I am very sorry to have to pass along this note. Urie was a very important
person in my
life, an early and peresistant chat theorist, and he is sorely missed. When
I can stop throwing euros at a computer to get online I will write more
about the importance of his ideas. Perhaps some of you can think of an
appropriate form of memorial activity.
Mike
_________________________
The Associated Press has just released Uri Bronfenbrenner's obituary:
"Academic Who Helped Create Head Start Dies"
The Associated Press
Monday, September 26, 2005; 4:09 PM
Urie Bronfenbrenner, a Cornell University psychologist who pioneered an
interdisciplinary approach to the study of child development and helped
create the federal Head Start program, has died. He was 88.
Bronfenbrenner, a member of the Cornell faculty since 1948, died at his home
Sunday from complications from diabetes, the school announced Monday.
The Russian-born Bronfenbrenner was credited with creating the
interdisciplinary field of human ecology and was widely regarded as one of
the world's leading scholars in developmental psychology and child-rearing.
Before Bronfenbrenner, child psychologists studied the child, sociologists
examined the family, anthropologists the society, economists the economic
framework of the times and political scientists the governing structure.
"Urie was the quintessential person for spurring psychologists to look up
and realize that interpersonal relationships, even the smallest level of the
child and the parent-child relationship, did not exist in a social vacuum,"
said Melvin L. Kohn, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University,
who studied under Bronfenbrenner.
Earlier in his career, Bronfenbrenner helped spur the creation of Head
Start, the federal child development program for low-income children that
has served millions of children since 1965.
According to an account on the American Psychological Association's Web
site, Bronfenbrenner was on a Head Start planning committee appointed by R.
Sargent Shriver, director of President Johnson's anti-poverty efforts.
Bronfenbrenner persuaded his colleagues to include the family and community
in Head Start, in order to better help poor children.
In his later years, Bronfenbrenner warned that the process that makes human
beings human was breaking down as trends in American society produced chaos
in the lives of America's children.
"The hectic pace of modern life poses a threat to our children second only
to poverty and unemployment," he said.
He was the author, co-author or editor of 14 books and more than 300
articles and chapters. He held many honorary degrees, and the American
Psychological Association gives an annual award in his name for
contributions to developmental psychology.
At his death, Bronfenbrenner was the Jacob Gould Sherman Professor Emeritus
of Human Development and of Psychology at Cornell.
Born in Moscow in 1917, Bronfenbrenner came to the United States at age 6.
He received a bachelor's degree from Cornell in 1938, a master's from
Harvard and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He served in the Army
as a psychologist before joining the Cornell faculty.
He is survived by his wife, Liese; and six children. Daughter Kate
Bronfenbrenner is the director of labor education research at Cornell.
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