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 […]

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