Before the cognitivist revolution of the 1960s and 70s, behaviorism was the key theory and practice utilized in educating America’s youth. Behaviorists believe that learning and behavior relies on previous stimuli associated (by the individual) with the current action taking place. The most famous psychological experiment in dealing with behaviorism is that of Pavlov’s dog: Pavlov would ring a bell before feeding the dog, and eventually the dog began to salivate at the sound of a bell. The problem with this, especially in dealing with human beings, is that such classical conditioning leads one to respond the same way after, for example, hearing a church bell. In other words, the stimulus has no true association with the concurrent behavior. This theoretical practice was furthered by Skinner, who saw reward and punishment as a means to education. Again, in no way does the act of giving a piece of candy to a student for a correct answer affect that student’s ethereal understanding of his correct answer. The student only knows that a correct answer will earn him a reward, so he better know how to spell “onomatopoeia,” or else. The problems become obvious later in life: rewards are not always given for correct behavior (ie: a policeman will never pull you over and give you $100 for stopping at a stop sign), and furthermore, those who have grown up under a behaviorist education may begin to see superficial rewards (such as a high salary in a job they hate) as worth the suffering they go through day after day. Not only will behaviorist-reared children come to expect rewards for good deeds throughout life, but they will also shut down if a reward is not given. Therein lies the true problem of a behaviorist approach to learning.
A behaviorist approach to education relies on reactive, rather than proactive, learning. Everything taken in by the child has been force-fed to them in one way or another, rather than giving the child the opportunity to seek out new explanations or observations. There leaves no room for abstract thinking-only concrete answers. To use a metaphor from the previous paper, behaviorists see the mind as a hallway of lockers for information. Because of this, the knowledge taken in by students is locked away, only to be taken out when needed and put back in its place when not. There is no comprehension or investigating as to why “I comes before E except after C…” only the knowledge that it is how it is. Learning is disconnected, as students will not look to previous knowledge in order to solve a new problem; rather they will wait to be force-fed the solution by the teacher they have come to rely on for answers. Obviously, this approach will almost undoubtedly leave many children without a sense of self-efficacy, as they will constantly rely on someone else for knowledge, rather than use their own brain at the risk of coming up with the wrong answer.
I have heard the saying “I will know I have done my job as a teacher when my students no longer need me.” This is anything but a behaviorist statement. The behaviorist sees children as computers, and him or herself as the person at the keyboard putting out information to be soaked up as is. To a behaviorist, the student will always need a teacher, until the student knows exactly what the teacher wants the student to know. The behaviorist knows only “black” and “white,” “correct” and “incorrect,” leaving no room for interpretation or explanation. The problem, of course, is that too many students fall in the grey area, unsure of themselves and the world around them-and, sadly, the behaviorist sees a hint of black and shuts these children down for being “wrong.”
A behaviorist approach to education is arbitrary at best. The behaviorist believes what is to be learned is given out, and should be regurgitated exactly as it was put in. If the information is thrown back at the teacher, an arbitrary reward that has nothing to do with the information is given. Rules are memorized, and “tricks” are used without a true understanding of why they work. A behaviorist may give a multiple-choice test with the directions stating, “Choose your best answer from A B C or D,” when in actuality the directions mean, “Choose the correct answer or you are wrong.” There is no inquiry as to why a student chose a different answer; only the concrete fact that it was the wrong answer. Because of this, that child who may have been on the “right track, wrong train,” so to speak, may fail the test, and never get a chance to prove to the teacher that he actually was using every ounce of his brainpower while taking the exam. The terrors faced by many “grey area” students in a behaviorist’s class is truly overwhelming, and will not only ostracize them from their peers, but will also put a lock on all of the “empty lockers” these students have which, given a different approach, would be open to new knowledge for a lifetime.
