Journal o f School Psychology 0022-4405/81/14(X)4)103500.

95
1981.Vol. 19, No. 2 © T h e Journal of School Psychology, Inc.

S C H O O L P S Y C H O L O G Y IN THE USA:
R E M I N I S C E N C E S OF ITS O R I G I N

Frances A. Mullen

Former Assistant Superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools, and

Secretary-General-Emeritus, International Council of Psychologists

Summary: As an example of the development

of school psychology programs in the cities of
the U.S., the early history of the Chicago
Bureau of Child Study is described on t h ~
basis of personal involvement and prior
records and literature. Program and services,
requirements, and training are discussed. The
early years of the Division of School Psy-
chology of APA are covered in the remini-
scences of a founding member and its 7th
president, with memories of the outstanding
women and men who headed school psy-
chology programs in the cities of the nation in
the 40s and who were leaders in Division 16.
Theories and practices in general educational
administration, especially decentralization,
are shown to affect school psychology. Pro-
gram differences in psychological services be-
twcen cities, possibly greater in the early days
than now, reflect the backgrounds and
interests of their leaders. In international psy-
chology, the dangers of exporting western
techniques and concepts in ways that may do
more harm than good are discussed, along
with the too often overlooked values of
importing ideas from overseas. Current issues
are seen against the historical development of
school psychology, with a plea for thorough
historiographic research to amplify, docu-
ment, and correct these and other personal
memoirs.

The year 1939 introduced me (already aged 37) to school psychology and was
memorable in many other ways. The University o f Chicago awarded my P h . D . in
educational psychology, and a judge awarded my husband and me adoption papers
on three children, partly to insure that our nine-year old son should not continue as
an only child. Hitler invaded Poland; Britain and France declared war. The .U.S.
economy, not yet out o f the unemployment era, began to spurt ahead. My husband
long unemployed, would have steady work thereafter.

103
104 Journal of School Psychology
Otherwise, things were as usual in Chicago. Mayor Edward Kelly was riding high
on an apparently unassailable machine. Protests at its 1935 dismantling of school
programs and the political manipulation of the results of the 1936 principal's
examination (which I am happy to say I failed) were ignored by the great majority of
the citizens, though not by all, as we shall see.
In September 1939 I was teaching a high school mathematics class when the call
came to report to the Bureau of Child Study "on loan" for a short-term special
writing project. I never returned to my high school, though I remained on its payroll
until 1946 when, with post-doctoral clinical courses, I had qualified to take and pass
the examination for assignment to the Bureau.
The Bureau of Child Study proved to be an exciting place to work. It was expand-
ing and humming with ideas and a variety of functions and services. Grace Munson
had been appointed director in 1935 when the Bureau, after depression cuts, was
down to three staff members. In four years it had grown to 34 elementary school
psychologists, 12 more in the high schools, 6 psychologists in charge of reading
clinics and one in speech therapy, 3 specializing in diagnosis of children with severe
hearing, vision, and physical problems, 2 psychiatrists, 4 " W P A " psychologists,
plus a central office clerical staff of 21. One of the psychologists also had full social
work background.
Munson also had instituted an "Adjustment Teacher program" with teachers re-
leased full time from class room duties in each of 337 elementary schools and 40 high
schools, and had started reading readiness programs (1C divisions) for entering first
graders not yet ready to learn to read and reading improvement classes for entering
high school freshmen. "Self-Appraisal and Careers" courses credited in the junior
year of the high school social science sequence were in operation in all high schools.
My first assignment was to work on the guidance materials for teachers and pupils in
those classes (Munson & Sehloerb, 1940).
A group testing program, already in operation in the schools, was expanded and
standardized by Munson. It included reading readiness tests, intelligence and
achievement tests for every pupil in grades, 1,4,8, and 11, supplemented by machine
scoring, Chicago norms, machine reporting of test results on forms for the pupils
and for the teachers, and a system of cumulative record cards and cumulative folders
for half a million pupils.
Let me introduce myself: I am white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, married to an
Irish Catholic. My family roots go back to the Mayflower; my husband's to the Irish
potato famine. Both my grandfathers, a lawyer and a doctor, came to Chicago as
young men with a child or two, when Chicago was little more than a village in the
swamps around a port at which ships from the east could load and unload for the
needs of the just-opening midwest.
Dad, Mother, and my maternal grandmother were all college graduates. Mother
enrolled for graduate work at the University of Chicago the year it opened, almost
worshipping the great men President Harper had lured from all over the country,
with Rockefeller money for tempting salaries but more importantly for laboratories
and clinics to their own designs.
I entered the U of C at age 16 on a mathematics scholarship and graduated four
years later with a hodgepodge of courses, their choice sometimes dictated by time
and place that could be worked into my job schedule, but also by my mother's deter-
 Mullen 105
mination that I take any course in any subject that might be open to an undergrad-
uate, if given by the great men she revered--not really a bad basis for choice.
In psychology, my undergraduate introduction was disastrous. A graduate student
taught Psych 101 after lunch, reading notes in sing song and swaying over the lec-
tern. A perfect setting for a nap. A course in social psychology was more interesting,
though the professor's example of the value of prestige appalled me. As a j~issionary
in Africa, he said, we should always convert the chief's son first.
Later, while I taught in Chicago high schools, the family still lived in the university
neighborhood and I took a variety of courses in the Department of Education, to
seek answers--seldom f o u n d - - t o my school problems, but resulting in an M.A. in
1928. Charles Hubbard Judd (Ph.D., Wundt, Leipzig, Germany) headed a depart-
ment dedicated to the scientific method which, even by that time, was being recog-
nized as producing disappointingly sterile results. Later courses in administration
were my preparation for the school system's 1936 principal's examination.
When it became common knowledge in the schools that the results of that exam
would be politically rigged, I went to see Judd to see if my accumulated mish mash of
credits could be applied toward a Ph.D. In twenty minutes he had me signed up for
the language exams and scheduled for the prelims that fall. When that was over, and
the search for a thesis topic was under way, Hoizinger claimed me in factor analysis.
The search for a thesis topic took me to Munson. I knew nothing about the Bureau
of Child Study, but word was going around of the new course in Self Appraisal and
Careers in which high school students took aptitude tests and interest inventories as a
preliminary to evaluating themselves in the light of career requirements. I proposed
to Munson a factor analysis of the data. She was at first enthusiastic but later
withdrew her approval. Holzinger found another source of data for me, and I forgot
about BCS.
Training o f a School Psychologist in the 1940s. Within a few months of my sudden
transfer to BCS in September 1939, I made up my mind that this was where I wanted
to stay. I was assigned to the high school team of psychologists and worked closely
with them on various projects, though I was not permitted to do case work in the
schools until I had completed post-doctoral courses in clinical psychology.
At that time in Illinois there were no state standards and no organized university
training programs in school psychology--and few elsewhere. Newland did not estab-
lish his doctoral school psychology program at the University of Illinois until 1951.
The Chicago schools published specific requirements for admission to the exam for
the BCS certificate. These included classroom teaching experience, a Master's degree
in education or psychology and some specific courses in clinical psychology, individ-
ual and group measurement, remedial reading, etc. Like practically all aspirants for
the Bureau at that time, I took two clinical courses which were offered by Andrew
Brown of the University of Chicago but conducted at the Institute for Juvenile Re-
search, where we could do practicums in individual measurement with a variety of
instruments and participate in the multidisciplinary staffing of I JR cases. Brown was
a strict but inspiring task master, universally admired.
Training Elsewhere. The Chicago requirements were perhaps typical if not super-
ior to those required for school psychology in other cities at the time. However, an
M.A., Ph.D. program at Ohio State was founded in the '20s by Henry Goddard and
Francis Maxfield. Marie Skodak took an M.S. there in 1931 and has described the
106 Journal of School Psychology
program to me (Skodak, Note 1). She recalls that both Goddard and Maxfield had
had training and experience under Witmer in his Philadelphia child guidance clinic,
and elsewhere in mental retardation--Goddard at Vindand, New Jersey. Students
planning to work in the schools took a minor in social work, emphasizing case work
techniques, referral processes and of community resources. Practicums and intern-
ships were required. Skodak did hers at a private institution for delinquent girls and
at the state institution tor the mentally retarded in Columbus. Fellow students she
remembers include Ernest Newland and Wilda Rosebrook, both Ph.D. 1931, though
Newland's was in general psychology. Stella Whiteside, who became head of school
psychologyin Cincinnati, and others who developed psychological programs in cities
in Ohio and New York were graduates of the Goddard-Maxfield program.
The early leaders in school psychology often came to that field of service by diver-
sified routes. Their career paths throw some additional light on the making of a
school psychologist in their day. Skodak, after her M.A. at Ohio State in 1931, did
not work directly in school psychology until 1948. In between, she had an exchange
fellowship at the University of Budapest and several years at a state school for the
mentally retarded in Rome, New York, where a progressive program of "colonies"
prefigured the half-way house programs of a much later era. In 1934-36 she was in
Iowa, traveling the state as a clinical psychologist evaluating applicants for
admission to various children's institutions and working with juvenile courts, chil-
dren's agencies and schools. From 1936-38 she worked on her Ph.D. in developmen-
tal psychology with Skeels at the Child Welfare Research Institute of the University
of Iowa, and co-authored the famous Skeels-Skodak reports on the development of
twins raised in different environments.
Wilda Rosebrook, before she began her Ph.D. studies at Ohio State, had had
training at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital, where she remembers inspiring super-
vision as she worked in the outpatient department with children from the dregs of the
city. She then went to Harvard for a variety of courses over a two year period; thence
to work under Goddard and Maxfield at Ohio State (Rosebrook, Note 2).
Grace Munson, born in a sod house on a Nebraska prairie, came to school psy-
chology via elementary teaching when she was just out of high school (Grace
Munson, 1944a, 1944b; Page, 1949a, 1949b; Munson, Note 3). Part-time study
prepared her for high school teaching and a high school principalship at age 23.
She continued part-time study, earning a B.A. in 1911 and a Ph.D. in 1916 at the
University of Nebraska, with a Wellesley M.A. in 1912 made possible by an honors
scholarship earned along with her Phi Beta Kappa key. While studying for her
Ph.D., she was also an Instructor in Education and Child Study at Nebraska. The
University of Nebraska from the turn of the century was deeply involved in the Child
Study movement which was then sweeping the nation; Nebraska has been described
as a nursery for APA presidents (Benjamin & Bertelson, 1975). After World War I
she moved to Chicago as a clinical psychologist in the Bureau of Child Study, in
1918. Later she was appointed principal, serving in two experimental schools where
she had freedom to try out her theories on individualized instruction, non-orai
reading, reading readiness, and guidance; and to develop a program designed to help
each child move at his o~ her own rate through the skill subjects, regardless of physi-
cal grade placement. These were among the ideas she brought with her and imple-
 Mullen 107
merited city wide when in 1935 she was named Director of the Bureau of Child
Study, 17 years after her first appointment as a psychologist in Chicago.
Margaret Hall (later Powers), second president of APA's Division 16 (1946-47),
came to school psychology in Chicago via a Ph.D. and experience in speech therapy
at the University of Iowa. In Chicago she served as a high school team psychologist,
while developing speech clinics throughout the city. ...
Ernest Newland has described the zigzag path by which he came to school psy-
chology (Newland, 1981).
These few examples suggest that, although organized training programs for school
psychology were seldom available, the early leaders who built outstanding programs
of school psychology in the cities and universities of the U.S. brought broad and di-
versified experience to their work, as well as some form of Ph.D. training.
Flashback: History of BCSfrom 1899. The Bureau of Child Study of the Chicago
schools was opened in 1899, the first psychological clinic in a public school system.
In the 1890s the Child Study movement, inspired by G. Standley Hall, had become
almost a nation-wide "craze" in the words of the editor of the Journal of Education
in 1892 (Winship, 1892). Slater, with careful historiographic methods, has recently
given us a fresh picture of that movement, especially in Illinois, of John Dewey's in-
volvement in it, and of the way in which it led a Board of Education member, Walter
Christopher, M.D., to pressure his Board colleagues into approving a plan for a
"Department of Child Study and Pedagogic Investigation" in the city schools
(Slater, 1980).
The techniques of Child Study of that era were largely anthropometric. Christo-
pher reported from his preliminary studies that bright children were heavier and taller
than the dull, antedating Terman's similar findings. Christopher, as others of his
day, however, saw an inherent causal relationship.
The use of physical measures (weight, bodily dimensions, lung capacity, strength,
ossification of the wrist, et al.) was a basic tool of the Child Study movement. When
John Dewey established the Laboratory Schools of the University of Chicago, he in-
stituted a program of annual physical measurements of each pupil, to be made
within three days before or after the child's birthday, a program followed ever since,
or at least until 1939, when I used the data for my thesis in factor analysis.
Mental tests as we know them did not exist. The Binet-Simon tests published in
France in 1905 reached the U.S. some time thereafter, though individual tests for
very specific kinds of personality and mental activity did exist. In 1906, MacMillan,
the second Director of the Bureau of Child Study, had gone beyond Chrisopher's
physical measures. He wrote that the psychological tests used in the pioneer days in
Chicago were "simple tests of perception, memory, association, attention, imagina-
tion, and judgment," which he described as "perfectly workable for prediction
purposes" (MacMillan, 1906).
MacMillan continued as Director of BCS for 33 years, from 1902 to 1935, with ex-
panding staff and services to a probable high point before the 1929 crash hit the
schools. His typewritten annual reports I indicate for example:
~An incomplete file of the annual reports of Daniel P. MacMillan, Director of the Bureau of
Child Study, typwritten or processed, is on file in the office of the present Director, William
M. Canning, Chicago Public Schools.
108 Journal of School Psychology

1921-22:4323 individual examinations completed

1924: 5844individual examinations completed by a professional staff of 7
1929: 8535individual examinations completed by 4717 group tests, by a profes-
sional staff of 16.

The problems as diagnosed by his psychologists after individual examinations in

1929 were

Mental handicap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540/0

Physical handicap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Behavior problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Educational adjustment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Gifted and Miscellaneous. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Professional Climate at BCS. When I arrived in 1939, Munson's programs out-

lined briefly earlier in this article had all been initiated in the four short years since
her appointment. Established citywide, they were still changing, broadening, ex-
panding. The rate of change is suggested in a statistical report issued in 1947, cov-
eting the previous ten years. The mean IQ of the children examined rose from 78 to
89, while the mean IQ of those examined and recommended for EMH placement
stayed at 69.1. In 1947 26o70 of all pupils examined were found to have IQs of 100 or
over, whereas the corresponding figure for 1937 was 7% (Statistical Report, Bureau
of Child Study, 1948).The Bureau, without reducing the number of cases invo!wr
ing mental retardation, was obviously tackling other problems, such as the needs
of the gifted, the maladjusted, truants, and particularly the problems of children of
any intellectual level, gifted or slow, whose achievements were not consistent with
their intellectual abilities.
For the psychologists on the BCS staff, there was an immediacy to events, a pas-
sionate belief that our efforts could make a difference in the schools and in the lives
of children. Munson welcomed suggestions, though one could expect trenchant criti-
cism. Our ideas might sometimes be tried out, kept, or abandoned. I knew the high
school team of psychologists best, because all of that group came into the central
office on Wednesdays, to make their telephone calls, to dictate their reports, and to
seek advice. It was a hectic schedule, but somehow we found time for gossip about
school affairs and about developments in psychology. Somewhere there was a state-
ment that psychologists working in the schools should complete two cases a day in
their four days in the field, but there was no pressure thereto, and the annual reports
show that the average was three or four cases a week, not eight.
Organized Psychology. Munson encouraged our participation in professional or-
ganizations, though she herself had time for few, except her beloved Chicago Psy-
chological Club, which she and other psychologists on the staffs of BCS and I JR had
founded in 1924. Great names in psychology from Chicago and elsewhere were on its
programs. During World War II, national conventions were often suspended, but at
CPS we came in contact with stirring developments in the profession (Chicago Psy-
chological Club, 1944).
Psychology Nationally. From 1936-45, psychology was a divided profession. The
American Association for Applied Psychology was formed to protest the domina-
tion of APA by academicians. In Illinois there was no general state psychological as-
 Mullen 109
sociation but an active Illinois Association for Consulting Psychology, with a Ph.D.
membership requirement, was working for state licensing or certification. I joined it
soon after receiving my Ph.D. in 1939. After the reunification of A P A and A A A P in
1945, the Illinois consulting group disbanded and helped to establish a new Illinois
Psychological Association.

Division 16, 1945. In 1945, the Division of School Psychology of the reorganized
American Psychological Association came into being as one of the original divisions
through which A P A hoped to satisfy the needs of its applied members. Harry Baker
of Detroit, Mr. Psychology of Michigan, was Division 16's first president, and four
Chicago BCS staff members or former staff members were early presidents:
Margaret Hall, 1946-47; myself 1952-53; Milton Saffir, 1953-54, and William Itkin,
1966-67.
Others of the early presidents of the Division were also school based: Bertha
Luckey of Cleveland, Judith Krugrnan, New York City; James Hobson, Boston; and
Keith Perkins, Phoenix. Today it appears that all of Division 16's presidents and a
large proportion of its entire leadership roster are university based, with some having
had earlier experience on the firing line in the schools. A shift, if not such a total
shift, from school to university leadership was, of course, inevitable. There were
practically no organized university programs in school psychology from which Divi-
sion 16 could draw its early leaders. It wasn't until the '60s, when the Kennedy mo-
mentum brought federal funds for special education and, as an off-shoot, federal
funds for school psychology, that the universities showed much interest.
The Thayer Conference on School Psychology, 1953. This was the big event of the
early years of Division 16. In 1949, the Boulder Conference on Clinical Psychology
had been funded by the U.S. Public Health Service because the Veterans Adminis-
tration needed clinical psychologists and the universities needed guidance in training
them. The report of that Conference was influential, not only because o f the inher-
ent value of its recommendations, but because the VA could and did mandate that
the universities follow them.
School psychology saw Boulder as a precedent. Newland in particular spearheaded
the drive to set up a similar conference for school psychology. Division committees
worked for several years to secure support from A P A and NIMH before a final
proposal went to A P A in October 1952. A busy year of further preparation was used
to select participants, collect background data, and plan the conference. The
discussions and conclusions of the meeting are well documented (Cutts, 1955) and
still are referred to in the professional literature and in training programs, so I will
not go into those details except to note that the conference's major unresolved issue,
the Ph.D.-M.A. split in requirements for the title of school psychologist, is still unre-
solved and is still a danger point. The year following the conference, Division 16 offi-
cially, and many of us individually, worked to bring the results to the attention of the
American Association of School Administrators, at national and regional meetings,
and to individual superintendents of schools, hoping that school administrators at
state and local levels would incorporate the recommendations into their
requirements.
The privilege of working with Division 16 leaders in the years before and after
Thayer was o f great value to me personally. I found opportunity to visit other cities.
 110 Journal of School Psychology
In Minneapolis, Virginia Hathaway headed a unique program of special services.
Her city had started classes for the trainable mentally handicapped many years be-
fore that movement gained its momentum in the early '50s. The Minneapolis schools
employed many more social workers than psychologists. A survey in the '50s showed
that cities tended to go to extremes in preferring one or the other of these professions
in their pupil personnel departments, with few using anywhere near equal numbers.
In Cleveland, Bertha Luckey not only had a fine staff of school psychologists but
an ongoing program of "Major Work Classes" for the gifted. Many cities started
such programs: Cleveland was one of the few in which the program for the gifted
survived for many years (Barbe & Norris, 1954; Hall, 1956).
California had programs in school psychology in the cities and state wide, before
most of the rest of the nation (Magary, 1967), but news traveled infrequently across
the Rockies. A state credential in school psychology was instituted in 1948. The Uni-
versity of Southern California and others offered M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in school
psychology. Elizabeth Woods was an early leader--I think perhaps the founder of
the Los Angeles city program of psychological services in the schools.
In Boston, James Hobson had a program of early school entrance for gifted tots.
He reported on extensive follow-up studies, on his early entrants who had reached
high school or even college, in his Division 16 presidential address in 1956 (Hobson,
1948, 1956).
In Phoenix, Arizona, a bit later, Keith Perkins, working for the variety of school
districts in the complex organization of that city's schools, had his problems with
state and city regulations, but led a great program, with emphasis on counseling.
The early university-based leaders in school psychology are not mentioned in the
above brief sampling of school psychology pioneers, not because their contributions
were less important, but because they are more fully documented in their published
work. The pressures of the school environment leave little energy for publication.
Administrative Years. In 19~47 1 was appointed principal o f an elementary school,
beginning twenty years in various administrative posts that considerably advanced
my general education and my understanding of some of the problems of school psy-
chology. The school was in a deteriorating neighborhood where the more successful
of the second or third generation of immigrant settlers had moved on to better areas
which offered better opportunities for their children. My first failure was an effort at
community organization. Two child murders rocked the neighborhood. I thought to
use the emotions which were aroused to involve the community in work on some of
the underlying problems: police disinterest, gangs, and open prostitution involving
our 8th grade girls. I soon found, however, that the community leaders were too
involved in keeping blacks out by arson and violence to tackle other problems.
Another learning experience came out of the school's classes for the educable
mentally handicapped. Under good teachers some o f the children were making good
progress and at least two seemed to be definitely ready for return to a regular grade.
The suggestion met complete opposition, from the special teachers, the parents and
particularly from the boys concerned. Youngsters who for the first time in their
school experience had found success and self-esteem in a special class were reluctant,
actually afraid, to go back to a regular class which had been so frustrating for them.
One boy whom I insisted on so placing regressed so rapidly that the decision had to
be reversed.
 Mullen 111
Currently, professional discussion and testimony in law courts often paints a dis-
mal picture, with all EMH classes portrayed as dead ends, unfairly stiffing the oppor-
tunities of minority children. There are classes fitting that description and there were
some in my day, for there was always a shortage of qualified effective teachers. But
memory brings many pictures of classes in which children were happily and cre-
atively engaged, full of pride in their progress in school tasks which previou~y had
been only a source of frustration. School psychologists need to defend special classes
when they are effective, balancing the values of special attention in a segregated set-
ting vs. mainstreaming and re-integration. Each has its place and its values at partic-
ular stages and for particular children.
School Organization for Special Services. In seeking a principalship I had thought
of it as improving my chances of someday becoming head of the Bureau of Child
Study. Unfortunately for that ambition, other promotions came first, detouring me
into special education. As has happened in other school systems, the Chicago psy-
chological services over the years have several times been moved back and forth
between Departments of Special Education and of Instruction. During my special
education administrative tenure, the Bureau of Child Study was under the Depart-
ment of Instruction, though both earlier and later it was under Special Education.
Philosophically, I believe that school psychology, serving all children, is more appro-
priately administered within a Department of Instruction, but of course I pesonally
regretted that BCS was never under my jurisdiction. However, close and usually cor-
dial relations were maintained with successive heads of BCS, and I could usually
mediate the occasional disagreements between an individual psychologist and an in-
dividual special educator. At the state level, city-state traditional antagonisms some-
times exacerbated special education--psychology conflicts, but with Ray Graham,
the grand old man of special education in Illinois at the state helm, we worked
through most of them with respect on both sides.
The increasing conflict between special education and school psychology over the
intervening years, distresses me. It is evident at national, state and local levelsma
conflict that reduces the effectiveness of all. School psychologists with training in
interpersonal relations and consultation hopefully could take a lead in finding better
solutions, better methods of cooperation in this era when both professions are under
intense criticism and attack.
Decentralization. My term as Assistant Superintendent of Schools coincided
closely with that of Benjamin C. Willis as General Superintendent, although my ap-
pointment came from his predecessor. Willis was a strong believer in decentraliza-
tion, and very shortly he had reorganized the administration of the Chicago schools,
creating the steep pyramid of command which was popular nation wide. He early
abolished the separate positions of Assistant Superintendents in charge of High
Schools and of Elementary Schools, reducing at a stroke much of the traditional
conflict between those areas. He demoted the Assistant Superintendents for Special
Education and for Vocational Education to staff rather than line authority, under a
superordinate Associate Superintendent of Instruction.
In the field, much greater authority was given to an enlarged number of district
superintendents. Each became responsible for all elementary, secondary, vocational
and special schools and classes and all pupil personnel services in the district. To
keep the steep pyramid, ~educing the number of individuals reporting to any one ad-
112 Journal of School Psychology
ministrator, Willis created Area Superintendents, each responsible for approximate-
ly five of the district superintendents.
This decentralization alarmed me and many special educators facing similar
changes in other cities. We feared that the district superintendents would not under-
stand the needs of the special programs in their districts, as of course some did not.
Many, however, took an intense interest in those aspects of their responsibilities. In a
few years, I had to admit that some, through their area superintendents, had been
able to get budget appropriations and other approvals that had eluded me for years,
and that some were thoughtful and creative in suggestions for improved ways of
serving the handicapped or making the psychologist's work more effective. Bureau
directors in the central office continued to have responsibility for seeing that na-
tional, state and local guidelines were understood ~md implemented, and for inser-
vice training. Since they had to work through the area superintendents, the district
superintendents, and the principals before reaching teachers or psychologists, the
tasks were often frustrating.
The psychological services on the average perhaps suffered more than did special
education. Psychologists under decentralization no longer came into a central office
where an experienced clerical staff helped process their reports, where the back files
were immediately available, and where knowledgeable "readers" could discuss, criti-
cize or suggest changes in reports or procedures. The opportunities for inservice
training originating in BCS were substantially curtailed. The lack of weekly face-to-
face contact between the field psychologists and the Director tended to lessen morale
and esprit de corps. District superintendents provided office facilities, but often were
themselves limited in space, clerical personnel, and phones, and did not always
understand the psychologists' needs.
School Psychology in Chicago Today. Although my contacts with the Bureau of
Child Study have been only occasional since my retirement in 1966, a few paragraphs
on its present status are in order (Canning, Note 4). William M. Canning, the present
director, has served in that capacity since 1956, almost a quarter of a century.
Expansion of the Bureau was inevitable. In 1979 BCS employed 189 psychologists
who completed examinations of 15,536 children, but ended the year with a backlog
of 6,965 referrals still unserved. Services are still decentralized, with the psychologist
working out of the district offices.
BCS has not been immune to the charges of racial bias that are of crisis propor-
tions nation wide. It is, however, one of the few school psychological services to have
successfully defended a damage suit claiming discrimination in its testing procedures.
Canning had for years been working to eliminate the bases for such charges. The
latest revision of the Bureau's Psychologists" Handbook (Bureau of Child Study,
1980) had been in preparation for years, and every word had been gone over, revised,
and finally approved by the Office of Education of the federal government. That
manual was presented to the Court by the defense attorneys. Judge John Grady, in a
July 1980 Illinois decision, found that all IQ tests were not discriminatory and could
be used as the Bureau was using them.
In the bilingual field, the Bureau has greatly expanded its staff, in line with federal
imperatives. In 1980, 40 staff psychologists were certified by the state as bilingual in
18 different languages. A directory of another 198 qualified bilingual, biculturai psy-
chologists available for part-time or consultative service gave BCS additional sup-
port in the languages covered by its staff, and for 13 additional languages. (Bureau of
Child Study, 1979).
 Muflen 113
State and National Commissions. During my administrative years I was increas-
ingly asked to serve on a variety of commissions and task forces, governmental or so-
cietal, usually interdisciplinary. The contacts were illuminating in positive and nega-
tive ways, and occasionally provided suggestions which I could at least attempt to
use in Chicago. Too many proved to be futile and frustrating.
A major disappointment was the failure of the Interprofessional ggsearch Com-
mission on Pupil Personnel Services to make a dent on the purpose for which it was
established: to define, delimit, distinguish and perhaps realign the various profes-
sions offering pupil personnnel services. It had a substantial NIMH grant for four
years of research. The national organizations involved: pediatrics, psychiatry, psy-
chology, social work, nursing, speech therapy, physical and occupational therapy,
attendance workers, guidance and counseling, plus educational groups: NEA, super-
intendents' and principals' associations, and the U.S. Office of Education, and the
Council for Exceptional Children, each agreed to appoint two members to the Com-
mission and to pay their expenses for attending meetings. Most of the C o m m i s s i o ~
members thought their major task was to design a coordinated program of research
to which we would distribute the NIMH research funds--projects that would con-
tribute to perhaps unrealistic goals. At the third meeting, after discussing possible re-
search and studying a report drafted for us which indicated that practically every
topic in the entire field of child development, and much else, would provide back-
ground for pupil personnel services, we found that the funds had been distributed to
four university groups for a series of research projects that, though interesting and
perhaps significant in themselves, were no part of an integrated research program
design. (Eckerson & Smith, 1966).
As the Commission members, from their varying professional backgrounds, dis-
cussed the project around a table at our quarterly meetings, it quickly became appar-
ent that each profession felt that it was competent to meet practically all the needs of
the child. We concluded that a person reading, for example, A A S W ' s official state-
ment on the functions of a school social worker, and the similar pronouncements for
psychology, guidance, nursing, et al. (having blocked out only a few specific words)
would be unable to tell which statement came from which profession.
Exports of American Psychology. In the '50s my overseas travels began, with a
few weeks in Europe in alternate summers, then South America, and Asia in the
'60s. The mountains first drew me to each new area, but the peoples in the villages,
their ways of life, the educational system, the universities soon proved fascinating.
Camping brought first-hand knowledge of the schools in remote areas, generating
skepticism and disillusionment as I listened to the pronouncements of officials in
their fine offices in capital citiesmor equally the theories of leading professors of
education and psychology, only a few of whom seemed to be aware of or interested
in the problems of the bulk of their compatriots. I suppose that to survive
emotionally in cities of India or Latin America one must be able to drop a penny in a
thousand cups without really seeing the deformed, starving beggar.
USAID and other projects were already in operation on my first visitsmsome with
totally unrealistic and inappropriate goals. Native psychologists back home with
Ph.D.s from the west, hoping perhaps to build reputations for themselves by using
the latest in sophisticated research and statistics, were making equally futile efforts,
little related to the needs of their country.
Recent exports o f US psychological and educational theories and practices have
been much more thoughtful and useful. For example, I would call attention to the
114 Journal of School Psychology

work of Peter Merenda of the University of Rhode Island, whose decade of studies
on the identification of talent in Sicily has expanded to involve a network of
cooperating psychologists in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere. Henry
P. David, president of the Transnational Family Research Institute, long involved in
international cooperative research related to fertility and family planning, is notably
successful in developing cooperation of psychologists and governments world wide.
Paul Pedersen, East West Center, Honolulu, has similar success in the field of
counseling, developing interculturally skilled counselors with the active participation
of psychologists native to the Pacific Islands.
International cooperation in psychology owes a debt to Harry Triandis and the
others who founded the International Association for Cross Cultural Psychology in
the '60s and the Journal of Cross Cultural Psychology in 1970. Its March 1980 issue
reviews its decade of publication and looks at the past, present, and future. In it
Triandis points to uncompleted tasks: "Almost all psychological theories are fig-
ments of European-American imagination. Do they provide a universal account of
the phenomena they deal with? Unfortunately most non-Western studies have not
provided different theoretical perspectives but rather are, in Deregowsky's 1980
words 'caricatures of Western studies.'"
Imports into the US. Psychologists have much to learn from abroad. School psy-
chologists recognize their roots in Binet (France), Piaget (Switzerland), Freud (Aus-
tria), projective techniques and field theory (Germany), behavior therapy and theory
from Pavlov in Russia via Watson and Skinner. Americans are not so aware that
there are ongoing developments and provocative ideas in the international literature
month by month that should not be ignored.
British school psychology we know most about. It has gone through many of the
same controversies as has the U.S., with different results. School psychologists (read
'educational psychologists' in Britain) are required to have teacher training and ex-
perience and a baccalaureate with an honors degree in psychology before beginning
specific training in educational psychology. They are proud to be both educators and
psychologists and would not trade that distinction for the U.S. pattern which
emphasizes a primary allegiance to psychology.
In Britain as in the socialized Scandinavian countries, few children fall between
the cracks of different agency services as they too often do here. A handicapped
child is known to the national health service from birth or the incidence of a handi-
cap, and is followed wherever he/she goes. On leaving school, a rehab service takes
over if needed. In school, relations between the school services and the nationalized,
completely free, medical services are open and continuous. How many of the frustra-
tions of a U.S. school psychologist would be alleviated in such a setting?
There seems to be particularly little cross-fertilization between school psychology
in the U.S. and France. Only Binet's work has penetrated the barrier. Wallon
(1879-1962), the revered father of school psychology in France, is almost unknown
here. An historical article in a 1971 journal of school psychology (Riquier, 1971) des-
cribes school psychology as founded by Wallon, making no reference to the programs
in other countries that much antedated his work. The author is specific that in the
training of school psychologists at her time, no information was given to students
about modern currents in psychology outside of France. Today, the I~cole de
Psychologues Praticiens in Paris, co-directed by Lisette Fanchon and Jean Bcsson,
offers at the graduate level a three-year course of intensive theoretical and practical
 Mullen 115

training for school psychologists which leads to a diploma recognized by the federal
government. Details of that program would reward study by school psychologists of
other countries.
America was very slow to take an interest in Piaget's ideas. His first articles were
pubfished in Switzerland in French in 1920, and his most revolutionary material in
1932, '36, and '37, but it was not until the late '50s that there was more than an occa-
sional mention of Piaget in U.S. texts on developmental psychology.
In Argentina today, very significant work is under way on the manner in which
preschool children of widely different cultures develop problem-solving tactics.
Horacio J.A. Rimoldi, M.D., Ph.D., at the Centro Interdiscipfinario de Investi-
gaciones en Psicolog~a Matem~tica y Experimental, reports that children from primi-
tive tribes, different countries of Latin America, and various cultural and economic
levels in the cities are able to deal with mathematical concepts and the logical struc-
tures involved, if the language of the tasks is adapted to the experience of the
children. ~
From Israel, highly sophisticated research on children and innovative service pro-
grams have been frequently documented for American psychologists--studies of
children raised in the collectivist Kibbutzim, the camps and residential programs for
refugee children without parents, the difficulty of integrating Jewish refugees from
the Arab countries into the dominant European cultures of the early immigrants.
The work of Avner Ziv, Benjamin Beit-Hailahmi, Reuven Feuerstein, Sol Kugel-
mass, Norman and Roberta Milgram, Israel Charny and others is accessible in the
U.S. literature.
Organizations in International Psychology. Many organizations, large and small,
general and specialized, are increasing the cross-fertilization of psychology inter-
nationally. To promote this in school psychology, in 1972 1 suggested to Division 16
that it appoint a committee to bring insights from abroad to U.S. school psycholo-
gists. Calvin Catterall, unknown to me, was simultaneously making the same sug-
gestion to NASP. A joint committee resulted. We started a newsletter, World Go
Round, opened up correspondence, and in 1974 leapt into the unknown, organizing
the first International Colloquium on School Psychology, to be held in Munich the
next summer. We knew nothing about the protocol of organizing international con-
ferences, or group travel, and made many mistakes, but a start had been made.
Other colloquia followed: Denmark 1977; York, England in 1979. In 1977, owing to
pressures of my work with ICP, I resigned as co-chairman of the school group.
The International Council of Psychologists made school psychology one, but an
important one, of its concerns. Frances M. Culbertson, retiring president of ICP,
1979-80, is a leader in Division 16. School psychologists should also keep in touch
with other international organizations.
The International Union of Psychologic.a/Sciences is a union of the national psy-
chological associations of 40 countries. Its quadrennial International Congress of
Psychology draws thousands of participants. (Paris, 1976; Leipzig, 1980; Mexico
City, 1984).
The International Association for Applied Psychology also meets quadrennially
(Munich 1978; Edinburg, Scotland, 1982). The January 1980 issue of its quarterly,
IRimoldi, Horacio J.A. Director, Centro Interdisciplinario de Investigacionesen Psicologia
Matematica y Experifftental, Cangallo No. 2158, 1040 Buenos Aires, Argentina. Extensive
of research reports on request.
116 Journal of School Psychology
International Review of Applied Psychology, concentrated on "Bilingualism and
Biculturalism," topics of concern to all school psychologists.
IACCP has already been described.
The Interamerican Society for Psychology covers all fields of psychology through-
out the Americas. Yearly conferences will be held in Lima, Peru in 1980; and Santo
Domingo, Dominican Republic, 1981.
SHARE is a hospitality program for traveling psychologists jointly sponsored by
Division 16, NASP, the Interamerican Psychological Society, the Catterall group on
International School Psychology, and.the International Council of Psychologists.
For more information as a potential host or guest, address SHARE, 4014 Cody
Road, Sherman Oaks, CA 91403.
Current Issues and Thoughts for the Future. I am no authority on Larry P or
school busing or PL 94-142, I leave these and many more to be tackled by those al-
ready so energetically involved in the necessary detailed, legalistic and political areas
of solution, and venture only a few generalized thoughts.
Certainly high on the list of the problems facing school psychology, the school sys-
tem of America, and the U.S. as a nation are the still only partially resolved prob-
lems of equal opportunity for all, of redress of the accumulated disadvantages of the
blacks and current disadvantages of other minorities. Educational administrators
and philosophers have contributed to the unrealistic expectation that the schools
alone could solve all such problems, without parallel changes in housing, employ-
ment, and political representation. The schools, with some help from school psy-
chologists, have soothed the nation's conscience by being overly optimistic about
specific panacea: integration, compensatory education, preschool education, indi-
vidualized instruction, bilingual and multilingual programs, paraprofessional teach-
er assistants, special education for every variety and degree of handicap, criminal
tendency, emotional disturbance or giftedness. The furor over the use and misuse of
intelligence tests and the values or dangers of special education is part of this na-
tional crisis.
School psychologists have long known and attempted to take into account the
limitations of our intelligence tests, but we did not early on stand up and say publicly
what our professional literature had already made clear: "We do not yet have the
skills to make the diagnoses you want. We will work with you as parents, com-
munity, and other professions to achieve the best answers possible at this time."
Today, similarly, I hear few voices in the storm of discussion, saying loudly and
clearly to the public and to the legislators: "The goals of PL-94-142 have been our
utopian dream for a generation, but if its requirements are to be met in other than a
routine, paper-shuffling fashion, then the pupil personnel services of your school
districts must be multiplied, by a factor of three or more. We do not know how many
it would take to do the job as effectively as the present state of our art permits, since
it has never been attempted on any comprehensive scale, across the whole range of
cultures represented in the school population."
The feuding over the Ph.D.-M.A. split between NASP and Division 16, currently
being worked on in both groups is, I think, not basically about whether M.A. psy-
chologists can be and are being trained adequately to perform valuable and highly
professional services, but whether those individuals will be awarded prestige in the
profession, whether their experience and realistic knowledge of what works in the
schools and what are the most pressing problems will be recognized as of equal or
 MuUen 117
greater value than training in sophisticated research techniques, whether the leader-
ship in a professional organization will continue to be entirely university-based, or
shared equally with those from the firing line.
The feuding between school psychology and special education is a disgrace to both
our houses. There are not enough qualified personnel to fill the enormous demands
of current legislation and rising expectations. School psychologists sometimes see
special education's development of diagnostic classrooms and evaluative personnel
as threats to their professional turf. Could they not instead use psychology's vaunted
skills in consultation and resolution of conflict to develop cooperation, to devise
programs based on the greater good of the greater number of children, in a time
when the manpower supply is far from adequate to meet the real needs of the
schools, even though there are currently unemployed school psychologists waiting
for positions in the niggardly supported school services?
Ethics and Advocacy. American school psychologists have not fully resolved in
practice nor internalized the question of their major loyalty on the job, regardless of
official pronouncements. As individuals they are paid by and work within the
administrative framework of the school. Certainly they are responsible for helping
teachers and other school authorities to reassess not only their view of a particular
child and his or her needs, but the effect of classroom or school management
techniques and climate on the child. Or the presence of an alcoholic or neurotic
teacher, administrator (or psychologist) too firmly protected by tenure. All state-
ments of psychological ethics in general and school psychology in particular put the
child in the forefront, his or her welfare as the psychologist's major responsibility.
Does this include aggressive advocacy of the rights of the child, within the school and
within the community and political scene? In these days when the schools are under
threat of lawsuits from parents and a variety of child advocate groups and individ-
uals, can the psychologist really take aggressive action, demanding changes in ser-
vices provided by his or her school to a particular child, or changes in school rules,
state guidelines or federal legislation when these interfere with the welfare of the
child? It is relatively easy to draft position papers, not so easy to make decisions in
the real world of the school psychologist's environment.
A Side Issue. School psychology will profit from a historiographically sound
search for its roots. The work of the pioneers in city school systems is beginning to
attract such attention. To date, most history of psychology, even of school psychol-
ogy, seems dedicated to tracing the development and transmission of ideas, or the in-
fluence of political and social events. The story of the practical implementation of
those ideas in the schools, as Slater has begun for the Chicago scene, will be more
difficult to unravel, but not impossible if begun soon.
A Final Word. The individual psychologist does count. I had hoped to paint a
picture of the great difficulties faced by early leaders whose achievements we recog-
nize, though with space limitations I have left out much of the gore. Today's
problems are possibly more complex, but the forces opposing progress toward solu-
tions, in spite of all their current patina of ideologies and sophistication, are no less
and no more vicious and destructive than the political subjugation of the schools and
school personnel to political manipulation in the machine era of city government
when individuals, and particularly leaders, could be demoted at the whim of a coal
dealer--tbe era in which many city school psychology programs were founded and
built into strong programs of services to children.
 118 Journal of School Psychology
The proposed solutions today are no less muddled than the doctrinaire swings of
the past in psychology and education. I lived through the years when Dewey's pro-
gressive education was carried to silly extremes in the '30s, throwing out all curricula
and letting the children decide from day to day what they wanted to study--and its
later revival in the enthusiasm for the British Summerhill experiments, for class-
rooms without walls, or what have you. I have seen the short-lived demand for pro-
grams for the gifted, following Russia's lofting of Sputnik, erode away and be
succeeded by today's tax revolts that threaten the bases of our public school system.
We wobble from strict behaviorism to humanistic psychology, from group therapy
in the school to aggressive community psychology. The truth, I think, is usually
somewhere near the middle. The individual psychologist with feet on the ground,
with inspiration where he/she can find it, is the ultimate resource for progress.

REFERENCE NOTES

1. Telephone conference, Mullen to Skodak, November, 1980

2. Telephone conference, Mullen to Rosebrook, November, 1980.
3. Obituaries: Grace Munson, Ph.D. 1882-1980. The School Psychologist. Nov. 1980. 35.
Grace Munson. Illinois psychological pioneer. Illinois Psychologist. Sept. 1980. 19, No.l
4. Office interview, William M. Canning, Bureau of Child Study central office, Chicago,
August, 1980.

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 Mullen 119

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