Eminent Psychologist: Leta Hollingworth Source Summary From Susan Hochman’s paper, “Leta Stetter Hollingworth: Her Life”, Leta Stetter was born in Nebraska May 25th, 1886 to her mother and an alcoholic father. After having two other children, Stetter’s mother passed away and the children were left to their irresponsible father. Stetter went on to live with her grandparents, which was better than living with her father. However, she still felt a remarkable sadness with regards to losing her mother at an early age. After graduating from Valentine, Nebraska’s high school, she attended University of Lincoln, in which she earned her Bachelor of the Arts degree and she also a teaching certificate for the state of Nebraska. In college, she met her …show more content…
future husband, Henry Hollingworth. However, he went to New York to do work at Columbia University and later, gained an assistant professor position at Barnard College. Stetter and Hollingworth later got married in 1908 and Mrs. Hollingworth moved to be with her husband in New York. Sadly, Mrs. Hollingworth was not able to obtain a teaching job in New York due to her marital status. As a result, Mrs.
Hollingworth took classes in literature and specialized in sociology and education. She really wanted to feel that she made a difference in the financial aspect of the household. Later on, she got to work part-time at a mental defectives “Clearing House”. Her role was to give out Binet intelligence tests. Later on, she moved to the Bellevue Hospital and was a chief of the psychology laboratory. During this time, she took classes in Doctorate work at Columbia University under Edward Thorndike. She also did research on differences (variability) between men and women by using infants, the time of women’s menstrual cycles, and variability in the Clearing House for Mental Defectives. She found that women can survive outside of institutions better than males because they have the domestic skills of cleaning, cooking, child-rearing and so forth. During her infant experiment, she found that there was no difference in variability between both genders. This means that it is social construction that creates the differences between males and females in regards to talent, abilities, and professions. Another key issue she looked at was with women and how they were inferior to men, especially because of the women’s reproductive cycle. Men were seen to be the providers and women were primarily for having children and tending to the household. During this time in history, women’s suffrage was a significant political issue and Hollingworth felt that suffrage could modernize …show more content…
the role of women. Hollingworth felt that with the technological and political advances, women could be more individualistic and make progress from being a housewife to a “New Woman”. While at Columbia university, Hollingworth accepted a teaching position in educational psychology and also a position in the School for Exceptional Children. Hollingworth’s other remarkable work was regarding children with mental disabilities, as well as exceptional children.
What she discovered was that the mentally disabled or “defective” children were of average intelligence, but had some type of adjustment issue. Later on, Hollingworth examined the exceptional children. She performed two longitudinal studies and in the first one, she studied exceptional children for three years and measured their intelligence quotient (IQ), family background, psychological state and other traits that distinguished them to be “exceptional”. She followed the group for eighteen years and added on to the study later. For her second longitudinal study, she worked with exceptional children again and her goal was to tailor an education that would challenge the exceptional children. In 1939, Hollingworth passed away due to abdominal cancer. She is well known for her work with exceptional and gifted children and also the role of women and their potential. What separates Hollingworth from other psychologists of her time and gender was her persistency on connection with the subjects and keeping in contact with them. This is a phenomenal approach because she saw her students as more than just psychological data and research subjects. She saw them for their potential and wanted to improve their lives to the best of her
ability.
Nellie was born in Missouri in 1876. “She was the sixth child and the first daughter of James and ‘Lizzie’ Tayloe” (Scheer, 2). Nellie was very private about her childhood and little is known about the family from which she came. The only story of her childhood that she ever shared was of her home being destroyed by a fire (Scheer, 1). In 1902, she became Nellie Tayloe Ross after marrying a successful lawyer and future governor of Wyoming, William Bradford Ross. Nellie was a stay at home mother with their four sons; twins George and James Ambrose, Alfred, who died at the age of ten months, and William Bradford II (Mackey, 26).
Born on December 25, 1921, Clara grew up in a family of four children, all at least 11 years older than her (Pryor, 3). Clara’s childhood was more of one that had several babysitters than siblings, each taking part of her education. Clara excelled at the academic part of life, but was very timid among strangers. School was not a particularly happy point in her life, being unable to fit in with her rambunctious classmates after having such a quiet childhood. The idea of being a burden to the family was in Clara’s head and felt that the way to win the affection of her family was to do extremely well in her classes to find the love that she felt was needed to be earned. She was extremely proud of the positive attention that her achievement of an academic scholarship (Pryor, 12). This praise for her accomplishment in the field of academics enriched her “taste for masculine accomplishments”. Her mother however, began to take notice of this and began to teach her to “be more feminine” by cooking dinners and building fires (Pryor, 15). The 1830’s was a time when the women of the United States really began to take a stand for the rights that they deserved (Duiker, 552). Growing up in the mist of this most likely helped Barton become the woman she turned out to be.
At the age of 18, Miss Barton became a schoolteacher. She taught at numerous different schools around Massachusetts. Clara noticed in one particular town that many of the students did not attend school that greatly distressed her. She wanted all children to have the same educational opportunity that she had when she was growing up. Eventually, Barton started her own school. It was free. However, she did not stay there for a long period of time. Clara only taught for a matter of ten years, teaching had exhausted Barton and she longed for a change in her life. She left the teaching field to move onto another field. Barton moved to Washington DC and she became a clerk in the US Patent Office.
She later states that, “sisters and brothers are exposed to the same parental backgrounds and attend schools of the same quality” (O’Neill, 2003, p.309). She has no evidential statistics to make that claim. Parental backgrounds vary from cultures, often boys are given more privileges than girls. It can be argued that families encourage boys and girls differently, which can be a factor to what school and career choice the individual wants to pursue. Without realizing, parents can pressure boys into aspiring for more prestigious careers to be able to support a family because of gender roles. Throughout history, women have proved that they are able to do the same work that males do. When it comes to work productivity, it can be argued that one sex does not have work done better than the other. In the statistics given, there is none that relate to a certain career. She continues to add on that the types of skills in a particular field of work are important but, does not give wage differences between men and women in particular jobs. There have been testimonies within workplaces that men are being paid more than women with no reasonableness. There could have been more statistics added to specify the fields of work that show significant differences in
As mentioned above, women’s role were unjust to the roles and freedoms of the men, so an advanced education for women was a strongly debated subject at the beginning of the nineteenth century (McElligott 1). The thought of a higher chance of education for women was looked down upon, in the early decades of the nineteenth century (The American Pageant 327). It was established that a women’s role took part inside the household. “Training in needlecraft seemed more important than training in algebra” (327). Tending to a family and household chores brought out the opinion that education was not necessary for women (McElligott 1). Men were more physically and mentally intellectual than women so it was their duty to be the educated ones and the ones with the more important roles. Women were not allowed to go any further than grammar school in the early part of the 1800’s (Westward Expansion 1). If they wanted to further their education beyond grammar, it had to be done on their own time because women were said to be weak minded, academically challenged and could n...
Hitchcock, C., Meyer, A., Rose, D., & Jackson, R. (2002). Providing new access to the general curriculum. Exceptional Children, 35(2), 8–17.
I choose to do my biographical paper on Margaret Higgins Sanger, because I admire the work that she done and that is continuing to be done, because of her. She was one of eleven children born to Michael and Anne Higgins; a Roman Catholic working-class Irish American family; on September 14, 1879, in Corning, New York. Margaret’s father a man of the bottle and one who enjoyed talking politics, rather than earning the money needed to take care of such a large family, therefore she spent most of her life in poverty. While I think her father had an impact on the person Margaret grew up to be; it was her mother that really shaped her into the person she was. Along with the eleven children she birthed, Anne also had many miscarriages, Margaret believed that it was the many pregnancies that took a toll on her mother's health and contributed to her early death at the age of 40. (BIO, 2014)
It is a declaration for the equal rights of man and women. The political significance of Mary Wollstonecraft cannot be overstated—her work is regarded as one of the first greatest feminist treatises in history and is also seen as the first step towards liberal feminism. She fought equality for women in the political sphere, but she also addressed the need for equality in the social, private realm. She emphasized the need for reform in women’s status, education, and maternal duties. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft argues that men and women are born with the same ability to reason. Therefore, men and woman should equally be able to exercise reason and attain knowledge. And conclusively, educated women would ultimately improve society; they would become better wives and mothers (72, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman). She argues that the current education system (i.e. Rousseau’s ideas of women education) restricts women and subjects them into passivity. Women are not perceivably “smart” as men because they have not been given the opportunity to be; women receive a “disorderly kind of education” (46, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman). Women are kept in passivity, forced to superficiality and shallowness. She derides these traits that are seen as inherent to a woman’s nature and asks the powerful question: how are women supposed to contribute to society if they have been reduced to their appearance and bodily function? For a thriving, modern and true civilization to succeed, each and every individual must be encouraged to seek moral and intellectual development, including
The scarce amount of women who were fortunate enough to obtain schooling sadly did not receive enough to meet society’s expectations, or lead a content lifestyle (Tomaselli). Wollstonecraft believed that education should be equal for both men and women. She argued that women are capable and have the right to be learn about important subjects, including reading, writing, arithmetic, botany, history, and philosophy (Powell). Wollstonecraft even emphasized the significance of physical education (Powell). She called for reforms, suggesting that schools be mixed regarding sex so as to “‘form a just opinion of ourselves’” (“On National Education”). As mentioned earlier, Wollstonecraft did her part to advocate for this by opening a school, but was forced to close it in a short amount of time (“On National Education”).
...nstitute and took up a role as a domestic worker and was a dedicated reader until her death in 1983. This, opposition of sterilization would say, shows that even those deemed as "feebleminded" can actually be productive members of society and should not lose their rights to an arbitrary line drawn by society's "best".
Edith Abbott was born in Grand Island Nebraska in 1876 (“Edith”, n.d.). Her parents were both active in civil rights and the government. Her father, Othman Ali Abbott, served in the Civil War and her mother, Elizabeth Abbott, was a respected high school principle prior to marrying Othman (Coston, 1986). Her father was also the first Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska, and her mother was an abolitionist and a women’s suffrage leader (“Edith”, n.d.). Edith’s younger sister, Grace, was also involved in public welfare and current social problems of the time (“Edith”, n.d.). Both Abbott sisters gained their pacifist beliefs, interest in progressive reform, and dedication to equal rights from their mother Elizabeth Abbott (Coston, 1986). Edith studied at the University of Nebraska and went to graduate school at the University of Chicago, where she earned her doctorate in political economy in 1905 (Costin, 1983). She was very involved in both her education and the education of others. Edith spent a year in Boston with the Women’s Trade Union League and the Carnegie Institution, along with a year in England studying at the London School of Economics and Political Science (Costin, 1983). The year she spent in England pushed Edith and shaped her beliefs into the person she became (Coston, 1986). She then taught a year of Economics at Wellesley College followed by becoming the dean of School of Social Service Administration in 1924 (Costin, 1983). Edith returned to Chicago to develop a new method of social research, where she spent the remainder of her career (Costin, 1983). She retired in Nebraska in 1953 and died there at the age of 80 (“National”, n.d.).
The first idea of a test was created when Alfred Binet was asked to be a member of the Free Society for the Psychological Psychology at the Sorbonne. His group was appointed to the Commission for the Retarded. They were asked, “What should be the test given to children thought to possibly have learning disabilities, that might place them in a spe...
“Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.” (Einstein). Developmental disability, better known as intellectual disability, or mental retardation is a disorder that causes individuals to preform at below average levels (“Intellectual”). This disorder is characterized by continued infant-like behavior, decreased learning ability, failure to meet the markers of intellectual development, inability to meet educational demands, and a lack of curiosity (“Intellectual”). Some people with intellectual disabilities are able to live normal lives, while others may require assistance. Most people with intellectual disabilities have the same capacity to preform the same task as those without intellectual disabilities.
She questions, “What if, in raising our children, we (the parents) focus on ability instead of gender. interest instead of gender” (36)? Simply, if negativity towards the opposite sex is eradicated in a new generation, there will be no more inequality to worry about. She also parallels Wollstonecraft in commenting on the fascinating diversity of males and females.
Dr. Montessori’s first notable success was when she had several of her eight year old students apply to take the State examinations for reading and writing. The children who were “defective” did not just pass but had above average scores. After the results came in Maria thought “If mentally disabled children could be brought to the level of normal children then (she) wanted to study the potential of ‘normal’ children” [Michael Olaf’s Essential Montessori: School Edition for ages 3-12+].