Copyright © 2008 by E. A. Kral

Prior to the 1950s and early 1960s, the beliefs that intelligence was fixed at childbirth and unchangeable and that an individual's abilities to react was predetermined by his heredity dominated the thought of a significant majority of America's intellectual leaders.

Among those who revealed in the mid-20th century that environmental experiences may affect the development of human infants was Nebraska native Joseph McVicker Hunt, whose Intelligence and Experience (Ronald Press, 1961) became a landmark in the fields of psychology and education.

His conclusion that "experience programs the development of the brain" countered the prevailing view that parents should leave children to their own ways and "avoid excessive stimulation" during child rearing. And his argument that French psychologist Jean Piaget's theories on intellectual development held promise for the field of child development helped initiate a new direction for educational research.

Moreover, Hunt's findings, along with the views and research of several others, had an impact on public policy, for they coincided with the efforts of the John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson Administrations to more sufficiently meet society's responsibility to children in the 1960s.

His career as an educator, developmental psychologist, and theoretician began after his early years on a farm near Scottsbluff and attendance at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where his interest in psychology emerged under Professor Joy P. Guilford, who later became known for inspiring the beginnings of informational-operational psychology and was ranked among the world's 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century in Review of General Psychology, Vol 6, No 2 (2002). With Guilford, he published his first article in 1931 titled "Some further experimental tests of McDougall's theory of introversion-extroversion."

Hunt's interest in behavior occurred under Madison Bentley while working on a doctorate at Cornell University, then he conducted studies while at the New York Psychiatric Institute and at Worcester State Hospital and Clark University, and learned how to conduct demonstration-interviews. While teaching at Brown University from 1936 to 1946, he performed experiments on "the effects of infantile feeding frustration upon adult hoarding in rats," and achieved the major professional accomplishment of organizing and editing Personality and the Behavior Disorders (Ronald Press, 1944), which became a virtual handbook of contemporary clinical psychology.

For the following five years, he was Director of the Welfare Research Institute of the Community Service Society of New York, where with Leonard Kogan he set up an assessment of social casework, which became not only one of the earliest efforts to evaluate psychotherapy results objectively but also award-winning research excellence. While working with this social agency, he realized the need to examine behavioral sciences literature "for evidence relevant to the various beliefs about child rearing," and became more aware of the potential value of research for political decision-makers.

Hunt returned to academia as professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1951 to 1974, where he was also professor of elementary education after 1967. At first, he continued as editor of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology from 1949 to 1955, and made additional contributions to his profession by serving as president of the American Psychological Association and by working to establish the American Psychological Foundation, the Gold Medal, and the Distinguished Contribution Awards.

In the latter 1950s, he pursued an examination of the literature of the behavioral sciences regarding child rearing and early childhood education from a historical and cultural perspective. The result was publication of his 416-page Intelligence and Experience (1961), which presented "the possibility of raising intellectual attainment through appropriate arrangement of educational experiences" and "was extremely important for crystallizing and highlighting a major shift in the thinking of American psychologists," according to his obituary in the American Journal of Psychology (Fall 1992).

Indeed, shortly after its publication, a review by P. E. Vernon in the British Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol 33 (June 1963) stated, in part, "This is an important book on two counts. First, Professor Hunt puts forward the strongest case yet made for discarding the conception of intelligence as inborn potential which is predetermined by the genes and which matures regardless of environmental conditions. Secondly, hs provides the most complete exposition available in English of the whole corpus of Piaget's theories and experiments on mental development."

According to Educational Psychology: A Century of Contributions (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003), Hunt's book served as an introduction to Piaget for American academics, along with John Flavell's Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget (Van Nostrand, 1963). As a consequence, there were many studies of Piaget's theories during the following decades, and the new research emphasis in education was placed on the theory and application of intellectual development.

For example, Piaget had identified stages in the development of procedural knowledge--from sensory-motor to preoperational to concrete operational to formal operational--which described the differences between childlike to adultlike thinking, the latter called hypothetical-deductive thought by Arizona State University science educator Anton E. Lawson.

In his Science Teaching and The Development of Thinking (Wadsworth, 1995), Lawson reported the key abilities of adults involve thinking about a theory rather than thinking only with a theory, considering the evidence to be evaluated as distinct from the theories themselves, and setting aside one's own acceptance or rejection of a theory in order to evaluate it objectively in terms of its predictions and the evidence.

Among others nationwide who studied and applied Piaget's theories of learning were several academics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. As described in UNL Nebraska Alumnus (March/April 1978), it was a multidisciplinary approach for college freshmen called Project ADAPT, directed by physics professor Robert G. Fuller.

The author of this profile benefited from the efforts at UNL, and with Lawson's assistance, conducted experimental work on scientific reasoning and achievement in a high school English course at Grand Island, Nebraska from 1982 to 1991. Its curriculum was described in Educational Forum, Vol 49 (Winter 1985) and its evaluation by use of American College Testing (ACT) reported in The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol 21 (May/June 1997).

After Hunt's landmark book was published in 1961, he continued his academic investigations in the areas of personality, infancy, and preschool children throughout the 1960s, early 1970s, and well into retirement years, which included working with Ina C. Uzgiris and others on the construction of ordinal scales of psychological development inspired by Piaget's observations, and studying "the effects of early environmental enrichment carried out in orphanages in Iran and Greece." By the time he ended his productive career in the late 1980s, he had edited, authored, or coauthored nearly ten books and 200 articles in psychological, psychiatric, and social work journals.

His investigations in early childhood education also began to make a contribution to public policy. By the early fall of 1962, Martin Deutsch of the Institute for Developmental Studies at New York Medical College had read Intelligence and Experience (as many others had), and invited Hunt to give the first presentation at a conference on preschool enrichment of socially disadvantaged children held that December at Arden House, the Columbia University satellite facility near Woodbury, New York. Published under the title "The Psychological Basis for Using Pre-School Enrichment As An Antidote for Cultural Deprivation" in Merrill-Palmer Quarterly of Behavior and Development, Vol 10 (1964) and more than a dozen other publications, it brought Hunt many lecture invitations.

Coincidentally, the federal government was about to become more active in early childhood education during the Kennedy Administration. Previously, the federal government resisted most requests for funding public education, but it had begun involvement in early childhood for the economically disadvantaged in 1933 by funding emergency public nursery schools, then during World War II many child care centers for working women. During the Truman Administration, funding of the GI Bill primarily aided the colleges, and under the Eisenhower Administration, the National Defense Education Act of 1958 was intended to improve science, mathematics, and foreign language instruction at all grade levels.

In late 1962, the Bureau of the Budget staff proposed "the federal government assist individuals from childhood to old age rather than institutions....and conceive of education as something that goes beyond the confines of school," reported Maris A. Vinovskis, author of The Birth of Head Start: Preschool Education Policies in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations (University of Chicago Press, 2005).

The concept of a war on poverty was developed a year later, and after the Kennedy assassination, it was President Lyndon B. Johnson who took action. In January 1964, he selected as antipoverty director Sargent Shriver, head of the popular Peace Corps, who after passage of the Economic Opportunity Act in August 1964 became head of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO). And he created task forces to make legislative recommendations to the White House.

Among the first thirteen task forces was a blue-ribbon Education Task Force, led by John W. Gardner, which that November sent to the White House its report that "described how preschool programs can help disadvantaged children."

After Johnson advocated federal support for preschools the following January, the first Head Start, an eight-week summer program, was implemented in the summer of 1965 by the OEO's Community Action Program. While it became a popular program, there arose criticisms of the OEO, concerns by some educators that Head Start ought to be offered year-around, and requests for a national evaluation.

In 1966, The Reader's Digest published in April the article "A Head Start for America' s Youngsters" and in May its interview of Hunt titled "Can We Make Human Beings More Intelligent?" And while Hunt had a manuscript started for a book on early experience and had spent the summer in Tehran to set up studies on orphanage-reared infants, Joseph A. Califano Jr., Special Assistant to President Johnson, asked him in the fall "to chair a Task Force to recommend what the role of the federal government should be in early child development."

It was on October 10th that Hunt met with John Gardner, Doug Cater, Sargent Shriver, and Joseph Califano to complete plans for a work schedule and membership of the White House Task Force on Early Childhood Development, comprised of 14 distinguished members, an executive secretary, and staff members from the OEO and U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). Among the notables were Jerome Bruner and John Goodlad, along with Robert E. Cooke and Urie Bronfenbrenner, the two original members of the Cooke Head Start Planning Committee in 1965.

After several meetings from October 15th until December and a process in which members kept the discussions confidential, a preliminary report for critique was submitted to the Johnson Administration and to Task Force members before Christmas. Hunt completed on January 14, 1967 the 157-page final report titled "A Bill of Rights for Children: Report of the President's Task Force on Early Childhood Development," which is now housed at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library at Austin, Texas.

It was a comprehensive, detailed, in-depth review, with the stated overall goal of "improving the quality of American life," along with seven broad recommendations: establishment of a federal office for children in the U.S. Department of HEW, an increase in the priority of children's needs in community and state governments, various neighborhood programs, a continuation of Head Start, federal matching of state funds for child welfare services, the training of staff for the future, and research and development for children of the future.

In his autobiographical article published in The Psychologists, Vol 2 (Oxford University Press, 1974), Hunt reported "great satisfaction" upon learning that Johnson's February 8, 1967 message to Congress contained "two of our most important recommendations, (1) an extension of the Project Head Start upward in the age range as the Follow-Through Program and (2) an extension of the project downward in the age range through the establishment of a limited number of Parent and Child Centers." He also noted that the recommendation for establishment of the Office of Children reporting directly to the Secretary of HEW was implemented later during the Nixon Administration.

Correspondence on file at the LBJ Library at Austin reveals that Hunt had written on May 22, 1967 to Joseph Califano in response to receiving copies of the working papers with the criteria for the Centers for Children and Parents, noting, in part, "I am delighted with these signs of progress," and cautioning "We are woefully ignorant about the period from about one year of age to about four years when children have, in the past, made their first appearance in nursery schools." Also on file are letters of appreciation to Hunt from President Johnson dated March 24, 1967 and Joseph Califano dated January 9, 1969.

Hunt had also expanded his involvement with the welfare of children when he had become a member of a committee in 1966 for selection of centers to be incorporated into a new National Laboratory for Early Childhood Education, and became chairman of the National Advisory Board. Then when the Office of Education located the Coordination Center to the University of Illinois, he became its director in 1967-68.

In 1968, after serving during the previous two decades in an advisory capacity on more than ten projects, Hunt became a member of the board of advisors for the Children's Television Workshop, which a year later initiated its popular Sesame Street, an educational series for preschoolers. Telecast by the Public Broadcasting Service, it has become one of the longest-running American television shows in history. In 1976, he became a member of the board of advisors for the Archives of the History of American Psychology at the University of Akron in Ohio.

More task forces were formed during the Johnson Administration, several individuals were involved in the advancement of Head Start, and in subsequent years there were various funding initiatives and studies. In addition to Maris Vinovskis' book The Birth of Head Start (2005), other useful histories of the program's development, including mention of Hunt's contributions, appear in Gilbert Y. Steiner, The Children's Cause (Brookings Institutions, 1976) and in Harold Silver and Pamela Silver, An Educational War on Poverty: American and British Policy-Making 1960-1980 (Cambridge University Press, 1991).

In 1994, with the reauthorization of the Head Start program, Congress included a new program known as Early Head Start for low-income families involving pregnant women and children under three years of age. Since its beginning in 1965, more than 24 million preschool-aged children have participated.

At present, the Office of Head Start is under the Administration for Children and Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Its stated mission, in part, is to promote school readiness by "enhancing the social and cognitive development of children through the provision of educational, health, nutritional, social and other services."

The annual budget of Head Start for Fiscal Year 2007 was just over $6.8 billion, with services provided to over 900,000 children, the vast majority 3 to 4 years of age.

Despite some misgivings about Head Start during its initial two decades, Hunt was optimistic overall about the progress made for preschool children, reported the article "A Head Start in The Nursery" in Psychology Today, September 1979. He also emphasized that "the key problem in education is the problem of the match--finding circumstances that are sufficiently stimulating but not too demanding for each child at each point in his development," and asserted that parents and teachers can provide such a match "by knowing precisely what each child can and can't do at any stage."

During his career, Hunt was recipient of many honors, most notably the Distinguished Contributions Award in 1973, the G. Stanley Hall Award in 1976, and the prestigious Gold Medal in 1979, all from the American Psychological Association, as well as the Kurt Lewin Memorial Award in 1981 from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. Honorary doctorates were awarded by Brown University in 1958, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1967, and Ohio State University in 1984.

The J. McVicker Hunt Papers are housed at the Archives of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Aside from the previously cited autobiography published in 1974 and obituary in 1992, other valuable biographical information appeared in American Psychologist (January 1980) as well as entries in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol 18 (1979) and Biographical Dictionary of Psychology (1997) and Encyclopedia of Psychology, Vol 4 (2000).

There was an obituary in the January 11, 1991 New York Times and an entry in Who Was Who in America, Vol 10 (1993).

Born in 1906 near Scottsbluff, Scotts Bluff County, Nebraska to Robert and Carrie Loughborough McVicker Hunt, he grew up on his father's farm, attended a one-room country school until the 2nd grade, then the Scottsbluff Public Schools, where he graduated from Scottsbluff High in 1924. After farming for one year, he attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, earning a bachelor's degree in 1929 and a master's degree in 1930. He also taught at UNL for one semester in the fall of 1935.

Married in 1929 to Seward native Esther Dahms, he and his wife raised two daughters. Joseph McVicker Hunt died at age 84 on January 9, 1991 at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.