March
1, 2002
Gorse
Conference Examines "Childhood Besieged"
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Photo: Paul Schnaittacher
Gorse
students at play
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These are not easy
times to be a child. Economic pressures challenge the ability
of families and communities to provide the resources children
need. Children are under increasing pressure to grow up quickly,
to emulate media stars. A growing culture of commercialization
pressures children to put the accumulation of possessions before
the development of character.
When organizers met
to consider the topic for a conference celebrating the fiftieth
anniversary of the Gorse Child Study Center, "we became aware
of how often we have heard parents, teachers, and psychologists
use the word ‘besieged' when talking about raising and working
with children," said Patricia Ramsey, the center's director
and a professor of psychology and education. "The events
of September 11 have only worsened the feeling, underscoring the
fragility of it all and making us more aware of the pressures
on families."
Designed to move beyond
an acknowledgement of those challenges to explore ways to restore
hope, integrity, and purpose in the lives of children, the conference,
"Childhood Besieged: Restoring Hope and Integrity in Children's
Lives," will be held Friday, March 8, and Saturday, March
9, in Gamble Auditorium.
William Damon, professor
of education at Stanford University, will speak on "The Moral
Advantage: Cultivating an Enduring Sense of Purpose in Our Children,"
March 8 at 7:30 pm. On March 9 at 9:30 am, Vivian Gussin Paley,
former kindergarten teacher at the University of Chicago Lab School,
will present "Children Indivisible: How Children Invent Community
through Their Stories and Play." Paley will be followed at
3:45 pm by Gloria Johnson-Powell '58, professor of psychiatry
and pediatrics and director of the Center for the Study of Cultural
Diversity in Healthcare at the University of Wisconsin Medical
School, who will speak on "Children and Families in a Diverse
Society: Implications for Health and Human Service Delivery."
Discussion groups will meet from 11:15 am to 12:15 pm, and a 2:30
pm panel discussion will addresss "Possibilities and Strategies
for Enhancing the Quality of Childhood Today." A birthday
cake in honor of Gorse's anniversary will be served at 1:30 pm
at the center, which has been recently refurbished.
The conference is
open to all those interested in the well-being of young children—
teachers, students, researchers, psychologists, social workers,
pediatricians, and parents. Conference registration is $20 with
an optional Saturday lunch for $10. The fee is waived for current
MHC students, staff, and faculty, and current Gorse parents. The
deadline for registration is March 5. For registration materials,
call x2039 or visit http://www.alumnae.mtholyoke.edu/gorse_reg.pdf.
The conference is sponsored by the Gorse Child Study Center, the
Department of Psychology and Education, the Alumnae Association,
the Weissman Center for Leadership, and the Purington Lecture
Fund.
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Photo: George Woodruff /
Courtesy of the MHC Archives
Winter fun at Gorse, February
1956
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Gorse
Through the Years
The bricks
and mortar, like its mission and program, have stood the test
of time over the course of the Gorse Child Study Center's first
half-century. Those well-laid foundations support a place very
much in the mainstream of evolving trends in early childhood education
and early childhood research.
Gorse,
the lab school for MHC's psychology and education department,
was created in 1952 as the successor to the Mount Holyoke Nursery
School, begun in the fall of 1940 in Hitchcock House (now home
to faculty housing). The new building, named in honor of Frank
Washington Gorse, the father of Florence Gorse Smith '16, was
designed from the first to be a lab school, with fully equipped
observation booths and small rooms for conducting interviews with
children.
In its
five decades, Gorse has modeled innovative early childhood curricula
and practices, supported a wide range of developmental and educational
research projects, and provided quality preschool and kindergarten
education to some two thousand local children. Gorse has helped
launch more than one thousand Mount Holyoke students into careers
in teaching, research, psychology, social work, pediatrics, and
other fields concerned with children and families, and has spawned
practical and research work on a wide variety of topics.
Today,
research focuses on such topics as the media's impact on children's
views and imaginative play; early concepts and attitudes related
to gender, race, and social class; the effects of multicultural
and environmental education; and ways that children's social skills
can be nurtured in the classroom. Yet while methods and themes
evolve, the focus remains on understanding, respecting, and facilitating
children's authentic development.
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