Urie Bronfenbrenner (April 29, 1917 – September 25, 2005) was a Russian American psychologist, known for developing his Ecological Systems Theory, and as a co-founder of the Head Start program in the United States for disadvantaged pre-school children.
Read more about Urie Bronfenbrenner: Life, Ecological Systems Theory
Famous quotes by urie bronfenbrenner:
“Development, it turns out, occurs through this process of progressively more complex exchange between a child and somebody else—especially somebody who’s crazy about that child.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“In today’s world parents find themselves at the mercy of a society which imposes pressures and priorities that allow neither time nor place for meaningful activities and relations between children and adults, which downgrade the role of parents and the functions of parenthood, and which prevent the parent from doing things he wants to do as a guide, friend, and companion to his children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Children need people in order to become human.... It is primarily through observing, playing, and working with others older and younger than himself that a child discovers both what he can do and who he can become—that he develops both his ability and his identity.... Hence to relegate children to a world of their own is to deprive them of their humanity, and ourselves as well.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Witness the American ideal: the Self-Made Man. But there is no such person. If we can stand on our own two feet, it is because others have raised us up. If, as adults, we can lay claim to competence and compassion, it only means that other human beings have been willing and enabled to commit their competence and compassion to us—through infancy, childhood, and adolescence, right up to this very moment.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (20th century)
“We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents—but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards—and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)