I did not know that 3% of all children are born 'retarded'. This is the term used throughout this 1959 documentary which openly and honestly looks at the social, professional and personal ramifications of this situation. Nowadays, we would term them 'mentally challenged.'
Arising from both biological and environmental causes, I also was unaware of the steep gradations into which such mental aberrations occur: there are the severely retarded, who have almost no motor skills and will never even learn to communicate. There are the mildly retarded who can receive a modicum of education and may eventually be employed in what are charitably referred to as 'sheltered workshops'. Then, there are the vast group in the middle who will always require a large degree of assistance and monitoring and will never be able to reason, to read or to count.
Probably the most revealing part of the thirty minutes this documentary filled was the interview with a mother of such a child, who recounted the various stages through which she went upon learning that one of her children was going to be quite different from his siblings. Her anxieties as to his future, her wish not to make him a burden upon her other children and, above all else, her desire for his eventual happiness was quite moving.
The NFB is not afraid to make extremely revealing short films. This is one of them.