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Child Psychotherapists are painfully aware that individual treatment can be available to very few children, and are asked to take a preventive role, e.g., through consultation and courses for other workers in the field. Over-busy as many of us are, we have hardly been able to take time to consider the most effective form that such preventive work might take. These books bring an exciting new perspective to this field, and one that demands our consideration.
Since 1978, Erna Furman and her colleagues at the Cleveland Center for Research in Child Development have been running courses for adolescents in senior high schools. These courses in Child Development are in fact a preparation for parenthood. The Furmans used the Socratic method, building on the adolescents' own observations, questions and thoughts. And as they developed the course, they carried out a meticulous study of their own teaching method as well as of each student's development. This is action research at its best.
In all, some 2,000 students have taken the course. The Furmans found that late adolescents were best able to make use of their method: at that stage the course could further healthy developmental progress as well as help adolescents to develop and integrate their view of themselves as potential parents — often different from, but appropriately appreciative of, their own parents. The course was less suitable for younger adolescents. (This finding has implications for those courses in human development which are currently available in some schools.)
In my view, Child Psychotherapists in England could and should find a way to develop such courses in our schools. Clearly teachers from outside our profession would be needed. The Furmans, aware of this problem, have developed a method of teaching the teachers. The course developed for older adolescents has proved suitable for later ages and higher levels of sophistication; it provides the basis for enlarging the teachers' understanding, and is supplem