Urie Bronfenbrenner > Quotes

“Thus if we know a child has had sufficient opportunity to observe and acquire a behavioral sequence, and we know he is physically capable of performing the act but does not do so, then it is reasonable to assume that it is motivation which is lacking. The appropriate countermeasure then involves increasing the subjective value of the desired act relative to any competing response tendencies he might have, rather than having the model senselessly repeat an already redundant sequence of behavior.”
― Urie Bronfenbrenner, Two Worlds of Childhood: U.S. and U.S.S.R.

“If the children and youth of a nation are afforded opportunity to develop their capacities to the fullest, if they are given the k nowledge to understand the world and the wisdom to change it, then the prospects for the future are bright. In contrast, a society which neglects its children, however well it may function in other respects, risks eventual disorganization and demise.”
― Urie Bromfenbrennner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design

“Goethe, who commented wisely on so many aspects of human experience, said of our attempts to understand the world:

Everything has been thought of before,
The difficulty is to think of it again.

To this I would add (supposing that Goethe also said something to this effect, but not having discovered his discovery) that ideas are only as important as what you can do with them. Democrites supposed that the world was made up of atomic particles. Aside from his error in overlooking the implications of assuming that all atoms move in the same direction at the same rate, his astute guess about the atomic structure of matter did not have the same impact as Rutherford's rediscovery (with cloud chamber in hand) in 1900. In short, an idea is as powerful as what you can do with it.”
― Urie Bronfenbrenner, The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design