Transcript Leta Stetter Hollingworth

Leta Stetter Hollingworth
1886 - 1939
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Life in 1886 : Leta’s Birth
• Sigmund Freud – 30 years old!
.
Wilhelm Wundt – had founded the fist
Psychology Lab eight years earlier
Edwin Boring is Born - The Historian of Psychology
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Woman’s Fashion - A walking dress.
Women’s suffrage was still 34 years away
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Labor Unrest - Haymarket Riots in Chicago
American Federation of Labor (AFL) formed by
26 craft unions. Samuel Gompers elected AFL
president
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Bay View Tragedy: 7 workers killed by State National
Guard while on peaceful march for establishing the 8hour day (State’s worst labor violence)
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The Gilded Age
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Robber Barons
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President Grover
Cleveland dedicates
the Statute of Liberty
People Complain about the cost of
Telephones. Bell had a monopoly.
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First Ads for Coca-Cola
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Nebraska
http://www.stockmapagency.com/media/US_State/Antique/T_S-NEBRNEBR1886-ANT.jpg
• Homestead Act of 1862
• Population growth:
2,700 in 1854 to
450,402 in 1880
• Hardships
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Family Life
Mother: Margaret Elinor Danley
• Wrote a journal written from Leta’s
(infant) point of view from birth to age
one.
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Father: John G. Stetter
"rollicking minstrel cowboy".
After the death of his Margret he left his three
daughters with their maternal grandparents for
the next ten years.
Leta had 2 sisters (Ruth and Margaret)
Their mother died when Leta was 3
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Leta had now lost both biological parents
before her 4th birthday and became a
brooding, sensitive child who kept a journal of
her thoughts that shows a maturity far beyond
her years.
13
At twelve years old, her father
remarried and the children went to
Valentine, Nebraska to live with him
and their stepmother.
Step Mother: Fanny Berling
was verbally abusive towards her
step-children and completely
authoritarian!
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University of Nebraska
• 1902-1906
• Selected as her class’ “Class Poet” in 1906
“Always and Forever Roses Die”
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One thinks when some dear, gladsome time is done,
“What if thro’ all the rounds and rounds of years,
The heart should lose it!” and the sudden tears
Spring hurting to the eyes. Well, this is one
Of all those times of which an end must be;
How shall its life be kept for you and me?
Oh , never weep with him of bitter heart
I saw once pausing where white roses die
And hide the earth in fragrance where they lie.
With darkened eyes he looked, then turned apart,
And murmuring “hopeless” to himself he said,
“The thorns still sharpen when the flowers are dead.”
Another came and stood within the place Where softly breathing lay the living snow,
And looked upon the waste and bending low,
Stooped as he loved it. Then I saw his face!
He gathered all the petals at his feet
And thro’ his life they gave him fragrance sweet.
So we may know what wisdom is, we read
Its mighty meaning in the brow and eyes
Of him who knows to keep his paradise
In fragrance when the living thing is dead.
He looked so calm, for tho’ his eyes were wet
His face was placid and without regret.
This story runs in sweet and tender ways,
For always and forever roses die
And all about us fragrant petals lie;
The remnants of the precious, perfect days
Which come and pass. But mem’ry still may lend
A fragrance sweet to gladden to the end.
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Leta and Holly (1880 – 1954)
Met at University of Nebraska
She was 17 and he 23
Shared experiences
Mother died when he was a toddler
Father Remarried
Grandmother kidnapped Holly
Restraining order on the Grandmother
Father Branded Holly with an H on his palm.
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Leta and Holly became engaged when she was 19.
In 1906, Harry and Leta graduated with a Bachelor of Arts
degree.
Harry went on to pursue graduate work
at Columbia University in New York.
Leta earned a Nebraska State Teacher’s Certificate.
Stetter's first job as assistant principal of the high school in
the DeWitt, Nebraska (1906). Second teaching position a
little bit larger town of McCook (1907)
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Harry, obtained an assistant professorship at Barnard
College and could afford to bring Leta to New York.
They were married on December 31, 1908
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Unable to secure a teaching job
due to her marital status.
Court case 1904 – If as single
teacher married, she could
retain her job – but a married
teacher could not be hired.
If a married teacher became
pregnant – she would be fired.
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Leta attempted to pursue graduate work at Columbia but she was
unable to acquire a fellowship position or scholarship because of
her gender.
Holly as making 41.66 per month ($1,000 ~ today in NEW YORK!)
1911 ~ Harry was hired to research the effects of caffeine for The
Coca-Cola Company.
Leta was hired by her husband as a research assistant, and was
finally able to take graduate courses at Columbia.
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Columbia University
Able to attend due to money from the Coca-Cola study
Advisor, Professor, and Mentor: Edward Lee Thorndike
“Of the hundred most gifted individuals in the country, not
two would be women…Thus, though women should capture
the teaching profession, they would hardly fill its most eminent
positions…even should all women vote, they would play a small
role in the senate.”
In 1913, she received her Master’s Degree
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While working on her Ph.D.
Clearing House for Mental Defectives Administer Binet
intelligence tests (self-taught)
Bellevue Hospital – consulting Psychologist
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In 1913, she received her Master’s Degree and shortly
thereafter was appointed the position of consulting
psychologist at Bellevue Hospital.
Leta went on to earn her Ph.D. from Columbia. She
performed so well that she was not required to take
an oral examination before receiving her doctorate
degree in 1916.
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Research in Sex Differences.
Hypothesis: greater variability among men
while women as a species were less variable.
Leta called this : “Armchair Dogma”
Did studies at the Clearing House.
Adolescence Study – IQ difference
- also a bias, Females were diagnosed
later because their roles were less
challenging.
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Infant Study
Participants: 1,000 consecutively born males
and 1,000 consecutively born females in the
New York Infirmary for Women and Children.
Method: ten anatomical measurements on each
infant.
Results: male infants were slightly larger than
the females, but there were no differences in
variability between the sexes.
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Hypothesis: “Functional Periodicity” that
women made poor scientists due to their
instability caused by their menstrual cycle.
Method: measured various skills and ability of
23 females and 2 males for three months.
Results: unable to find any significant
differences in scores between any phases of the
female’s menstrual cycle
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Ph.D.
Leta earn her Ph.D. from Columbia using the
Functional Periodicity Research as her Thesis.
She performed so well that she was not
required to take an oral examination before
receiving her doctorate degree in 1916.
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In 1927 Leta published her final article on the
subject of the psychology of women.
"Suffrage can be used to modernize law, but it
has very limited use as an instrument to
modernize people“
The "New Woman" is consciously experimenting
with her own life to find out how women can
best live. "Surely this requires a courage and a
genius deserving of something better than
blame or jeers; deserving at least open-minded
toleration and assistance"
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Leta’s Beliefs
Eugenics (Negative and Positive)
Galton:
Positive eugenics used education, tax incentives, and
childbirth stipends to encourage procreation among fit
people.
Negative eugenics sought to limit procreation through marriage
restriction, segregation, sexual sterilization, and, in its most extreme
form, euthanasia.
Marriage and motherhood
- yet Leta never had children.
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Columbia University’s
Teacher’s College
• Replaced Naomi Norsworthy
•Teachers College
1916-1919: Instructor
1919-1922: Assistant Professor
1922-1928: Associate Professor
1928-1939: Full Professor
Listed in American Men of Science five years after receiving her
doctorate
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P.S. 165 in New York City
A group of fifty children ages seven to nine with
IQ's over 155 were studied for a three- year
period.
• Characteristics (e.g., demographics)
• Curriculum
Continued to stay in contact with this group for
the next eighteen years adding to her study the
spouses and children of the original participants.
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Speyer School
• 1934 – vacancy at Speyer School
• Diversity (23 national Backgrounds)
• Agent of positive social change
• Speyer experiment
7 Binet classes
2 Terman classes
175 students
50 students
IQ: 75-90
IQ: 130+
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Gifted Education Philosophies
• Recognized the full spectrum of learners
• Hands on learning
• museums
• importance of writing
• learning a language
• biographies – “people, rather than things, were paramount
to the development of humans” (Klein p. 146)
• “Evolution of Common Things”
Video (52:28 – 55:02)
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Publications
• Gifted Children: Their Nature and Nurture – 1926
- the first textbook in gifted education
• The Psychology of the Adolescent – 1928
- “goal of adolescence is to evolve into an ‘adequate
adult’” (self-sufficiency, ready to handle life’s
challenges without crumbling)
• Children Above 180 IQ: Stanford-Binet Origin and
Development – 1942
- is still influential today
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Final Years
• Abdominal Cancer
• Final trip to Nebraska
•1938 – Hollingworths received honorary doctor of
laws degrees from University of Nebraska
• Leta selected to give speech at Alumni dinner
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She criticized her cohorts for their lack of connection with
their subjects pointing out that their main concern
seemed to be to get knowledge quickly. She chided them
that:
"The adding machine has tremendous advantages over
the child as an object of intimate association. It has no
parents; it does not lose its pocket-handkerchief; it does
not kick or yell. All this we grant. Those who really study
children -those who would study any individuals - must be
prepared to take pains" ~ L. S. Hollingworth
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References
Klein, Ann G. (2002). A Forgotten Voice: A Biography of Leta Stetter
Hollingworth. Scottsdale, AZ: Great Potential Press, Inc.
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