Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

77 change through funding, in Implementing PPB in State, City and County: A Report on the 5–5–5 Project . (State-Local Finances Project of The George Washington University: Washington, D.C., June, 1969). This entry summarizes this Report , published in cooperation with: The Council of State Governments, The International City Managers Association, The National Association of Counties, The National Governors’ Conference, The National League of Cities, and The United States Conference of Mayors. The Sick Sixties : c. 1968

1968

B.F. S KINNER : T HE M AN AND H IS I DEAS BY R ICHARD I. E VANS WAS PUBLISHED (D UTTON and Com pany: New York, 1968). Evans’s excellent critique of the totalitarian views of Professor Skinner was funded by the National Science Foundation. Extensive quotes from this book are included in Appendix XXIV. A few pertinent excerpts follow: “I could make a pigeon a high achiever by reinforcing it on a proper schedule.”... His [Skin ner’s] concern for what he believes to be the inadequacy of our formal education system led to applying the principles of operant conditioning to a learning system which he called the teaching machine, but Skinner’s approach is concerned with more than merely methods and techniques. He challenges the very foundations by which man in our society is shaped and controlled. (p. 10)… …“[F]or the purpose of analyzing behavior we have to assume man is a machine. (p. 24) ...You can induce him to behave according to the dictates of society instead of his own selfish interest.” (p. 42)… …“I should not bother with ordinary learning theory, for example. I would eliminate most sensory psychology and I would give them no cognitive psychology whatsoever [mean ing the students, ed.].” (p. 91)“ ...It isn’t the person who is important, it’s the method. If the practice of psychology survives, that’s the main objective. It’s the same with cultural practices in general: no one survives as a person.” (p. 96) “...It does bother me that thousands of teach ers don’t understand, because immediate gains are more likely in the classroom than in the clinic. Teachers will eventually know—they must [understand]—and I am more concerned with promoting my theories in education [operant conditioning].” (p. 96) “...I should like to see our government set up a large educational agency in which specialists could be sent to train teachers.” (p. 109) In 1953 Skinner wrote Science and Human Behavior (Macmillan & Co.: New York, 1953), within which is found the following quote: A rather obvious solution is to distribute the control of human behavior among many agencies which have so little in common that they are not likely to join together in a despotic unit. In general this is the argument for democracy against totalitarianism. In a totalitarian state all agencies are brought together under a single super-agency. [Ed. Note: Obviously, even before the U.S. Department of Education was established and orga nized teacher in-service training had taken a behaviorist (performance-based) turn, Skinner was advocating these very operant conditioning methods in all phases of education. Beginning in 1965, the federal government implemented several teacher education programs based on per formance—performance-based teacher education—which would fulfill Skinner’s plan. Skinner