Arnold Gesell

Arnold Lucius Gesell (born June, 21, 1880 – died May 29, 1961) was a pioneer in the field of child development, whose research on developmental milestones is still widely used by pediatricians, psychologists and other professionals who work with children.

Life

Arnold Gesell was born in Alma, Wisconsin. His parents raised their son to highly value education, and young Gesell decided to become a teacher. He received his bachelor degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1903, after which he served as a high school teacher and later, a principal. He entered the graduate study in psychology at Clark University, under the influence of G. Stanley Hall, one of the pioneers in the study of child development. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1906, Gesell moved to the East Side in New York City where he taught elementary school.

In 1911 Gesell was appointed an assistant professor of education at the Yale University, where he established the Yale Psycho-Clinic (later the Clinic of Child Development). He served as the director of the clinic from 1911 until 1948. The clinic became the main center in the U.S. for the study of child behavior. There he spent some of the most fruitful years of his career, conducting numerous studies and discovering the theories of which he later became famous for. In early 1910s Gesell decided to study medicine, since medical degree was still being regarded as an essential credential for any kind of research in child development. In 1915 he gained a MD from Yale.

From 1920s to 1950s Gesell conducted numerous studies on child development, becoming the nation’s foremost authority in this field. The tests that he developed were widely used in assessment of child’s intelligence. He wrote some of his most well known works in this period, including Infant and Child in the Culture of Today (1943) and The Child from Five to Ten (1946),

By the end of his career Gesell served as a research consultant at the Gesell Institute of Child Development in New Haven, Connecticut, from 1948 until his death. Gesell died in New Haven, Connecticut, on May 29, 1961.

Work

Gesell was initially interested in retarded development, and he spent several years in research of Down’s syndrome, cretinism, and cerebral palsy. However, he soon became aware that retarded development couldn’t be fully understood without knowledge of normal development. He thus turned to the study of normal behavior, especially of the mental growth of babies. He developed a method to precisely record and measure behavior, in a strictly controlled environment. Gesell used movie camera and a one-way mirror to observe and record children, as they played without being disturbed. He recorded some 12,000 children of various ages and levels of development - the study that became foundation for his theories of children development. He later trained other researchers in how to collect data and make sound reports.

Based on his studies, Gesell concluded that all children pass through certain maturational stages - developmental milestones – in essentially similar way. Children progress through those stages naturally over time, and independently of learning. Gesell noticed that four major areas are included in that development – motor, linguistic, adaptive, and personal-social behavior. Gesell even produced a scale – Gesell Developmental Schedules - that included all four areas to measure normal children development. The scale measured whether children developed normally or they deviate from expected growth, and it could be used with children between four weeks and six years of age. This scale was the first such scale ever created, and was widely used in subsequent research in medical and educational fields.

Gesell applied his research into adoption studies. He used his scale to determine whether a child reached certain developmental milestone and whether the child could be adopted. It eliminated many problems with adoption, especially those related of giving a right child to right parents. In 1926 he wrote:

“[Adoption] can not be entrusted altogether to good will or to intuitive impulse, or even to unaided common sense. There are too many opportunities for error and miscarriage. The combined critical judgment of the social investigator, the court, the physician, and the mental examiner should enter into the regulation of adoption. . . . Systematic psychoclinical examinations not only will reduce the wastes of error and miscarriage but will serve to reveal children of normal and superior endowment beneath the concealment of neglect, of poverty, or of poor repute. Clinical safeguards can not solve all the problems of child adoption but they can steadily improve its methods and make them both more scientific and humane.”

Gesell also argued that the best method to raise children is through reasonable guidance, rather than through over-permissiveness or over-strictness. In another words, since most of the children’s growth is based on the natural unfolding of hereditary characteristics already present inside the child, parents need to help those characteristics express in a positive way. Too much either permissiveness or rigidity would hinder normal child development. He wrote:

“The child’s personality is a product of slow gradual growth. His nervous system matures by stages and natural sequences. He sits before he stands; he babbles before he talks; he fabricates before he tells the truth; he draws a circle before he draws a square; he is selfish before he is altruistic; he is dependent on others before he achieves dependence on self. All of his abilities, including his morals, are subject to laws of growth. The task of child care is not to force him into a predetermined pattern but to guide his growth."

Gesell’s work, however, was criticized on several grounds. One of the biggest objections was that he used only white, middle-class parents and children for his subjects, thus decreasing the validity of his studies. He was also accused of ignoring individual and cultural differences in growth patterns.

Legacy

Gesell constructed the Gesell dome, a one-way mirror shaped as a dome, under which children could be observed without being disturbed. Measurements done in these sessions (which were extensively annotated and filmed) contributed to establishment of a theory of developmental milestones, which is still being used by child health professionals.

With his ideas that both nature and nurture are important in child development, Gesell influenced numerous child psychologists and pediatricians, including Jerome S. Bruner and Jean Piaget.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Bates, Louise A. 1989. Arnold Gesell: Themes of His Work. Human Sciences Press. ISBN 0898854210

Bibliography

• Gesell, Arnold. 1926. Psychoclinical Guidance in Child Adoption. In Foster-Home Care for Dependent Children, U.S. Children's Bureau Publication, No. 136. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office

• Gesell, Arnold. 1955. Child Behavior. Dell Publishing Company. Inc.

• Gesell, Arnold. 1956. Youth the Years From Ten to Sixteen. Harpercollins Publisher. ISBN 0060115106

• Gesell, Arnold. 1969. Developmental diagnosis: Normal and abnormal child development, clinical methods and pediatric application. Harper and Row.

• Gesell, Arnold. 1977. The Child from Five to Ten. Harpercollins. (original published 1946). ISBN 0060115017

• Gesell, Arnold. 1993. The First Five Years of Life. Buccaneer Books. ISBN 1568491638

• Gesell, Arnold, Ilg, Frances L., & Bates, Louise, A. 1995. Infant and Child in the Culture of Today: The Guidance of Development in Home and Nursery School. Jason Aronson. (original published 1943). ISBN 1568215673

External links

• Britannica article – Short biography

• Historical link collection – Gesell’s links and photos

• Adoption studies – Article about Gesell’s work on adoption

• Medicine at Yale – History of Yale School of Medicine

• The Gesell Institute of Human Development

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