We actu­al­ly do not have to infer what kinds of minds and per­son­al­i­ties and beliefs are suit­able for these new visions of tomor­row. One advo­cate telling­ly used this quote from Napoleon that “There are but two pow­ers in the world, the sword, and the mind. In the long run the sword is always beat­en by […]

Day 12: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files Like a Bad Hor­ror Movie — Skin­ner’s BACK!!! More his­to­ry you aren’t sup­posed to know.…  Just like a bad B‑rated hor­ror film, B.F. Skin­ner’s Pro­grammed Instruc­tion con­tin­ues through the decades — rerun, rein­vent­ed, rein­tro­duced, repack­aged and re-named — as an inte­gral part Amer­i­can’s reform engine. Skin­ner is the METHOD that dri­ves the whole […]

DAY 9: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files HISTORY YOU ARE NOT MEANT TO KNOW! And par­ents con­tin­ue to mess around fight­ing Com­mu­nist Core? Should­n’t they instead be focus­ing on killing tax-fund­ed fake school “choice” which is the vehi­cle to con­trol not just stu­dents, but adults as well, under UNESCO’s agen­da: Lim­it­ed Learn­ing for Life­long Labor. What the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment funds […]

Day 10: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files More His­to­ry You Aren’t Sup­posed to Know… THE pres­i­den­tial­ly appoint­ed Nation­al Coun­cil for Edu­ca­tion­al Research (NCER) issued two “Poli­cies on Mis­sions for Edu­ca­tion­al Research and Devel­op­ment Cen­ters,” dat­ed June 14 and Octo­ber 25, 1984, short­ly after region­al hear­ings had been held regard­ing the need for reg­u­la­tions to imple­ment the Pro­tec­tion of Pupil […]

Day 8: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files Teach­ings Machines => Computers Comput­ers have become the per­fect vehi­cle for those who want to imple­ment soci­etal oper­ant con­di­tion­ing meth­ods on the chil­dren and pop­u­lace. These change agents desire to break down human behav­ior into the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor, and mea­sure it bit by bit via con­di­tioned respons­es desired (or required) […]

Day 6: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files “Please do not for­get for one moment that OBE is mas­tery learning/direct instruc­tion. The only dif­fer­ence between OBE and Direct Instruc­tion is that OBE had very bad, out­ra­geous… out­comes, and direct instruc­tion has… those peanut but­ter-and-jel­ly-sound­ing phon­ics outcomes.” – Char­lotte Iser­byt, cir­ca 1998, p. A‑156 the delib­er­ate dumb­ing down of america  

DAY 7: The Skin­ner Hor­ror Files The Influ­ence of Thorndike Lives On.…   Edward Thorndike“Thorndike intro­duced the con­cept of reinforcement.” Beware! When the media mouth­piece for the neo­con­ser­v­a­tive edu­ca­tion agen­da (The Wall Street Jour­nal) uses words “true mas­tery” and “prac­tice,” par­ents MUST under­stand that “they” are rec­om­mend­ing use of the Skin­ner­ian Direct Instruc­tion although “they” obvi­ous­ly aren’t going […]

Day 5: Skin­ner Hor­ror Files Skin­ner Trou­bles with Direct Instruction/Mastery Learning The fol­low­ing blog post is an excerpt from Appen­dix XXV of my book the delib­er­ate dumb­ing down of amer­i­ca. It is the sec­ond of a two-part alert series in the late 1990s that com­prised this par­tic­u­lar appen­dix. This is the best sum­ma­ry of what exact­ly […]

A Couple Loose Analogies Pic­ture total­i­tar­i­an­ism on one end of a scale and anar­chy on the oth­er. Both have issues but for dif­fer­ent rea­sons. Total­i­tar­i­an­ism is like Cap­i­tal “D.I.” Direct Instruc­tion where they attempt Pruss­ian style edu­ca­tion of forc­ing knowl­edge into heads. Here’s your task, repeat it. Con­struc­tivism is akin to anar­chy. Anar­chy always always […]

Day 3: The Skin­ner Hor­ror Files Pro­grammed Instruc­tion: An Introduction Exhib­it 1, p. 163 Exhib­it 1 is from a 1971 text­book Psy­chol­o­gy Applied to Teach­ing by Robert F. Biehler (Houghton Mif­flin Co., Boston). This pho­to illus­trates the ear­ly use of Skin­ner’s PROGRAMMED INSTRUCTION in the class­room using a “teach­ing machine” com­put­er. In order to under­stand what has […]

Sac­ri­lege! Direct Instruc­tion is bad??? By the end of this 3 part arti­cle I hope to explain what I mean by this before my home­school and char­ter school friends storm the cas­tle, though they do have some­thing to ponder. Back­ground: What Moti­vates Us I recent­ly lis­tened to a book on tape called “Dri­ve,” by Daniel Pink. […]

31 Days of B.F. Skin­ner Hor­ror Stories   Because so much edu­ca­tion reform rests upon Skin­ner’s meth­ods and ide­olo­gies, it is time to tell the truth. The next 31 days this blog will be post­ing cur­rent and his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion about the true nature of Skin­ner’s “edu­ca­tion” that has been foist­ed upon our nation’s children. “I […]

Day 2: The Skin­ner Hor­ror Files It depends on what the mean­ing of the word “char­ters” ‘is’… Salon arti­cle pub­lished HERE Here are excerpts from the Salon arti­cle above: Bill Clin­ton weighed in on the debate over char­ter schools this week, warn­ing that the pub­licly fund­ed yet autonomous schools must keep their “orig­i­nal bar­gain” if they want […]