What Is Haeckle's Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny Theory

Granville Stanley Hall was one of the most renowned psychologists in the United States during the 1800’s. Though his life began on a farm in Massachusetts, his life’s journey led him to become first American to earn a Ph.D in Psychology, studying under well-known psychologists William James and Henry P. Bowditch, and Wilhem Wundt. Further to his credit, he was the founder of the first laboratory of psychology in America at John Hopkins University, the first president of the American Psychological Association, and the founder of the American Journal of Psychology. His efforts led to vast contributions to psychological research and theory.
While many of his ideas have become outdated due to additional research by others in the field, G. Stanley
Ernst Haeckle’s “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” theory influenced Hall’s work on child development and evolutionary theory. As a result of Haekle’s claim that an organism’s development from fertilization though gestation and birth (ontogeny) goes through stages resembling the stages of its ancestors’ evolution (phylogeny) (Early Evolution, 2017), Hall’s Recapitulation Theory links together the notion of genetic psychology and education. Simply put, the theory suggests, “each person goes through a change in both the psychic and somatic senses which follow the evolution scale of the mind and body” (Grezlik, 1999). Therefore, his interest in Haekle’s work led him to explore educational issues as well child development and psychology. His combined work on the theory led to the thought that adolescence was a distinct stage of life. His work was being published at the same time that high schools were being popularized, students were being held accountable for going to school, and students were delaying going into the work force in favor of education. The expanding stage from childhood to adulthood was a fertile ground for
These three movements were Child Study Movement, the Parent Education Movement, and the Child Welfare Movement (Brook-Gunn, 2006). Of those three, Child Study Movement was the most influential because it pushed studying children to the forefront, an action that was seen as taboo, and paved the way for a scientific investigation of childhood and adolescence. Hall introduced the concept of acquiring anecdotal descriptions of child behavior from parents and teachers. Further, Hall employed the questionnaire method in order to study children and their thinking. His methods met with harsh criticism, and many rebuked his work as methodologically weak as many of his research references were left incomplete. However, his pioneering methods are useful tools that are used today. What began as an attempt to better understand children through their own words and the anecdotes of the people closest to them blossomed into “the Child Study Movement that swept the nation and shaped the discipline later known as applied developmental psychology” (Brook-Gunn,