Abstract
How childhood has been investigated and interpreted in the twentieth century is examined with regard to how “normal” learning takes place from infancy to adolescence. Social and behavioral scientists in the twentieth century at major universities in the United States and Canada following from European models pursued efforts to formalize normal stages of child growth and learning by age level. Funded by major philanthropies and government agencies, research agendas were developed that were guided by positivistic assumptions about psychological and biological reality based on medical models of research into human growth. Researchers assumed that their efforts would lead to universal truths about human learning. They neglected to take into account cultural and social factors that influence learning characteristics and official interpretations of what constitutes supposedly advanced versus delayed learning patterns. Major figures and social movements such as the mental hygiene movement that influenced research are included in the discussion. Basic concepts about human development were established in this period. It is concluded that it is vital that historians visit these ideas and their origins in a critical way.
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Notes
- 1.
Theresa R. Richardson, The Century of the Child: The Mental Hygiene Movement and Social Policy in the United States and Canada (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989).
- 2.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1962).
- 3.
Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of Human Science (New York: Vintage 1973); Michel Foucault, Archeology of Knowledge trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Routledge, 2002); Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in an Age of Reason trans. Richard Howard (New York: Vintage, 1973).
- 4.
Educational psychologist Edward L. Thorndike is credited with making learning the central issue of psychology.
- 5.
Patrick Suppes and Hermine Warren, “Psychoanalysis and American Elementary Education,” in Suppes and Warren, eds., Research on Education: Some Case Studies (Washington, DC: National Academy of Education, 1978), pp. 319–396; note that Freudian theory and psychoanalysis ultimately had more influence in the USA than in Europe.
- 6.
Edward L. Thorndike, Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of Associative Processes in Animals (New York: Macmillan Co., 1897). Erwin V. Johanningmeier and Theresa Richardson, Educational Research, The National Agenda, and Educational Reform. (Charlotte, NC: Information Age, 2008), p. 261.
- 7.
Philippe Aries, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life. trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Vintage, 1962); Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt, Children in English Society, 2 Vols. (London: Routledge, 1969); George Boas, The Cult of Childhood (London: Warburg, 1966); Philip J. Greven Jr. Four Generations: Population, Land and Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970); Michael B. Katz, The People of Hamilton: Canada West, Family and Class in a Mid-Nineteenth Century City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975); Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800. (New York: Harper & Row, 1979); Neil Sutherland, Children in English Canadian Society: Framing the Twentieth Century Consensus (Toronto, Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1976); Patricia T. Rooke and R. L. Schness eds. Studies in Childhood History: A Canadian Perspective (Calgary, ALBT: Detselig Enterprises, 1982); Marilyn R. Brown, ed. Picturing Children: Constructions Between Rousseau and Freud (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).
- 8.
See, for example, the late 1960s text in child psychology by Robert D. Singer and Anne Singer, Psychological Development in Children (W. B. Saunders Company: Philadelphia, London, Toronto, 1969).
- 9.
Harry Eiss, ed., Images of the Child (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green Popular Press, 1994); Margaret Mead and Martha Wolfenstein, eds., Childhood in Contemporary Cultures (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955, 1967).
- 10.
Laurence Brockliss and George Roussseau, “The History Child,” Oxford Magazine (Michelmas Term, 2003), pp. 4–7; note in discussing Oxford University’s Centre for the History of Childhood that there is a danger in “historicizing a phenomenon that has few stable parameters, and, in some cultures may not exist at all…In several languages there is no word for child; even in English, the word has drastically shifted its meaning over the centuries.”
- 11.
Lester D. Crow and Alice Crow, eds., Readings in Human Learning (New York: David McKay Company, 1963).
- 12.
Patrick Suppes and Hermine Warren, “Psychoanalysis and American Elementary Education,” in Suppes and Warren, eds., Research on Education: Some Case Studies (Washington, DC: National Academy of Education, 1978), pp. 319–396.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
The first publication using this phrase was by a Swedish author Ellen Keys, Barnets Århundrade (Stockholm: A. Bonner, 1900); the German version Das Jahrhundert Des Kindes (Berlin; S. Fischer, 1905) was translated into English as The Century of the Child (New York and London; G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909). Peter B. Neubauer also used the phrase “The Century of the Child,” Psychiatry in American Life, ed. Charles Rolo (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), pp. 133–141.
- 15.
Theresa R. Richardson, The Century of the Child: The Mental Hygiene Movement and Social Policy in the United States and Canada (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989).
- 16.
Sol Cohen, “The Mental Hygiene Movement, the Development of Personality and the School,” History of Education Quarterly 23, 2 (Summer 1983), pp. 123–150; Sol Cohen, “The School and Personality Development: Intellectual History,” in Historical Inquiry in Education: A Research Agenda, ed. John Best (Washington, D. C.: A. E. R. A., 1983); Sol Cohen, “The Mental Hygiene Movement, the Commonwealth Fund and Public Education, 1921–1933,” in Private Philanthropy: Proceedings of the Rockefeller Archive Center Conference, June 1979, ed. Gerald Benjamin (Rockefeller Archive Center Publication, 1980), pp. 33–46. Other related articles include Steven L. Schlossman, “Philanthropy and the Gospel of Child Development,” pp. 15–32, and Robert J. Havighurst, “Foundations and Public Education in the Twentieth Century,” pp. 5–14, both in Private Philanthropy, cited above, and also Elizabeth Lomax, “The Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, Some of its Contributions to Early Research in Child Development,” Journal of the History of Behavioral Science 13 (1977): 283–293.
- 17.
Norman Dain, Clifford W. Beers, Advocate for the Insane (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg, reprint 1918, original New York: Longmans Green, 1907).
- 18.
Margo Horn, Before it is too Late: The Child Guidance Movement in the United States (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989).
- 19.
Robert B. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation (New York: Harper, 1952), George W. Corner, A History of the Rockefeller Institute, 1901–1953 (New York: Rockefeller Institute Press, 1965).
- 20.
Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed, A History of the University of Chicago Founded by John D. Rockefeller (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1916); University of Chicago Archives, One in Spirit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973, 1991).
- 21.
See letters and interviews in the Thomas W. Salmon Papers and Clifford W. Beers Papers in the American Foundation for Mental Health Archives (AFMH) and Payne Whitney Clinic Library at Cornell Medical Center. Also see the National Committee for Mental Hygiene Records in Record Group 1.1 in the Rockefeller Foundation Archives (RFA) at the Rockefeller Archive Center (RAC). Secondary literature includes biographies of Beers and Salmon: Norman Dain, Clifford W. Beers; and Earl D. Bond with Paul O. Komora Thomas W. Salmon: Psychiatrist (New York: W. W. Norton, 1950). Raymond D. Fosdick’s The Story of The Rockefeller Foundation (New York: Harper’s Brothers, 1952), and General Education Board, The General Education Board: An Account of Its Activities 1902–1914 (New York: G. E. B., 1915), which give an overview of the philanthropies in contemporary perspectives. Fosdick was the president of the Rockefeller Foundation and a long-term officer with Rockefeller philanthropies and in the family office. His own papers are also housed at RAC. The General Education Board Archives are also at RAC. Canadian archives on mental hygiene and child development include the Greenland Griffin Archives in Toronto and the Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa.
- 22.
Samples of supportive documents include “Annual Report to the Commonwealth Fund on the Operation of the Bureau of Child Guidance by the New York School of Social Work as Section I of the Program for the Study of Methods for the Prevention of Delinquency Covering the Year 1924–1925”; Bernard Glueck’s “Annual Report of the Bureau of Child Guidance”; Barry C. Smith, “Report of the General Director, Child Welfare Program for the Prevention of Delinquency”; and many others including letters and interviews in the CF Archives at RAC and AFMH Archives. Secondary literature includes books by principal investigators at the time such as Smiley D. Blanton and M. G. Blanton, Child Guidance (New York: Century, 1927).
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
W. I. Thomas, The Unadjusted Girl: With Case Studies and Standpoints for Behavior Analysis (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1923); W. I. Thomas and Dorothy Swain Thomas, The Child in America: Behavior Problems and Programs (New York: Knopf, 1928, reprint New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1970).
- 25.
The Thomas Theorem as quoted by Robert K. Merton: “If men define situations as real they are real in their consequences.” For a discussion, see Robert K. Merton, “The Self-fulfilling Prophecy,” in Lewis A. Coser, The Pleasures of Sociology (New York: American Library, 1980), pp 29–47.
- 26.
Donna Varga, “LOOK—NORMAL: The Colonized Child of Developmental Science,” History of Psychology 14, 2 (2011): 137–157.
- 27.
G. Stanley Hall, “The Contents of Children’s Minds,” Princeton Review 11 (May 1883): 249–272; G. Stanley Hall, Life and Confessions of a Psychologist (New York: D. Appleton, 1923); Dorothy Ross, G. Stanley Hall: The Psychologist as Prophet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972).
- 28.
Edward L. Thorndike, Introduction to the Theory of Mental and Social Measurements (New York: Science Press, 1904); Lewis M. Terman, The Stanford Revision of the Simon Binet Scale (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1916); Lewis M. Terman, The Intelligence of School Children: How Children Differ in Ability, the Use of Mental Tests in School Grading and the Proper Education of Exceptional Children (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1919).
- 29.
Lewis M. Terman, Genetic Studies of Genius (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1925, 1926); Lewis M. Terman, Intelligence Tests and School Reorganization (Yonkers-on-Hudson, NY: Word Book Publishing Co., 1922).
- 30.
Lewis M. Terman, The Estimation of Juvenile Incorrigibility: A Report of Experiments in the Measurement of Juvenile Incorrigibility by Means of Certain Non-Intellectual Tests (Whittier, CA: California Bureau of Juvenile Research, 1923); Lewis M. Terman, Surveys in Mental Deviation in Prisons, Public Schools, and Orphanages in California: Brief Descriptions of Local Conditions and Need for Custodial Care and Training, Dependent, Defective, and Delinquent Classes (Sacramento, CA: California State Printing Office, 1918).
- 31.
Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, Annual Report (New York: Rockefeller Foundation, 1930), p. 10.
- 32.
Richardson, Century of the Child see pp. 129–147 and notes 235–241.
- 33.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1970).
- 34.
The extensive records on these files are in the LSRM, GEB Archives, as well as in the Spelman Fund Papers, a philanthropy created in the 1930s to continue child study research on adolescence. All are housed at RAC. In addition, Canadian materials are also in the Public Archives of Canada and Griffin-Greenland Archives in Toronto.
- 35.
George D. Stoddard and Dorothy E. Bradbury, Pioneering in Child Welfare: A History of the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station, 1917–1933 (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1933); Cora Bussey Hillis, “How the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station Came into Being,” unpublished mss. August 1919; George D. Stoddard, “The Second Decade: A Review of the Activities of the Iowa Child Welfare Research Station, 1928–1938,” Aims and Progress of Research 58, New Series, 366 (February 1, 1939): 1; “An Act for the Promotion of the Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy, 1921,” US Statutes at Large XLII, part I (April 1921–March 1923), pp. 224–226. The Children’s Bureau also has publications on the Station.
- 36.
Bird T. Baldwin, “Heredity and Environment – Or Capacity and Training” Journal of Educational Psychology 19 (1928); Bird T. Baldwin, Eva A. Fillmore and Lora Stecher, “Mental Growth Curve of Normal and Superior Children,” University of Iowa Studies in Child Welfare 2, 1 (1922); Bird T. Baldwin, Eva A. Fillmore, and Lora Hadley, Farm Children: An Investigation of Rural Live in Selected Areas of Iowa (New York: Appleton, 1930).
- 37.
Arnold Gesell and Francis Ilg, Feeding Behavior of Infants: A Pediatric Approach to the Mental Hygiene of Early Life (Philadelphia, London: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1937); Arnold Gesell, et al., The First Five Years of Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940, 1971); Arnold Gesell, Francis Ilg, Louise Bates Ames, and Glenna E. Bullis, Youth: The Years from Ten to Sixteen (New York: Harper, 1956). The US Library of Congress lists 77 publications of Gesell including translations.
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Richardson, T. (2015). 5.3 Liminality: Interpreting Research on Learning in the Context of the History of Childhood. In: Smeyers, P., Bridges, D., Burbules, N., Griffiths, M. (eds) International Handbook of Interpretation in Educational Research. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9282-0_44
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