Robert James Havighurst (Hurlock) (June 5, 1900 – January 31, 1991) was a chemist and physicist, educator, and expert on human development and aging.
He published a number of papers in journal of physics and chemistry about the structure of the atom in 1924.
[2] He went to Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow, studying atomic structure and publishing papers in journals of physics and chemistry.
[1] He was inducted in the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame.
He involved Native Americans in planning the study as well as helping in field work and data analysis.
The conclusions indicated that education for Native American youth across the United States varied widely according to numerous factors such as funding, location, curriculum, faculty, degree of isolation, and cultural differences.
He conducted a study of public high schools in the forty-five largest cities in the United States.
Havighurst concluded that there was more and deeper segregation and separation of high school students of different socioeconomic and ethnic groups in 1969 to 1970 than there was ten or twenty years before.
In 1977, at age seventy-seven, he coedited a book in which he developed a series of policies and practices for the improvement of big city schools based on his research.
But it can be increased if we do two things: if we recognize and uphold the essential values of family life and if we get and keep control of the process of social change so as to make it give us what is needed to make family life perform its essential functions."
"The modern world needs people with a complex identity who are intellectually autonomous and prepared to cope with uncertainty; who are able to tolerate ambiguity and not be driven by fear into a rigid, single-solution approach to problems, who are rational, foresightful and who look for facts; who can draw inferences and can control their behavior in the light of foreseen consequences, who are altruistic and enjoy doing for others, and who understand social forces and trends."