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Gerald Samuel Lesser (August 22, 1926 – September 23, 2010) was an American psychologist who served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1963 until his retirement in 1998. Lesser was one of the chief advisers to the Children's Television Workshop (CTW, later known as the Sesame Workshop) in the development and content of the educational programming included in the children's television program ''Sesame Street''. At Harvard, he was chair of the university's Human Development Program for 20 years, which focused on cross-cultural studies of child rearing, and studied the effects of media on young children. In 1974, he wrote ''Children and Television: Lessons From Sesame Street'', which chronicled how ''Sesame Street'' was developed and put on the air. Lesser developed many of the research methods the CTW used throughout its history and for other TV shows. In 1968, before the debut of ''Sesame Street'', he led a series of content seminars, an important part of the "CTW Model", which incorporated educational pedagogy and research into TV scripts and was used to develop other educational programs and organizations all over the world. He died in 2010, at the age of eighty-four, and was survived by his wife, a daughter, a son, and a grandchild. ==Early life and professional career== Lesser was born on August 22, 1926 in Queens.〔 The younger of two children, he grew up in the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens and graduated from Jamaica High School. After two years at Columbia University, he served in the United States Navy during World War II and returned to finish his undergraduate degree and earn a master's in psychology at Columbia.〔 He earned a Ph.D. from Yale University in child development and psychology in 1952, studying the effects of visual media on children and the design of educational programming.〔 He married Stella Scharf in 1953.〔 Lesser taught education at Adelphi University and Hunter College,〔 until hired by the Harvard School of Education (HSE) in 1963, where he taught developmental psychology and its application to education.〔 He was also chair of Harvard's Human Development Program for 20 years, which focused on cross-cultural studies of child rearing and was responsible for recruiting developmental psychologists and cultural anthropologists who influenced the studies of child development and education in the U.S.〔〔 The HSE honored Lesser with a professorship, the Gerald S. Lesser Professor in Early Childhood Development; former Harvard dean Kathleen McCartney was a recipient.〔 Lesser retired in 1998, and was a professor emeritus at Harvard until his death.〔 Lesser's colleagues reported that he had a big impact on his students and colleagues.〔 Even though he worked all over the world, he remained dedicated to his students and "remained an integral presence in the lives of his graduate students".〔 Lesser was one of the first scholars to study the effect of television on young children.〔 He was hired in 1961 by NBC as an educational consultant for the TV show ''Exploring'', which was created in response to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Newton Minow's charge to the networks to create more quality shows for children.〔〔 Lesser studied how ''Exploring'' helped children learn in order to help the producers improve it, observed children while they watched it, and was able to see how TV shows were produced.〔 Lesser's experiences at NBC led to his involvement with the development of ''Sesame Street''.〔 In 1964, Lesser wrote, with Gordon Fifer and Donald H. Clark, ''Mental Abilities of Children in Different Social and Cultural Groups''. Random House published his 1974 book ''Children and Television: Lessons From Sesame Street'', which was called a "how-to" in creating and producing a children's television show, and was an account of the hard work and dedication required to put ''Sesame Street'' on the air.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Gerald S. Lesser」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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