Granville Stanley Hall was a pioneering American psychologist and educator. His interests focused on childhood development and evolutionary theory. Hall was the first president of the American Psychological Association and the first president of Clark University.
Background
Granville Stanley Hall was born on February 1, 1844 Ashfield, Massachusetts, United States. He grew up on a farm with his parents, Granville Bascom Hall, who served on the Massachusetts legislature, and Abigail Beals, who attended school at Albany Female Seminary and went on to become a teacher herself.
Education
During his time as a child he spent much of his time reading and taking advantage of the educational advantages he could gain from his parents and the local schools. At a young age he was interested in animals and bodily skills. At the age of 16 he began to teach other students, most of which were older than he was at the time.
He studied at Williams College, Union Theological Seminary, and Harvard (Ph.D. 1878), and at several German universities, both before and after his doctorate, with Wundt, Helmholtz, and other notable experimentalists.
Career
He began his career by teaching English and philosophy at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, and then teaching history of philosophy at Williams College in Massachusetts. Following successful lecture series at Harvard and Johns Hopkins University, Hall secured a position in the philosophy department at Johns Hopkins, teaching psychology and pedagogy. He remained at Johns Hopkins from 1882 to 1888 and, in 1883, began what is considered by some to be the first formal American psychology laboratory. There, Hall objected vehemently to the emphasis on teaching traditional subjects, e.g., Latin, mathematics, science and history, in high school, arguing instead that high school should focus more on the education of adolescents than on preparing students for college.
In 1887, Hall founded the American Journal of Psychology, and in 1892 was appointed as the first president of the American Psychological Association. In 1889 he was named the first president of Clark University, a post he filled until 1920. In 1917, Hall published a book on religious psychology, "Jesus the Christ in the Light of Psychology." The book was written in two volumes to define Jesus Christ in psychological terms. In 1922, at the age of 78, he published the book "Senescence," a book on aging.
Views
Hall was a proponent of racial eugenics, his views were less severe in terms of creating and keeping distinct separations between races. Hall believed in giving "lower races" a chance to accept and adapt to the "superior white civilization". Hall even commended high ranking African Americans in society as being "exception to the Negro’s diminished evolutionary inheritance". Hall viewed civilization in a similar fashion he viewed biological development. Humans must allow civilization to "run its natural evolution". Hall saw those that did not accept the superior civilization as being primitive and consisting of savages. Hall viewed these civilizations in a similar fashion that he viewed children stating that "their faults and their virtues are those of childhood and youth". He believed that men and women should be separated into their own schools during puberty because it allowed them to be able to grow within their own gender. Women could be educated with motherhood in mind and the men could be educated in more hands-on projects, helping them to become leaders of their homes. Hall believed that schools with both sexes limited the way they could learn and softened the boys earlier than they should be. "It is a period of equilibrium, but with the onset of puberty the equilibrium is disturbed and new tendencies arise. Modifications in the reproductive organs take place and bring about secondary sexual characteristics. Extroversion gives way slowly to introversion, and more definitely social instincts begin to play an increasing role."