8th Annual Victoria International Jewish Film Festival

The Mind of A Child

Expired November 7, 2022 7:45 AM
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Special thank you to the National Film Board of Canada and Face to Face Media

Also available in-person at the Vic Theatre, Wednesday, November 2.


How can children adapt and do more than survive in neighbourhoods where violence is common? How can they learn in schools where teachers have given up on them?


This challenging documentary follows the successful work of Lorna Wanosts'a7 Williams, who set out to help Indigenous children in Canada who were dropping out of school, losing hope, and committing suicide in terrifying numbers. Her search led her to Dr. Reuven Feuerstein, an Israeli psychologist who began his work with the children of the Holocaust. 


Feuerstein's ideas have provided profound insight into the way children learn. Lorna returned to Canada with a renewed approach to teaching that revealed the intelligence and the ability of the children, and helped them to build missing skills.


Children in diverse cultures develop the same fundamental abilities which allow them to organize and process the vast sensory data of the world. They learn, for example, how to behave, how to act, and how to modify themselves to meet new challenges. Children who are cut off from their culture may lack fundamental skills such as logical and mathematical abilities, self-regulation, spatial orientation, feelings of competence, complex social skills, and a sense of the past and the future.

  • Year
    1995
  • Runtime
    60 minutes
  • Language
    English
  • Country
    Canada
  • Director
    Gary Marcuse