On January 4, 2016, the B. F. Skinner Foundation launched a new project – Skinner’s Quote of the Day. Quotes from B. F. Skinner’s works, selected by renowned scientists, appear daily Monday-Friday in order, starting with Chapter 1 of each book and running all the way through the last chapter. We started with the Science and Human Behavior (January-December 2916), followed by About Behaviorism (January-November 2017), Contingencies of Reinforcement (January-October 2018), Recent Issues (October 2018-May 2019), Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (May 2019-February 2020), and now moving on to Upon Further Reflection (from February 10 2020).
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In summary, then, machine teaching is unusually efficient because (1) the student is frequently and immediately reinforced, (2) he is free to move at his natural rate, and (3) he…
Some of those most active in improving education have been tempted to dismiss slow students impatiently as a waste of time, but it is quite possible that many of them…
The effect of pressure to move beyond one’s natural speed is cumulative. The student who has not fully mastered a first lesson is less able to master a second. His…
In trying to teach more than one student at once we harm both fast and slow learners. The plight of the good student has been recognized, but the slow learner…
[With the teaching machine, the student] has no reason to be anxious about impending examinations, for none are required. Both he and his instructor know where he stands at all…
Exploratory research in schools and colleges indicates that what is now taught by teacher, textbook, lecture, or film can be taught in half the time with half the effort by…
Instead of teaching “an ability to read” we may set up the behavioral repertoire which distinguishes the child who knows how to read from one who does not. (p. 223)
Instead of “transmitting information to the student” we may simply set up the behavior which is taken as a sign that he possesses information. (p. 223)
We can define terms like “information,” “knowledge,” and “verbal ability” by reference to the behavior from which we infer their presence. We may then teach the behavior directly. (p. 223)
Human behavior is distinguished by the fact that it is affected by small consequences. Describing something with the right word is often reinforcing. So is the clarification of a temporary…
Fortunately, we can solve the problem of education without discovering or inventing additional reinforcers. We merely need to make better use of those we have. (p. 219)
The processes clarified by an experimental analysis of behavior have, of course, always played a part in education, but they have been used with little understanding of their effects, wanted…
All good teachers must “wean” their students, and the machine is no exception. The better the teacher, the more explicit must the weaning process be. (p. 207)
[One] trouble with deliberately making education difficult in order to teach thinking is . . . that we must remain content with the students thus selected, even though we know…
The traditional teacher may . . . be particularly alarmed by the effort to maximize success and minimize failure. He has found that students do not pay attention unless they…
It is a salutary thing to try to guarantee a right response at every step in the presentation of a subject matter. The programmer will usually find that he has…
Whether good programming is to remain an art or to become a scientific technology, it is reassuring to know that there is a final authority—the student. (p. 205)
A simple technique used in programming material . . . is exemplified in teaching a student to recite a poem. The first line is presented with several unimportant letters omitted.…
. . . the [teaching] machine, like the private tutor, reinforces the student for every correct response, using this immediate feedback not only to shape his behavior most efficiently but…
Like a skillful tutor, the [teaching] machine helps the student to come up with the right answer. It does this in part through the orderly construction of the program and…
Like a good tutor, the [teaching] machine presents just that material for which the student is ready. It asks him to take only that step which he is at the…
Like a good tutor, the [teaching] machine insists that a given point be thoroughly understood, either frame by frame or set by set, before the student moves on. Lectures, textbooks,…
Unlike lectures, textbooks, and the usual audio-visual aids, the [teaching] machine induces sustained activity. The student is always alert and busy. (p. 197)
In acquiring complex behavior the student must pass through a carefully designed sequence of steps, often of considerable length. Each step must be so small that it can always be…
Another reason [why the student must compose rather than select a response from alternatives] is that effective multiple-choice material must contain plausible wrong responses, which are out of place in…
An appropriate teaching machine will have several important features. The student must compose his response rather than select it from a set of alternatives, as in a multiple-choice self-rater. One…
In education the behavior to be shaped and maintained is usually verbal, and it is to be brought under the control of both verbal and nonverbal stimuli. Fortunately, the special…
By arranging appropriate “contingencies of reinforcement,” specific forms of behavior can be set up and brought under the control of specific classes of stimuli. The resulting behavior can be maintained…
The emphasis in this research has not been on proving or disproving theories but on discovering and controlling the variables of which learning is a function. This practical orientation has…
The learning process is now much better understood. Much of what we know has come from studying the behavior of lower organisms, but the results hold surprisingly well for human…
Even in a small classroom the teacher usually knows that he is moving too slowly for some students and too fast for others. Those who could go faster are penalized,…
Audio-visual aids . . . serve one function of the teacher: they present material to the student and, when successful, make it so clear and interesting that the student learns.…
When [education has accepted the fact that a sweeping revision of educational practices is possible and inevitable], we may look forward with confidence to a school system which is aware…
We are on the threshold of an exciting and revolutionary period, in which the scientific study of man will be put to work in man’s best interests. (p. 191)
There is a simple job to be done. The task can be stated in concrete terms. The necessary techniques are known. The equipment needed can easily be provided. Nothing stands…
A country which annually produces millions of refrigerators, dish-washers, automatic washing machines, automatic clothes-driers, and automatic garbage disposers can certainly afford the equipment necessary to educate its citizens to high…
There is no reason why the schoolroom should be any less mechanized than, for example, the kitchen. (p. 191)
Marking a set of papers in arithmetic—“Yes, nine and six are fifteen; no, nine and seven are not eighteen”—is beneath the dignity of any intelligent individual. There is more important…
An advancing science continues to offer more and more convincing alternatives to traditional formulations. The behavior in terms of which human thinking must eventually be defined is worth treating in…
It is true that the techniques which are emerging from the experimental study of learning are not designed to “develop the mind” or to further some vague “understanding” of mathematical…
Mathematical behavior is usually regarded, not as a repertoire of responses involving numbers and numerical operations, but as evidences of mathematical ability or the exercise of the power of reason.…
Now, the human organism is, if anything, more sensitive to precise contingencies than the other organisms we have studied. We have every reason to expect, therefore, that the most effective…
There are certain questions which have to be answered in turning to the study of any new organism. What behavior is to be set up? What reinforcers are at hand?…
Education is perhaps the most important branch of scientific technology. It deeply affects the lives of all of us. We can no longer allow the exigencies of a practical situation…
The teacher is usually no happier about [the lack of effective teaching] than the pupil. Denied the opportunity to control via the birch rod, quite at sea as to the…
Most pupils soon claim the asylum of not being “ready” for arithmetic at a given level or, eventually, of not having a mathematical mind. Such explanations are readily seized upon…
Perhaps the most serious criticism of the current classroom is the relative infrequency of reinforcement . . . the total number of contingencies which may be arranged during, say, the…
In a typical classroom, . . . long periods of time customarily elapse . . . Many seconds or minutes intervene between the child’s response and the teacher’s reinforcement. In…
It can easily be demonstrated that, unless explicit mediating behavior has been set up, the lapse of only a few seconds between response and reinforcement destroys most of the effect.…
It was part of the reform movement known as progressive education to make the positive consequences more immediately effective, but anyone who visits the lower grades of the average school…