Childcare

Albert Bandura
Biographical Sketch |
Albert Bandura was born on December 4, 1925, in Mundare, a small hamlet of some 400 inhabitants, largely immigrants from Poland and Ukraine, in northern Alberta, Canada, about 50 miles east of Edmonton. He was the youngest child and only boy among six children in a family of Eastern European descent. His parents had each emigrated to Canada when they were adolescents—his father from Krakow, Poland, and his mother from the Ukraine. Bandura's father worked laying track for the trans-Canada railroad, and his mother worked in the town's general store. After they garnered sufficient savings, they bought a homestead and engaged the ardous task of converting, practically with their own hands, heavily wooded land strewn boulders into a tillable farm. They had no formal education but placed a high value on educational attainment. For example, his father taught himself to read three languages, Polish, Russian, and German, and he also served as a member of the school board in the district where they lived.Bandura wrote about this difficult, but productive, time in his family's struggle: "In addition to creating a workable farm, my father supervised the layout and construction of the road system in this newly opened homestead district. The beginning of this pioneer life was a tough struggle. In the first year, a layer of the thatched roof on the house my father built had to be dismantled and fed to the cattle because of a severe drought." In 1918, the family suffered a tragic loss when the flu pandemic claimed a young daughter. Bandura's mother walked from home to home helping to nurse back to health those who were fortunate to survive. Not long after, a son was killed in a hunting mishap with one of his friends. Recalls Bandura, "the Great Depression took a toll on my father's fun-loving spirit when he lost a section of land he had cultivated so laboriously. It pained him to see somebody else farming it." But through laborious effort,...