Donald O. Hebb - Early Life

Early Life

Donald Hebb was born in Chester, Nova Scotia, the oldest of four children of Arthur M. and M. Clara (Olding) Hebb, and lived there until the age of 16, when his parents moved to Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

Donald's parents were both medical doctors. Donald's mother was heavily influenced by the ideas of Maria Montessori, and she home schooled him until the age of 8. He performed so well in elementary school that he was promoted to the 7th grade at 10 years of age. Although his rebellious attitude and disrespect for authority may have contributed to his failing the 11th grade, he graduated from the 12th grade two years later. (At that time in Chester, the 9th, 10th and 11th grades were taught in the same classroom by the same teacher. The year Donald failed the 11th grade, most (almost all?) of the students in the three grades failed the provincial exams and hence their year. Those failing the 9th and 10th years were moved to the next grade despite their failures. There was no 12th grade in Chester for Donald to be moved to and so he repeated the 11th grade. The following year, then living in Dartmouth, he successfully completed the 12th grade at Halifax County Academy in Halifax.)

The older of Donald's younger brothers, Andrew, obtained a law degree but went on to a career in journalism and then insurance. Donald's youngest brother, Peter, became a physician like his parents. And his sister, Catherine, eventually became a prominent physiologist. But Donald, early in life, had no aspirations toward psychology or the medical field; rather, he wanted to be a writer. He entered Dalhousie University aiming to become a novelist. He wasn't an exceptional student (his best subjects were math and science) but he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1925. Afterward, he became a teacher, teaching at his old school in Chester. Later, he became a farmer in Alberta and then traveled around, working as a laborer in Quebec. During his travels he encountered the works of Sigmund Freud (which he regarded as "not too rigorous"), William James, and John B. Watson which made him consider joining the field of psychology.

At the age of 23, he asked William Dunlop Tait, the chairman of the psychology department at McGill University (a post Hebb would one day hold) what he'd have to do to get in and was given a reading list and told to come back in a year's time. During this year of study, he went back to teaching.