Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

115 thinking ability of children and adults. Her strategies are presented in this chapter.... [In 1957 a California State Senate investigative committee exposed the work of Hilda Taba as harmful to children, ed.] (12) Non-Directive Teaching—Rogerian Counseling as a Source. From his studies of coun seling and therapy, Carl Rogers has developed a flexible model of teaching emphasizing an environment which encourages students to create their own environments for learning. (13) Classroom Meeting Model—A Model Drawn from a Stance toward Mental Health. Another therapist, [William] Glasser, has also developed a stance toward teaching—one which emphasized methods easily applicable to the classroom situation.... [In 1971 the Citizens Committee of California, Inc., presented “A Bill of Particulars” for the abolition of Dr. William Glasser’s theory from the Orange County Unified School District which stated in part: “Dr. Glasser has developed a method of education which negates a desire to achieve and compete; destroys respect for authority; expounds a ‘situational ethics’ philosophy; and develops group thinking.” William Glasser’s philosophy is a component of Outcome-Based Education, ed.] (15) Awareness Training—A Model to Increase Human Awareness. Gestalt therapists and other humanistic psychologists have focused on strategies for increasing the awareness and sense of possibilities of individuals. A number of models for sensitivity training have been developed by William Schutz. (16) Operant Conditioning—The pioneering work of B.F. Skinner has been followed by a mass of approaches to teaching and training based on the shaping of learning tasks and use of reinforcement schedules. Several such models are explored here. (17) A Model for Matching Environments to People—The psychologist David Hunt has gen erated a “model of models”—an approach to teaching which suggests how we can match teaching styles to learning styles so as to increase growth toward personal flexibility. (18) The Models Way of Thinking—An Operational Language. The chapter explores the philosophical and practical implications of a stance toward education and includes a spec trum of models which have different uses for different students. The person most responsible for applying behavioral principles to education is B.F. Skinner, whose Theory of Operant Conditioning provided the basis for programmed instruction. The Theory of Operant Conditioning represents the process by which human behav ior becomes shaped into certain patterns by external forces. The theory assumes that any process or activity has observable manifestations and can be behaviorally defined, that is, defined in terms of observable behavior. Either or both of the theory’s two major opera tions, reinforcement and stimulus-control, are emphasized in the educational applications of operant conditioning theory. Conditioning refers to the process of increasing the probability of occurrence of existing or new behavior in an individual by means of reinforcement. In operant conditioning the response (behavior) operates upon the environment to generate consequences. The consequences are contingent upon the emission of a response, and they are rein forcing. For example, the response “Pass the butter” operates upon the environment, another The Serious Seventies : c. 1972 One finds the following information in chapter 16 under the title “Operant Conditioning”: