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PROFILE: Leta Stetter Hollingworth

Psychologist challenged male superiority claims and founded the field of gifted education

Copyright © 2008 by E. A. Kral

One of the first Americans to challenge scientifically various claims of male superiority was Nebraska native Leta Stetter Hollingworth, the educational psychologist who became a major pioneer of the academic field of gifted education in the early decades of the 20th century. She also pioneered the setting of professional standards for clinical psychologists and their inclusion in the American Psychological Association during World War I.

While studying for her master and doctorate degrees at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City from 1911 to 1916, she confronted centuries-old beliefs that women were similar to each other and that women were intellectually inferior to men. And it was thought that because variation from group average had survival advantages, men would more likely be eminent in endeavors of great achievement and leadership. Extreme variability in the intelligence of males (more were retarded and more were geniuses) allegedly proved they were superior to females.

Hollingworth, however, considered scientific research an effective way to counter the prejudices of her time. In 1917, after testing 1,000 people deemed mentally defective by New York authorities, she found that males outnumbered females in the younger group, but the reverse was true in the older group.

The data also revealed more males were referred to institutions at an early age due to relatives' concerns they could not care for themselves, while females were kept at home to do housework until no longer needed, then they were sent to authorities for care.

And she observed there were really as many retarded females as males. There were only more institutionalized feebleminded males, which was not evidence of greater variability in male intelligence.

Hollingworth also studied the claim that eminence in achievement and leadership was identical to high intelligence, which allegedly proved the superiority of males, since the vast majority of those who had illustrious careers were males.

As early as 1914, she noted that the occupation of housekeeping, comprised exclusively of women who bear and raise children, was not a field where eminence was recognized. By the time she earned her doctorate, she had published six research articles on related subjects.

Over ten years later, she reported investigators of eminence agreed that nearly all great male achievers came from comfortable homes or parents with social and economic advantages. And she observed that few children of manual workers and few women become regarded as highly eminent. Her interpretation was that those considered socially inferior, such as the uncultured, most servants, and women, did not have the education and opportunity to achieve eminence.

In 1926, she reported there were as many highly intelligent females as males, based on results of the Stanford-Binet standardized measurement of the human intelligence quotient. And there were equal numbers of gifted females and males in childhood.

Thus the under-representation of women in the category of illustrious persons was due to environmental factors, not ability. And she believed a reform of attitudes rather than the political process could more likely bring change in the status of women in business, the professions, and public life.

Her interest in the educational and emotional development of gifted children emerged in 1916, the year she began her career as professor of educational psychology at Teachers College. That was also the same year that Lewis Terman had published his Stanford-Binet test, which became the standard intelligence measurement in English-speaking countries for at least three decades.

While Terman contributed to the gifted education field through his career in mental measurements, it was mainly as a description of giftedness as an inherited trait.

It was Leta Hollingworth who pioneered the academic field by devoting much of her career to education and opportunity for nurturing the gifted. Before her time, there had been scattered instances of attempts to offer services to able children in metropolitan areas. Strategies included curriculum enrichment, various groupings of high ability students, independent projects, and grade acceleration, typically by one or two years.

She taught the first academic course in gifted education in the spring of 1919, which formally began the field, and became one of the major pioneers on the Teachers College faculty, reported Lawrence Cremin, the primary author of A History of Teachers College, Columbia University (1954). An advocate of identifying the talented during the first 12 years of children's lives, she favored homogeneous grouping of the most able in special classes that emphasized enrichment rather than acceleration. She did not favor placement of all ability levels in groups, only those at the extreme levels to meet their needs.

Her first experimental research was conducted at Public School 165 in New York City from 1922 to 1925, with follow-up study for several years. Students remained together for three years, completed the required course of study, and received enrichment with various intellectual opportunities, such as more writing, the study of biography, and cultural attractions outside of school.

In 1926, she published her findings in Gifted Children: Their Nature and Nurture (Macmillan), the first textbook in the field, and noted that individual special talents are not easy to identify because some students gifted in academics might not be so in music, drawing, or mechanical concepts, and vice versa.

Two years later, she published The Psychology of the Adolescent (Appleton), which became a standard textbook for educators for about two decades. As she had also studied individuals with mental disabilities, she noticed many were actually normal but were suffering from adjustment difficulties. She also developed courses on mental adjustments during an individual's transition from elementary to secondary school.

In 1936, Hollingworth became director of research at the experimental Public School 500 in New York City, known as Speyer School, in which she developed a curriculum from student interests, and emphasized initiative and originality. With help from their teachers, students formulated their own questions, located sources of information themselves, and published their findings.

Thus during her career she laid the foundation for modern education of the gifted child, with its focus on student-centered curriculum, major concepts, independent study, creativity, and biographical studies.

In 1938, the year she and her husband received an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, she spoke of the high ranking of the state of Nebraska for producing notables in the intellectual and artistic life of the nation. Her talk was later repeated in published form in the UNL Nebraska Alumnus in March 1939. She was the first Nebraska-connected scholar to report on the national accomplishments of the state's natives or residents.

After her untimely death, the first conference on gifted education was held in 1940 at Teachers College, Columbia University as a memorial to her contributions. Her husband Harry Hollingworth, himself a nationally distinguished psychologist at Barnard College, Columbia University, saw to it her unfinished work titled Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet: Origin and Development (World Book, 1942) was published. He also authored Leta Stetter Hollingworth: A Biography (University of Nebraska Press, 1943; reissued by Anker Publishing, 1990), which listed the half dozen authoritative books and nearly 100 scientific and popular articles she wrote, and noted "the difficulties, objections, and discouragements she encountered in endeavoring to carry forward educational experiments with gifted children...constitute an eloquent testimonial...to the social apathy toward and jealousy of the gifted, against which she always had to struggle."

The distinguished Lewis Terman, commenting about the little recognition Leta received during her lifetime, was quoted as saying, "Comparable productivity of a man would probably have been rewarded by election to the presidency of the American Psychological Association or even to membership in the National Academy of Sciences."

Her under-recognition--as was the case with the vast majority of women professionals in her time--was a result of various forms of discrimination in academia as well as society, a subject well documented by Margaret W. Rossiter in Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982), and Rossiter quoted from an obituary on Hollingworth which stated, in part, that "she gave most generously of her time and personal funds for the support of research when institutions delayed or refused financial support."

During recent decades, scholars have published articles and books about her contributions to society, including Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith, Women Who Changed Things (Scribner's, 1983) 79-99 and Women In Psychology: A Bio-Bibliographic Sourcebook (Greenwood Press, 1990) 173-183. There are also entries in the prestigious Notable American Women 1607-1950, Vol 2 (Belknap, 1971) 206-208 and American National Biography, Vol 21 (Oxford University Press, 1999) 67-68.

A complete account of her career and life is offered in the book by Ann G. Klein, A Forgotten Voice: A Biography of Leta Stetter Hollingworth (Great Potential Press, 2002).

Housed at the Archives of the History of American Psychology at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio are the Harry and Leta Hollingworth Papers.

Leta was posthumously honored with establishment of the Leta Stetter Hollingworth Fellowship, begun by her husband with an initial endowment of $51,000, which was accepted on October 2, 1944 by the Trustees of Columbia University. The existence of the Fellowship was later reported in the September 18, 1956 New York Times obituary of Harry Hollingworth. And it is mentioned in Ludy T. Benjamin's scholarly article "The Pioneering Work of Leta Holingworth in the Psychology of Women" published in the Winter 1975 issue of Nebraska History.

At this writing, the endowment for her Fellowship held by the Columbia University Development Office has a principal of $594,000. Between 4-5 percent of the principal is made available each year for student recipients.

The Leta Stetter Holingworth Fellowship is a need-based interschool fellowship awarded annually to women students who wish to pursue any field of graduate study at Columbia University in New York City. Preference is given to women who have or will earn a bachelor's degree from the undergraduate programs of the University of Nebraska at its campuses in Kearney, Lincoln, and Omaha.

To apply for the Fellowship, students may contact the financial aid offices at any one of the 15 colleges of Columbia University and at the three campuses of the University of Nebraska. Needed with their application are a letter of reference from a University of Nebraska faculty member and a copy of their transcript from the Kearney, Lincoln, or Omaha campus.

Selection of interschool fellowship recipients at Columbia University is administered by the Office of the Provost, located in 401 Low Library at 535 West 116th Street.

She was also posthumously recognized in 1981 by establishment of the Hollingworth Center within the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, Columbia University. Located in 309 Main Hall at 525 West 120th Street, the Center provides "internship and training opportunities for graduate students of Teachers College, develop model programs in early childhood education, and offer enriched educational services for children, families, and educators." The Center's primary concern is nurturing the talent development of all young children.

In 2005, the Nebraska Association for the Gifted inaugurated the Leta Hollingworth Student Award, which is annually presented to a student between grades 7-12 who is recognized as distinguished "through outstanding achievement, accomplishment, or unusual ability." Initial funding for this award was contributed by Ann G. Klein, author of A Forgotten Voice: A Biography of Leta Stetter Hollingworth.

Born near Chadron, Dawes County, Nebraska in 1886, one of three daughters of John C. and Margaret Danley Stetter, Leta was raised until age 10 on the farm of her maternal grandparents after her mother died when Leta was three years old.

After the following two years spent in Chadron and Colorado, she returned to reside in Valentine, Cherry County, where her father lived with his second wife. Leta persisted despite unhappiness with her stepmother, and graduated from Valentine High School in 1902.

She attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she majored in literature and writing, and met UNL classmate Harry Hollingworth, a DeWitt, Nebraska native who she married in late 1908. There were no children.

After graduation from UNL in 1906, she taught English at DeWitt in Saline County for one year, then at McCook in Red Willow County the following year before relocating to New York City in 1908, where Leta Stetter Hollingworth remained until her death in November 1939 at the age of 53 from inoperable abdominal cancer. Interment was at Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln.

It is of historical interest that Leta's first cousin Helen Stetter, a daughter of Henry and Mary Schwalm Stetter, died in 2007at the age of 113 years and 195 days after residing her entire life at Chadron and Valentine. See article and obituary published in the Valentine Midland News, June 13, 2007, pp. 1, 4, 6. At the time, Helen Stetter was validated among the world's 100 oldest persons all time by Gerontology Research Group, a Los Angeles-based worldwide association of scientists, scholars, and volunteer investigators.