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On September 5, 2005, Uri Bronfenbrenner, a world-famous specialist in the field of child psychology, a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Education, passed away. In our traditional U.E.K., dedicated to the masters of world psychology, a personal essay has not yet been published about him for only one reason — according to the established tradition, we do not undertake to talk about the life path and scientific achievements of our contemporaries during their lifetime. After all, while a person works, thinks and creates, his path in science is not completed and it is not known what events, and perhaps even sharp turns on this path, will still occur. The path of Uri Bronfenbrenner has been passed. The time has come to pay tribute to him and tell about his life, his fate, his contribution to psychological science.
YURI, SON OF ALEXANDER
The American Bronfenbrenner is sometimes called Yuri in Russian-language publications. And this is not a mistake of ignorant translators, but one of the acceptable pronunciations of his name (just as Maslow, in principle, can be called Maslov). So Bronfenbrenner was often called by his Soviet colleagues, with whom he communicated and collaborated a lot and fruitfully. Indeed, in other circumstances, the born Muscovite Bronfenbrenner could well have been our compatriot! But fate decreed otherwise.
Uri Bronfenbrenner was born in Moscow at the same historical epochs — April 29, 1917. His family belonged, as they would say today, to the middle class — Uri’s father, Alexander Bronfenbrenner, was a well-known neurologist. And the middle class, unlike the proletariat, had something to lose at the revolutionary break. No, the parents of the future psychologist were not counter-revolutionaries! But after 1917, their life changed far from for the better. Seeing no hopeful prospects for themselves in Soviet Russia, the family rushed across the ocean in search of a better life. So at the age of six, Uri Bronfenbrenner became an American.
In America, the family settled in the town of Leechworth Village, New York, where Bronfenbrenner Sr. managed to find work in his specialty in a boarding school for mentally retarded children. He sometimes shared his observations with his family. From a young age, Uri remembered the bewilderment, almost indignation, with which his father spoke about the admission of new pupils to the boarding school. The American way of diagnosing «mental retardation» on the basis of IQ testing seemed absurd to him — the reasons for failure in testing, in his opinion, could be very different, and a low test score did not necessarily indicate a hopeless mental retardation that required placement in a special educational institution.
Already in adulthood, being a well-known psychologist, Uri Bronfenbrenner recalled how these considerations of his father prompted him to think about the need for a comprehensive analysis of intellectual retardation — in some cases reversible, which should be the goal of a real specialist. So, perhaps, even in his youth, the future psychologist began to nurture thoughts that later found concrete embodiment in the nationwide compensation and educational program «Head Start».
In general, the father’s influence on the formation of Bronfenbrenner’s worldview is difficult to overestimate. Being already very old and seriously ill, he regularly wrote letters to his son, sharing his thoughts about life. For Uri, the attitude towards his father has always been not just a worship of authority, but genuine love, mutual and indestructible. In one of his works, he wrote: “For normal development, every child needs at least one person who would not have a soul in him.” Without a doubt, such a person for Uri himself has always been his father, Alexander Bronfenbrenner.
EDUCATION, WAR, WORK…
The whole family atmosphere, imbued with the ideals of humanism and deep scientific interests, could not but affect the intellectual development of the future scientist, the formation of his inclinations. The house was often visited by «comrades in exile» — emigrants from Russia, intelligent and highly cultured people. The conversation often turned to new trends in medicine and the humanities, in particular psychology, so for young Uri, unlike most of his peers, the names of Wertheimer and Levin, Piaget and Vygotsky (whom Americans generally learned about only many years later) were not empty words.
He chose psychology as his profession and, after graduating from high school, entered the psychology department at Cornell University. After receiving a bachelor’s degree in 1938, he continued his education at Harvard University, where he was awarded a master’s degree, and at the University of Michigan, where he received his doctorate in 1942. Literally the next day, the newly minted Doctor of Science was drafted into the ranks of the armed forces — the Second World War was on. Like most of his colleagues, Dr. Bronfenbrenner was not sent to the active army, he was seconded to command structures where professional psychologists’ consultations were highly valued.
After demobilization in 1946, he worked for a couple of years in a modest position as assistant professor at the University of Michigan, until he finally moved to his Alma Mater — Cornell University in 1948, where he worked until the end of his days (officially resigning in 1987. , Bronfenbrenner, in the status of an honorary professor, continued active scientific activity).
COMPENSATORY TRAINING
The largest practical achievement of the scientist throughout his long career was the development and implementation of the «Head Start» compensatory education program, aimed at improving academic performance and developing the intellectual abilities of students from low-income families and national minorities.
In the mid 60s. the movement to provide all children with equal opportunities to receive a full-fledged education has intensified. One of the ideologists of this movement was Bronfenbrenner. In 1964, speaking in Congress as an invited expert, he declared that the government’s proclaimed course to combat poverty and unemployment would only make sense when the main efforts were directed to helping children develop their abilities and receive an education. Otherwise, the «social lower classes» are forever preserved in their unenviable position.
In 1965, at the initiative of President L. Johnson, the Primary and Secondary School Act was passed, which served as the basis for numerous developmental programs. In the same year, the largest of them, Head Start, was launched. It was seen as one of the means to “compensate” for life in poverty, poor health, poor nutrition, overcrowding, that is, everything that millions of children from low-income families, belonging mainly to national minorities, face and suffer from, in the first place — blacks. 2500 centers have been established in 13400 districts, reaching over half a million children (although only the XNUMX most needy were originally planned).
The developmental training course developed by Bronfenbrenner and colleagues lasted 8 weeks. The classes were aimed at eliminating gaps in the knowledge of children and developing their intellectual skills. In addition, other large-scale programs were in operation throughout the year, suggesting that children from low-income families needed additional education in order to prepare for regular schooling. Already in 1965, at the end of the course, positive changes were achieved in the performance of intelligence tests by children.
TWO WORLDS — TWO CHILDREN
It would seem that, at the request of the public, she was rolled out a wonderful barrel of honey for endless eating. But not without a fly in the ointment! On February 21, 1969, the prestigious Harvard Educational Review published a 123-page feature article by Arthur Jensen, Professor of Educational Psychology and Research Psychologist at the University of California, as the featured article. The article was titled «How Much Can We Improve IQ and School Performance?» In this long, statistical and technical article, Jensen gave a simple answer to this question. In his opinion, any pedagogical efforts aimed at increasing the level of mental abilities and academic performance are extremely ineffective. The author saw the reason for this in the fact that the intellect is genetically predetermined and is not subject to significant changes during life. Moreover, among different races and social groups, intelligence is distributed unequally. Simply put, some classes and peoples as a whole are more stupid than others, and any attempts to change this genetic pattern are practically useless. It simply needs to be taken into account when planning social policy accordingly.
Jensen began his article with a dramatic assertion that compensatory education had failed. The reason for this was the already fairly obvious fact that the increase in IQ achieved with the help of compensatory training was of a temporary nature. Is not a lot of taxpayer money being wasted, Jensen asked, if the effect of development programs, and primarily the Head Start program, is very small, and after some time it completely disappears?
Bronfenbrenner’s counterarguments were logical and convincing in their own way. In his opinion, the data cited by Jensen only show that the existing intelligence tests reveal not intelligence itself, but knowledge and skills that correspond to the structure of these tests. Therefore, classes under the «Head Start» program, aimed at mastering these knowledge and skills by children, contributed to the growth of IQ. Subsequently, when the classes were over and the children returned to their usual unfavorable social environment, there were no new incentives for the growth of IQ. Nevertheless, according to Bronfenbrenner, the experience of the Head Start program indicates significant opportunities for pedagogical influence on intellectual development. Contrary to the opinion of supporters of the theory of innate abilities, the Head Start program convincingly showed the dependence of school performance and mental development on social conditions.
It is easy to see that these views of Bronfenbrenner are in many respects in tune with the postulates of Soviet psychology and pedagogy. It is not surprising that the scientist, who traveled almost half the world as a researcher and guest lecturer, undertook an extensive comparative study in the USSR, which provided material for one of his most famous books, Two Worlds of Childhood: Children of the USA and the USSR. In America, it came out in 1970, in our country — 6 years later. It took more than one year for our official ideologists to figure out in whose favor the results of a comparative study testify.
And it was really not easy to figure it out — the book turned out to be extremely objective, not anti-Soviet or anti-American, without obvious and obvious preferences. As a result, we decided to publish the book. And not in vain — they quote her to this day. It is only a pity that no one would think of carrying out such a study in our day. His results would certainly have been different. What? Alas, we can only speculate about this for now …
ON FOUR LEVELS
Uri Bronfenbrenner’s most significant contribution to psychology is his development of an interdisciplinary approach to the processes of socialization, which he called human ecology. Grace Craig, author of the well-known textbook Developmental Psychology, calls Bronfenbrenner’s model «perhaps the most influential model of human development to date.»
According to this ecological model, human development is a dynamic process that goes in two directions. A growing person constantly experiences the impact of various elements of his environment and at the same time he actively restructures his multi-level living environment. According to Bronfenbrenner, the ecological environment of a child’s development consists of four systems, as if nested one into the other, which are usually graphically depicted as concentric rings. Bronfenbrenner calls the levels of this environment microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem and macrosystem. A characteristic feature of his model is the flexible direct and feedback links between these four systems, through which their interaction is carried out.
The microsystem, or the first level of the model, at any period of life is made up of people and objects in the immediate environment of the child. It is this level that traditionally attracts the attention of psychologists. But Bronfenbrenner is not limited to them. He points out that the interconnections of two or more microsystems (for example, a family and a kindergarten) form a second level — the mesosystem. The exosystem refers to those levels of the social environment or social structures that, while outside the sphere of direct human experience, nevertheless influence it. For example, a business where the mother of a child works may allow her a flexible working schedule, which will allow her to pay more attention to education and indirectly affect the development of the child. At the same time, the opportunity to more freely manage one’s time and devote most of it to education will contribute to the mother’s spiritual balance and will indirectly affect the increase in her labor productivity.
Unlike other levels, the macrosystem is not related to a specific environment, but includes life values, laws and traditions of the culture in which a person lives. For example, the rules under which children with developmental delays can be educated in a mainstream school are likely to have a significant impact on the level of education and social development of both these children and their «normal» peers. In turn, the success or failure of this pedagogical undertaking may facilitate or, on the contrary, hinder further attempts to integrate lagging children into the mainstream school.
Although developmental support and stimulation interventions can occur at all four levels of the model, Bronfenbrenner believed that they play the most significant role at the macrosystem level. This is because the macrosystem has the ability to influence all other levels. An example is the same Head Start program, according to Bronfenbrenner, which had a huge positive impact on the development of several generations of American children. (However, this opinion is still actively disputed by many.)
THE BUSINESS OF LIFE
Bronfenbrenner published his last book (a total of 14, including co-authors, not to mention more than 300 articles) a year before his death, as if summarizing the results of the path traveled. The title of this book (Making Human Beings Human) could be somewhat clumsily translated as «The Humanization of Man.» After all, it was precisely to this — to help a growing child become a real person — that the scientist aspired all his life. And the successes along this path during his lifetime were highly appreciated. A few years ago, the American Psychological Association honored him with the Distinguished Contribution to Developmental Psychology Award, which has since borne his name. The Center for Developmental Ecology at Cornell University is also named after Bronfenbrenner. Honorary professor of many American and European universities, Uri Bronfenbrenner in 1993 was elected a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Education.
You can’t say «untimely» about the death of an 88-year-old man. However, the obituaries, which hastened to publish almost all American national newspapers, noted how heavy this loss was not only for the scientist’s relatives, but for the entire psychological science. Let us bow our heads in his memory.