Deliberate Dumbing Down of America Public Education

Appendix II

Excerpts from Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning

Teaching Machines and Programmed Learning: A Source Book , edited by A.A. Lumsdaine, Program Director, American Institute for Research, Professor of Education, University of California, Los Angeles and Robert Glaser, Professor of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Research Advisor, American Institute for Research (Department of Audio-Visual Instruction, National Education Association, Washington, D.C., 1960). The original studies reported by contributors to this volume also received direct support from the Office of the Air Research and Development Command of the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Office of Education, and a number of other agencies including HumRRO (Department of the Army), the Ford Foundation and the Fund for the Advancement of Education, and several industrial organizations. Acknowledgment should also be made of the support and encouragement provided on several of these projects by the University of Pittsburgh, Harvard University, and a number of other academic institutions. [Preface] Despite great variation in complexity and special features, all of the devices that are currently called “teaching machines” represent some form of variation on what can be called the tutorial or Socratic method of teaching. That is, they present the individual student with programs of questions and answers, problems to be solved, or exercises to be performed. In addition, however, they always provide some type of automatic feedback or correction to the student so that he is immediately informed of his progress at each step and given a basis for correcting his errors. They thus differ from films, TV and most other audio-visual media as ordinarily utilized, because of three important properties. First, continuous active student response is required, providing explicit practice and testing of each step of what is to be learned. Second, a basis is provided for informing the student with minimal delay whether each response he makes is correct, leading him directly or indirectly to correction of his errors. Third, the student proceeds on an individual basis at his own rate—faster students romping through an instructional sequence very rapidly, slower students being tutored as slowly as necessary, with indefinite [ sic ] patience to From “Teaching Machines: An Introductory Overview,” A.A. Lumsdaine:

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