George P. Bush

For other people named George Bush (disambiguation), see George Bush (disambiguation) (disambiguation).

George Prescott Bush
Born	(1976-04-24) April 24, 1976 Texas
Allegiance	United States of America
Service/branch	United States Navy
Years of service	2007-present
Rank	Lieutenant
Unit	United States Navy Reserve
Battles/wars	War in Afghanistan
Other work	Attorney, businessman

George Prescott Gallo Bush (born April 24, 1976 in Texas) is an attorney, U.S. Navy Reserve officer and real estate developer, who is the eldest of three children of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and his wife Columba. He is the nephew of the 43rd President of the United States, George W. Bush, and the grandson of the 41st President of the United States, George H. W. Bush.

Early life

Bush's mother, Columba Garnica Gallo, is a naturalized citizen of the U.S. originally from Mexico. Bush attended Gulliver Preparatory School in Miami and was a classmate to popular musical artist Enrique Iglesias. Bush earned an undergraduate degree from Rice University in 1998 and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Texas School of Law in 2003.

Like his grandfather and uncle (both at Yale), Bush was a freshman walk-on to the baseball team at Rice University, but abandoned the game by his sophomore year. Bush played quarterback for the Jones College intramural football team.

He was featured in People Magazine's top 100 Bachelors in 2000.

Binet attended law school in Paris, and received his degree in 1878. He also studied Natural Sciences at the Sorbonne. His first formal position was as a researcher at a neurological clinic, Salpetriere Hospital, in Paris from 1883–1889. From there, Binet went on to being a researcher and associate director of the Laboratory of Experimental Psychology at the Sorbonne from 1891–1894. In 1894, he was promoted to being the director of the laboratory until 1911 (his death). After receiving his law degree in 1878, Alfred Binet began to study science at the Sorbonne. However, he was not overly interested in his formal schooling, and started educating himself by reading psychology texts at the National Library in Paris. He soon became fascinated with the ideas of John Stuart Mill, who believed that the operations of intelligence could be explained by the laws of associationism. Binet eventually realized the limitations of this theory, but Mill's ideas continued to influence his work. In 1883, years of unaccompanied study ended when Binet was introduced to Charles Fere, who introduced him to Jean Charcot, the director of a clinic called La Salpetriere. Charcot became his mentor and in turn, Binet accepted a job offer at the clinic. During his seven years there, any and every of Charcot's views were accepted unconditionally by Binet. This of course, was where he could have used the interactions with others and training in critical thinking that a University education provided. In 1883, Binet began to work in Jean-Martin Charcot's neurological laboratory at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. At the time of Binet's tenure, Charcot was experimenting with hypnotism. Binet was strongly influenced by this great man, and published four articles about his work in this area. Unfortunately, Charcot's conclusions did not hold up under professional scrutiny, and Binet was forced to make an embarrassing public admission that he had been wrong in supporting his teacher. When his intrigue with hypnosis waned as a result of failure to establish professional acceptance, he turned to the study of development spurred on by the birth of his two daughters, Madeleine and Alice (born in 1885 and 1887, respectively). In the 21 year period following his shift in career interests, Binet "published more than 200 books, articles, and reviews in what now would be called experimental, developmental, educational, social, and differential psychology" (Siegler, 1992). Bergin and Cizek (2001) suggest that this work may have influenced Jean Piaget, who later studied with Binet's collaborator Théodore Simon in 1920. Binet's research with his daughters helped him to further refine his developing conception of intelligence, especially the importance of attention span and suggestibility in intellectual development. Despite Binet's extensive research interests and wide breadth of publications, today he is most widely known for his contributions to intelligence. Wolf (1973) postulates that this is the result of his not being affiliated with a major university. Because Binet did not have any formalized graduate study in psychology, he did not hold a professorship with a prestigious institution where students and funds would be sure to perpetuate his work (Siegler, 1992). Additionally, his more progressive theories did not provide the practical utility that his intelligence scale would evoke. Binet and his coworker Fere discovered what they called transfer and they also recognized perceptual and emotional polarization. Binet and Fere thought their findings were a phenomenon and of utmost importance. After investigations by many, the two men were forced to admit that they were wrong about their concepts of transfer and polarization. Basically, their patients had known what was expected, what was supposed to happen, and so they simply assented. Binet had risked everything on his experiment and its results, and this failure took a toll on him. In 1890, Binet resigned from La Salpetriere and never mentioned the place or its director again. His interests then turned toward the development of his children, Madeleine and Alice, who were two years apart. This research presages that done by Jean Piaget just a short time later, regarding the development of cognition in children. A job presented itself for Binet in 1891 at the Laboratory of Physiological Psychology at the Sorbonne. He worked for a year without pay and by 1894, he took over as the director. This was a position that Binet held until his death, and it enabled him to pursue his studies on mental processes. While directing the Laboratory, Theodore Simon applied to do doctoral research under Binet's supervision. This was the beginning of their long, fruitful collaboration. During this time he also co-founded the French journal of psychology, L'Annee psychologique, serving as the director and editor-in-chief.

In 1904 a French professional group for child psychology, La Société Libre pour l'Etude Psychologique de l'Enfant, was called upon by the French government to appoint a commission on the education of retarded children. The commission was asked to create a mechanism for identifying students in need of alternative education. Binet, being an active member of this group, found the impetus for the development of his mental scale. Binet and Simon, in creating what historically is known as the Binet-Simon Scale, comprised a variety of tasks they children's abilities at various ages. This task-selection process was based on their many years of observing children in natural settings. They then tested their measurement on a sample of fifty children, ten children per five age groups. The children selected for their study were identified by their school teachers as being average for their age. The purpose of this scale of normal functioning, which would later be revised twice using more stringent standards, was to compare children's mental abilities relative to those of their normal peers (Siegler, 1992). The scale consisted of thirty tasks of increasing difficulty. The easier ones could be done by everyone. Some of the simplest test items assessed whether or not a child could follow a beam of light or talk back to the examiner. Slightly harder tasks required children to point to various named body parts, repeat back a series of 2 digits, repeat simple sentences, and to define words like house, fork or mama. More difficult test items required children to state the difference between pairs of things, reproduce drawings from memory or to construct sentences from three given words such as "Paris, river and fortune." The hardest test items included asking children to repeat back 7 random digits, find three rhymes for the French word "obéisance" and to answer questions such as "My neighbor has been receiving strange visitors. He has received in turn a doctor, a lawyer, and then a priest. What is taking place?" (Fancher, 1985). For the practical use of determining-old child who passed all the tasks usually passed by 6 year-olds—but nothing beyond—would have a mental age that exactly matched his chronological age, 6.0. (Fancher, 1985). Binet was forthright about the limitations of his scale. He stressed the remarkable diversity of intelligence and the subsequent need to study it using qualitative, as opposed to quantitative, measures. Binet also stressed that intellectual development progressed at variable rates and could be influenced by the environment; therefore, intelligence was not based solely on genetics, was malleable rather than fixed, and could only be found in children with comparable backgrounds (Siegler, 1992). Given Binet's stance that intelligence testing was subject to variability and was not generalizable, it is important to look at the metamorphosis that mental testing took on as it made its way to the U.S. While Binet was developing his mental scale, the business, civic, and educational leaders in the U.S. were facing issues of how to accommodate the needs of a diversifying population, while continuing to meet the demands of society. There arose the call to form a society based on meritocracy (Siegler,1992) while continuing to underline the ideals of the upper class. In 1908, H.H. Goddard, a champion of the eugenics movement, found utility in mental testing as a way to evidence the superiority of the white race. After studying abroad, Goddard brought the Binet-Simon Scale to the United States and translated it into English.roduction of feeble-mindedness and in the elimination of an enormous amount of crime, pauperism, and industrial inefficiency (p.7)" Terman, L., Lyman, G., Ordahl, G., Ordahl, L., Galbreath, N., & Talbert, W. (1916). The Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Scale for Measuring Intelligence. Baltimore: Warwick & York.(White, 2000). It follows that we should question why Binet did not speak out concerning the newfound uses of his measure. Siegler (1992) pointed out that Binet was somewhat of an isolationist in that he never traveled outside of France and he barely participated in professional organizations. Additionally, his mental scale was not adopted in his own country during his lifetime and therefore was not subjected to the same fate. Finally, when Binet did become aware of the "foreign ideas being grafted on his instrument" he condemned those who with 'brutal pessimism' and 'deplorable verdicts' were promoting the concept of intelligence as a single, unitary construct (White, 2000). He did a lot of study on kids. His experiments ranged from 3 to 18 year olds. Teachers were able to distribute the kids that weren't as smart as the kids that were. Binet published the third version of the Binet-Simon scale shortly before his death in 1911. The Binet-Simon scale was and is hugely popular around the world, mainly because of the vast literature it has fostered, as well as its relative ease of administration. Since his death, many people in many ways have honored Binet, but two of these stand out. In 1917, the Free Society for the Psychological Study of the Child, to whom Binet became a member in 1899 and which prompted his development of the intelligence tests, changed their name to La Societe Alfred Binet, in memory of the renowned psychologist. The second honor was not until 1984, when the journal Science 84 picked the Binet-Simon scale, as one of twenty of this century's most significant developments or discoveries. chiromancer in Paris in those days.-p-bush-jeb-still-mum |title=Rubio nabs George P. Bush; Jeb still mum |publisher=The Hill |date=2010-01-21 |accessdate=2010-04-30}}</ref>

Career

Bush is currently a partner with Pennybacker Capital, LLC, a real estate investment company in Austin, Texas. The company was originally named N3 Capital and headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas. Before entering the real estate investment business, he practiced corporate and securities law in Dallas with Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld LLP. In 2005, Bush was selected as one of Texas Monthly's "Rising Stars" for his work with Akin Gump.

Bush is also a co-founder and on the board of directors of Hispanic Republicans of Texas, a political action committee whose goal is to elect Republican political candidates of Hispanic heritage to office in Texas.

Bush received his undergraduate degree from Rice University and obtained his Juris Doctorate from the University of Texas School of Law in 2003. After law school, he clerked for U.S District Judge for the Northern District of Texas, Sidney A. Fitzwater.

Military service

On March 21, 2007 the United States Navy Reserve announced the selection of Bush for training as an intelligence officer. Once commissioned as an Ensign for eight years of reserve service, he was expected to attend direct commission officer training, and then undergo a year of intelligence training, initially assigned to duty near his home.

Bush told The Politico that attending the October 2006 launch of the aircraft carrier named for his grandfather—the USS George H.W. Bush -- inspired him to join the service. He also called the death of Pat Tillman, the NFL player and Army Ranger who was killed in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan in 2004, "a wake-up call." When asked to comment, Bush's senior assistant, Kyle Hoskinson, said "The Pat Tillman case is one of the saddest in U.S. Army history."

In October 2009, news blogs reported that the U.S. Navy had recently told Bush that he is likely to be soon deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan. He would go on to serve a tour of duty in the War in Afghanistan and returned to the United States in 2011. Bush was deployed under the United States Special Operations Command.

Personal life

Bush married a law school classmate, Amanda "Mandi" Williams, on August 7, 2004 in Kennebunkport, Maine. Williams is a media law attorney at the Jackson Walker LLP in Fort Worth, Texas. They currently live in Austin, Texas.

External links

• Republicans Abroad home page