| Women's Intellectual Contributions to the Study of Mind and Society Students, as part of an advanced seminar, examined and wrote about the lives of these women, their intellectual contributions, and the unique impact and special problems that being female had on their careers. |  |
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John remarried when Leta was 12, and took the children back in with his new family. The girls were all very unhappy with the transition. They missed their grandparents and Leta began to realize how much she longed for her mother.
Leta had a talent for writing and by the age of 14 had published a poem in the local Valentine Newspaper titled "Lone Pine". This was one of the first of many poems Leta would write.
In 1902, at the age of 16 Leta graduated from Valentine High School and entered the University of Nebraska. Not only was she a talented writer but a gifted child with an amazing academic record. It was at the University where Leta would meet her future husband Harry Hollingworth. They soon became engaged and immediately following his graduation he moved to New York to begin his graduate work at Columbia University.
In 1906 Leta graduated and received her first job as an assistant principal at a high school in DeWitt, Nebraska. After one year Leta accepted a teaching position in McCook, which didn't last long. Harry had put together enough money to move Leta to New York by gaining a spot on the faculty as a professor at Barnard College.
On New Years eve in 1908 Harry and Leta were married. At this time, it was very difficult for women to find work after they were married. They were expected to stay at home and begin a family. Leta was frustrated and realized to gain respect and a job she would need to further her education. She decided to pursue a Master's of Education Degree at Columbia University.
During her graduate studies, Leta examined the role women play in society. It was assumed that women were inferior due to biology, but Leta questioned this theory and assumed that women were dominated by men. Leta began to research men and women and also infants. She discovered that there was little difference between the infants. The difference between men and women was their social environment. For men their environment consisted of their job and friends and for women it was their role as a housewife and possibly mother. Leta was also curious to discover if a women's menstrual cycle would disrupt her mental and motor skills. She found that the menstrual cycle does not disturb a women's daily performance.
In 1913, Leta finished her Master's from Columbia University and began working at the Clearing House for Mental Defectives. Her job was to administer the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test. At the same time she was a consulting psychologist at Bellevue Hospital and completed her Doctorate under Edward Thorndike at Columbia in June 1916. About the same time she was offered a position at the Columbia Teachers College where she remained the rest of her life. Dr. Hollingworth was also the principal for The School of Exceptional Children.
Leta was also known for her fight in women's suffrage. In 1915 Harry walked along beside her in suffrage parades. The Hollingworth's wanted attitudes towards women to change more than anything. Harry supported the women's movement as much as Leta did.
The Hollingworth's also spent much of their life providing financial aid to under privileged children. They wanted to provide the education that every child should deserve and provide children that were mentally gifted and mentally challenged the assistance they would need. After her death a scholarship fund was set up in the Hollingworth name for children with IQ's above 180.
In November of 1916, Leta's interest in the gifted child was sparked when she saw a child score above a 180 on the Binet Intelligence test. She spent the next 23 years searching for children of equal intelligence and found 11 in the New York region. Leta is known for beginning the research for gifted children. Leta believed that not only was intelligence inherited, but that educational and environmental factors played a major role.
Leta spent the remainder part of her life researching children with IQ's above 180. The majority of her books are regarding intelligence. Her other interest was in the Psychology of Women. In 1927 Dr. Hollingworth published her final article on women. Having a greater interest in the mentally gifted and mentally challenged Leta strayed from her women's studies and began to write several books on the intelligence of children. She began to provide the text books for her classes at Columbia. She was able to balance her busy schedule between research , full time teaching, writing books and continuing her clinical practice.
Dr. Hollingworth had many experiments with the gifted children and remained in contact with them after the experiments were over to add any additional information that would be of importance.
Dr. Hollingworth's had several major contributions to the field of psychology including the first comprehensive text on the gifted, taught first college course on the gifted, first studies on children with IQ's above 180 and she was one of 14 women listed in American Men of Science.
Some of her many writings were: Leta Stetter Hollingworth, the Biography (1943), The Psychology of Subnormal Children (1920), Special Talents an defects (1923), Gifted Children: Their Nature and Nurture (1926), The Psychology of the Adolescent (1928), Children Above 180 IQ Stanford Binet: Origin and Development (1942).
On November 27, 1939 Leta passed away from abdominal cancer. She accomplished so much in her short life time, but never her dream quoted below.
"What is needed for the support and development of those children whom we see before us daily, and who represent scores of others in the same economic condition, is what we may call a revolving foundation. By this is meant a fund from which the gifted young could draw, at any age, the means for their development, with the moral (not legal) obligation to pay according to the ability to do so, after twenty years with out interest..very little money would actually be spent, because it would come back again, and the nation would benefit in ways not now fully foreseeable. The establishment of a revolving fund for the development of tested children would be another new thing under the sun. It would be a great experiment in social science, now rendered possible for the first time by inventions and discoveries in the field of child psychology." (Hollingworth, p.137)
Leta wanted all children to be provided with the education that they deserve. Funding for special programs is not always obtainable, and wanted others to realize how important it is that we provide children with the best education we can. Leta spent the majority of her life trying to understand the importance of education in the gifted and the deficient and lead the way for many others to research. She was forgotten for thirty years until researchers began investigating the origins of the psychology of women.
Harry Levi Hollingworth also played a major role in psychology. Harry is best known for his research in mental health, growth and decline, the psychology of thought and vocational psychology. He was a professor for 46 years at Barnard College. He finished his wife's biography in 1944 after she passed and lived until 1956 at the age of 74.
For further information regarding the life of Leta Stetter Hollingworth, please view these web sites: