Mis-education and the deaf child: Lindsay Anderson and the documentary film Thursday’s Children (1954)

The English folk rhyme ‘Monday’s Child’ predicts a fortune for children based on the day of the week on which they were born. Line 4 reads ‘Thursday’s Child has far to go.’ This article explores whether Lindsay Anderson and Guy Brenton edited the documentary film Thursday’s Children (1954) to convince the viewer that deaf children educated in the oral method at the residential Royal School for the Deaf, Margate, Kent, England, would go far. Alternatively, perhaps the filmmakers were presenting the educational experiences on offer with a film-title tinged with doubt. The film’s voice-over, scripted by Anderson, states: ‘without words there can be no thoughts, only feelings.’ We are also told that only one in three deaf children will achieve ‘speech’. This tension is presented in the documentary with a curious mixture of visual and verbal contradictions. The author argues that the seeds of Anderson’s other filmmaking can be found in this early documentary. His ultimate interest was not a ‘tender’ portrayal of children submitting to a particular pedagogy, but instead to show the power and camaraderie of children who, however, they might be taught, should not be made to feel dis-empowered.