If we think of the Com­mon Core as a buck­et or a ban­ner instead of pre­tend­ing it is about the trans­mis­sion of knowl­edge, its func­tion becomes much clear­er. All the changes that would cause an out­cry if pur­sued sep­a­rate­ly, and in many cas­es already have cre­at­ed wide­spread pop­u­lar rejec­tion, get to Come on Down Any­way […]

Day 18: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files Your Child, the Lab Rat?! See yes­ter­day’s post “School-To-Prison-Pipeline” Sys­tem? Then exam­ine care­ful­ly the graph­ics in this post. This tells a more com­plete sto­ry about Oper­ant Con­di­tion­ing. Sim­i­lar graph­ics were used on pre­vi­ous posts this month dur­ing our “Skin­ner Hor­ror Files” series. But these images have an added element. Note the words […]

Day 17: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files Oper­ant Con­di­tion­ing Includes PUNISHMENT Don’t ever for­get this! Penal­ties, pun­ish­ment… it is all part of the sys­tem of oper­ant con­di­tion­ing and an inte­gral part of the method. And when par­ents find out about this, they often get upset. Very upset. Read this arti­cle: “Mom Says NO to School Sys­tem Intim­i­da­tion,” Sep­tem­ber 26, […]

Ani­ta B. Hoge This edu­ca­tion mod­el is a recur­ring, failed edu­ca­tion mod­el being dupli­cat­ed with new names over the past sev­er­al decades. The ref­er­ence to a stu­dent is “human cap­i­tal.” This val­ue-added def­i­n­i­tion address­es the worth of an indi­vid­ual to busi­ness. There are many old­er names for Out­come Based Edu­ca­tion. Com­mon Core State Stan­dards, CCSS, is […]

An edu­ca­tion expert who heads up a pop­u­lar online K‑12 school is advis­ing par­ents that they must be vig­i­lant against gov­ern­ment intru­sion if they want to main­tain con­trol over their chil­dren’s schooling. Alan Scholl and his wife, Doreen, have suc­cess­ful­ly home­schooled sev­en chil­dren over the past 29 years. In addi­tion to that accom­plish­ment, Scholl — […]

Day 16: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files Skin­ner’s Ten­ta­cles Extend to Pri­vate and Home Education An oldie from 2002 high­lights the prob­lems with Skin­ner­ian edu­ca­tion and com­put­ers. Once a tiny bit of gov­ern­ment monies comes to pri­vate edu­ca­tion, the gov­ern­men­t’s ten­ta­cles will ful­ly encir­cle and start to suffocate.  In an arti­cle pub­lished on NewsWith­Views on July 8, 2002, […]

Day 15: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files More his­to­ry that would upset par­ents if they only knew…   B.F. Skin­ner In 1961 PROGRAMMED LEARNING: EVOLVING PRINCIPLES AND INDUSTRIAL APPLICATIONS (Foun­da­tion for Research on Human Behav­ior: Ann Arbor, Mich., 1961) edit­ed by Jerome P. Lysaught was pub­lished. An excerpt from the intro­duc­tion by Thomas H. Miller follows: To intro­duce the […]

Some­times peo­ple feel deeply shak­en by the things I write about. Me too, except there is no ambi­gu­i­ty in what is being sought by the time I am will­ing to dis­cuss it in pub­lic. If the dec­la­ra­tions appear to be Trag­ic or even just a hor­rif­i­cal­ly waste­ful idea, some­one needs to be bring­ing these inten­tions […]

DAY 14: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files THE BIG LIE EXPOSED Direct from the horse’s mouth “It is always to be kept in mind that these principles  are quite in con­trast to “rote learn­ing” or drill. “In rote learn­ing, many wrong respons­es are per­mit­ted to occur, and the stu­dent even­tu­al­ly learns to devel­op his own prompts often to a rel­a­tive­ly […]

Day 13: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files  “…Teach­ing thus dif­fers from train­ing and conditioning, which are con­cerned with performance rather than belief and ratio­nal action.… To be eth­i­cal, con­di­tion­ing must have student  coop­er­a­tion in and aware­ness of its use  to change behav­ior.” N.L.Gage and David C. Berlin­er, Edu­ca­tion­al Psy­chol­o­gy, Rand McNal­ly Col­lege Pub­lish­ing Co., Chica­go, 1975, 129–131

Day 11: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files And you thought com­put­ers just taught academics? In 1963 THE ROLE OF THE COMPUTER IN FUTURE INSTRUCTIONAL SYSTEMS was pub­lished as the March/ April, 1963 sup­ple­ment of Audio­vi­su­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Review.[1] James D. Finn of Los Ange­les was the prin­ci­pal inves­ti­ga­tor and Don­ald P. Ely (lat­er of Project BEST: Basic Edu­ca­tion­al Skills […]