G. Stanley Hall, Child Study, and the American Public

Abstract

In the final decades of the 19th century psychologist Granville Stanley Hall was among the most prominent pedagogical experts in the nation. The author explores Hall's carefully crafted persona as an educational expert, and his engagements with the American public, from 1880 to 1900, arguably the height of his influence. Drawing from accounts of Hall's lecture circuit in the popular press, a map of his talks across the nation is constructed to assess the geographic scope of his influence. These talks to educators on the psychology underlying childhood and pedagogy, and his views and research on child life more generally, were regularly discussed in newspapers and popular periodicals. The venues in which Hall's ideas were disseminated, discussed, and in some cases, dismissed are described. His efforts to mobilize popular support for, and assistance with, his research endeavors in child study are also discussed. Such efforts were controversial both within the burgeoning field of psychology and among the public. Through his various involvements in pedagogy, and concerted efforts to engage with the American public, Hall helped establish psychology's relevance to parenting and educational practices.

Psychology and its publics

“…These contributions took on more substantive, material form as the public sphere became entangled with the mass culture of the late 19th century (Malin, 2014). Psychologists contributed to middlebrow periodicals, traveled the lecture circuit, and became print entrepreneurs with their own journals (Young, 2016). The attitudinal measures of the inter-war period have become a ubiquitous presence of our online culture as we are constantly called to rate (on a 5-point scale) our latest purchases and experiences.…”

Theatricalization In Education: Dialog Of Cultures

“…For example, the pedocentric revolution according to which the child is the center of the educational process, and the goal of education is to discover and develop the personality through "doing". Another "theory of play" (Young, 2016), based on the "dramatic instinct" hardwired in the child's growing body and in his very nature with his desire to play a role. Yet another theory is Evreinov's (2011) theory of the theatricalization of life emphasizes that everything in the life of an individual is determined by their 'dramatic instinct': when a child acts constantly, the objects around him become objects of his adventurous theatricalization.…”

Thinking in multitudes: Questionnaires and composite cases in early American psychology

“…And yet, as has been argued elsewhere (Young, 2012a, 2014), the earliest years of scientific psychology involved as much non-experimental as experimental practice. This is perhaps best exemplified in the proliferation of questionnaire research during this period (Young, 2012a, 2012b, 2016).…”

“…In the fall of 1882, psychologist G. Stanley Hall undertook work with this method in the context of research on children’s mental lives, as part of his larger entrée into the burgeoning realm of child study (Hall, 1883, 1893; Ross, 1972). Hall – remembered today for, amongst other things, arranging psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s sole visit to the United States – soon became a nationally recognized leader within the American child study movement, situating himself as a scientific expert on child life (Young, 2016). Hall’s production of questionnaires (or, as he often termed them, topical syllabi ) abated shortly after this first project, but was resurrected in the mid-1890s after he took on the presidency of the newly instituted Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.…”

“…Hall’s programme of questionnaire-based research continued until 1915, but this form of practice failed to achieve prominence in psychology outside of Clark after initial experiments with the method from the first generation of American psychologists in the 1890s. What resulted was the continuation of published reports of questionnaire projects that centred around extensive excerpts from collected material, and the increasing segregation of the questionnaire projects produced at Clark University, under Hall’s guidance, to the realm of pedagogical rather than psychological research (Ross, 1972; Young, 2016; Young and Green, 2013).…”