director of Photography:
Kirk Tougas
Editor:
Paul Lievesley
Production Manager:
Betsy Carson
Original Music Composed by:
Henry Heillig
Assistant Camera:
Robert Simpson
Sound Recordists:
Terence McKeown,
Gary Marcuse,
Eli Taragan,
Roger Stefackis
Re-recording:
Dieter Piltz, Ewan Deane
Additional Camera:
Randy Rotheisler,
Robert Simpson
Production assistant:
Raleigh Dixon
Research/PA:
Karen Spaner
Animation / Titles Design:
Ruben Möller
Post Production Supervisor:
Betsy Carson
Video Technician:
Pierre de la Roche
On-line Editor:
Rick McCarthy
Musicians:
Henry Heillig,
Graeme Coleman,
Joseph Pepe Danza,
Robbie Steininger,
Lil’wat Singers and Drummers
Producer for the NFB:
Svend-Erik Eriksen
Teachers:
Adeline Saunders, Lettie Battle, David Tzuriel, Reuven Feuerstein, Carl Haywood, Chaim Peri
Students:
Clarissa Pascal, Angelo Ferguson, Sam Hinton, Troy Devese, Anton Mitchell
Produced by Face to Face Media Ltd. in Association with the National Film Board of Canada, Pacific Centre. Produced with the Participation of Telefilm Canada, British Columbia Film, and Knowledge Network / Open Learning Agency.
Filmed on location in British Columbia, Canada, Washington D.C., USA and Jerusalem.
Purchase This Film
Press Kit
The Mind of a Child (1995) 60 min. Re-released in 2024
Working with children affected by poverty, racism and war
Filmed in Canada, the United States and Israel
Winner : Gemini Canada Award
Available in English, French and Italian
Directed by Gary Marcuse Produced by Lorna Wanosts’a7 Williams, Gary Marcuse and Betsy Carson. Featuring Lettie Battle
In 1985 only two Indigenous children graduated from the Vancouver school district. Many were dropping out as early as grade 5. Why? The school district hired Lorna Wanosts’a7 Williams, an Indigenous educator from nearby Mount Currie who had been sent to to one of the many residential schools as a child, for help.
Gallery
