Education
Asch was shy when he moved to the United States and did not speak English fluently. He went to the neighborhood public school, P.S. 147, to attend 6th grade. As a result of the language barrier, Asch had a very difficult time understanding in class. He learned English by reading Charles Dickens. Asch later attended Townsend Harris High School, a very selective high school attached to the City College of New York. After high school, he attended the City College of New York, majoring in both literature and science. He became interested in psychology towards the end of his undergraduate career after reading the work of William James and a few philosophers. In 1928, when he was 21 years old, he received his Bachelor of Science.
Asch went on to pursue his graduate degree at Columbia University. He initially was not very interested in social psychology, but he was interested in anthropology. With the help of Gardner,Lois Murphy, Boas, and Bendict, he investigated how children became members of their culture through a summer fellowship. His master thesis was a statistical analysis of the test scores of 200 children under the supervision of Woodworth. Asch received his Master’s degree in 1930. His doctoral dissertation examined whether all learning curves have the same form; H.E. Garrett assigned the topic to him. He received his PhD in 1932.
Asch was exposed to Gestalt psychology through Gardner Murphy, a young faculty member at Columbia at the time. He became much more interested in Gestalt Psychology after he met and worked closesly with his advisor at Columbia Max Wertheimer, one of the founders of Gestalt Psychology. He later became close friends with Wertheimer.
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Famous quotes containing the word education:
“Nature has taken more care than the fondest parent for the education and refinement of her children. Consider the silent influence which flowers exert, no less upon the ditcher in the meadow than the lady in the bower. When I walk in the woods, I am reminded that a wise purveyor has been there before me; my most delicate experience is typified there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The fetish of the great university, of expensive colleges for young women, is too often simply a fetish. It is not based on a genuine desire for learning. Education today need not be sought at any great distance. It is largely compounded of two things, of a certain snobbishness on the part of parents, and of escape from home on the part of youth. And to those who must earn quickly it is often sheer waste of time. Very few colleges prepare their students for any special work.”
—Mary Roberts Rinehart (1876–1958)
““We’ll encounter opposition, won’t we, if we give women the same education that we give to men,” Socrates says to Galucon. “For then we’d have to let women ... exercise in the company of men. And we know how ridiculous that would seem.” ... Convention and habit are women’s enemies here, and reason their ally.”
—Martha Nussbaum (b. 1947)