Madeline Cheek Hunter - Life

Life

Hunter's family originally lived in Canada where she was born. Her father was an avid hunter who liked Canada because "the duck hunting was better there." As Hunter was a "sickly" child, the family ultimately moved to California to avoid the terrible Canadian winters in Saskatchewan. Although they returned to Canada from May to October for many years, most of her schooling was in California.

In junior high she was placed in an experimental school to test some of Stanford University's psychological theories on intelligence. They used her to score intelligence tests. As a result, she became interested in human intelligence; this along with classical ballet became her passions in life. As a 16-year-old she entered the University of California at Los Angeles as a combination pre-medicine and psychology major while continuing her ballet dancing. She had to choose either going to South America on tour with the Ballet Russe or finishing her degree in pre-medicine. She chose to finish her degree and then realized that she had limited hand eye coordination which would deny her the chance of becoming a neurological surgeon. Two additional events influenced her choice of a career in school psychology. The first occurred in seventh grade while sitting in an auditorium waiting to be assigned a class. She felt hurt when she was being labeled as dumb, these feelings were never forgotten. Because of this experience she felt the need for giving positive reinforcement to students in schools--"Never put a kid down, always build the kid up." A second influence occurred during her first work experiences at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles and at Juvenile Hall.

During World War II she married an engineer, Robert Hunter, who worked at Lockheed Aviation until he retired. They had two children, a daughter and a son. In 1944 their first child was born, Cheryl, who became a film editor later in her career. In 1946 they had their second child, Robin, who became a school principal.

After her children were on their own, she went back to working full time as an educator. She held many positions such as: a school psychologist, principal, director of research, and an assistant superintendent. She was given the opportunity to implement her educational model in a laboratory school setting. In Hunter's lifetime, she wrote 12 books, over 300 articles, and produced 17 videotape collections.

According to the Graduate School of Education at U.C.L.A where she worked, Hunter died at the age of 78 in Los Angeles from a series of strokes.