The Technology of Teaching

by B.F. Skinner

Book Overview

B.F. Skinner- The Technology of Teaching paperback This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: 0390812900
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Appleton-Century-Crofts
• Length: 271 Pages

Customer Reviews

The Science of Education

Read about what learning really is all about from the perspective of a behavioral scientist rather than the superstitious nonsense that masquerades as learning in our schools. Our schools educate by the sink or swim method of "education". Students are thrown into the deep end of the pool and if they swim to the side and survive the school claims that they educated them to learn how to swim and takes credit for their learning how to swim and if they need to be rescued or drown or barely make it to the side of the pool the school systems says they were bad people and did not want to learn how to swim. The schools do not teach how to learn any better than throwing someone into the deep end of the pool teaches them how to swim. The sink or swim method of "education" just sorts people out rather than teaching them to learn (swim). Skinner does not have all the answers, but his book has plenty of answers to learning problems and ideas on ways to change education. This book was wriiten in 1968 and except for some dated views on teaching machines, it could have been written yesterday. If you love the status quo and educational ignorance, nonsense and psychobabble, do not read this book. You probably won't be able to read it anyway because it will be way over your head.

One of the most important education books. Ever.

Skinner has written some books that are about theories and principles of behaviorism applied to social or philosophical questions. Unfortunately, these books overlooked what Skinner did best - behavioral analysis. This book sticks to that and how to apply it to education, a field where it can be very useful. I use his techniques with my students. Skinner is also very familiar with the field of Education and implicitly responds to other educational thinkers like Dewey, etc. Skinner often gets a bad rap (and is frequently confused with Pavlov whom he couldn't be more dissimilar from), but he is actually one of the more progressive educational thinkers of all time and was instrumental in raising the standard of care for intellectually disabled people and was adamant about educational reform. He opposes the use of punishment (which most other educational psychologists and philosophers still support) and is quite frank about the fact that we use the threat of force or law to keep children in school. On the other hand, Skinner is not wishy-washy about being firm in the classroom. He is practical. He comes up with procedures for keeping a classroom orderly and the kinds of drill and skill techniques that enhance learning and enhance motivation. Unlike his other books where he talks about Behaviorism, in this one, he shows how to employ these techniques in a classroom. And boy, does it ever work. A caveat - Skinner comes up with what is essentially a computer program for immediate reinforcement, which was prescient of recent developments. Personally, I've seen these programs in action - they're egregious and they don't work because they ignore the grammatical and creative portions of writing to focus on what can be tested the most easily - spelling and vocabulary vis-a-vis fill in the blank questions. They also can't measure something a human finds simple which is the crux of good writing - writing to your audience. To be honest, I'd skim those chapters, unless you want to understand why these programs are in schools. Still, this book is not to be missed by any educator capable of reading it. Skinner writes very clearly and his ideas and insight are not to be missed. It is one of the best books ever written on Pedagogy and easily the most scientific.