Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

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to develop in his own way. He is limited by what the programmer knows and by how the programmer learned.... It is true that the student might use the material in an original way after he had finished the program, but there is the possibility that programmed instruction interferes with this process. For example, some students who have completed programs report that although they have progressed quickly and satisfactorily and feel that they have learned something, they aren’t sure where to go from here. Typically, the next step is to take an exam, usually of the multiple-choice type, which is highly similar to the program in which that stimuli are presented and responses are chosen. But what happens after the exam? If the student cannot respond unless he is stimulated in the same way he was in the program or exam, he will rarely be able to apply what he has learned to real life situations. What we are dealing with here is the subject of transfer… which is basic to education. Ellis has pointed out that little research has been done on the transferability of programmed learning; in almost all studies the experimenter determines the degree of learning solely on the basis of each child’s performance on a test given immediately after the completion of the program. Skinner maintains that the student can be taught to transfer ideas through separate programs designed for this purpose and that a properly written program will wean the student from the machine, but there is little evidence to back up this contention. On logical grounds alone it seems reasonable to question the transfer value of programmed instruction. Markle notes that in order to ensure that approximately 95 percent of the answers will be correct, as Skinner suggests, programmers are forced to keep revising programs for the lowest common denominator—the slowest students in the group. This eventually leads to programs which most students can complete fairly easily, but it also leads to programs which are oversimplified and repetitious. (pp. 168–171) T HE I NDIVIDUALIZED L EARNING L ETTER (T.I.L.L.) : A DMINISTRATOR ’ S G UIDE TO I MPROVE Learning; Individualized Instruction Methods; Flexible Scheduling; Behavioral Objectives; Study Units; Self-Directed Learning; Accountability, Vol. I (February 22, 1971: T.I.L.L., Huntington, N.Y.) 1 was published and circulated. Excerpts follow: Opting to become a greater force in promoting I.I. (Individualized Instruction), The Northeast Association for Individualization of Instruction (Wyandanch, N.Y.) has gone national—by substituting the word “national” for “northeast.”.... The enlarged 2–1/2 day convention is geared to give registrants more time to watch I.I. in action in live classrooms. Several of the nation’s I.I. leaders already lined up to run workshops include: Dr. Lloyd Bishop, NYU; Dr. Sid Rollins, Rhode Island College; Dr. Robert Scanlon, Research for Better Schools [Research for Better Schools and University of Pittsburgh Learning Research and Development Center (Robert Glaser) were instrumental in development of IPI in the early 1960s, ed.]; Dr. Edward Pino, Superintendent of Cherry Creek Schools (Englewood, CO); Dr. Robert Anderson, Har vard University; Dr. Leon Lessinger, Georgia State University; Dr. Robert Sinclair, University of Massachusetts; Jane Root, Stanford Research Associates; and Dr. Glen Ovard, Brigham Young University. Representatives of USOE, NEA, NY State Department of Education will be present. (The latter supports the conference with an annual grant.).... QUOTES YOU CAN USE: DOWN WITH BOOKS . “Textbooks not only encourage learning at the wrong level (imparting facts rather than telling how to gather facts, etc.), they also violate an important new con cern in American education—individualized instruction.... Textbooks produce superficially