Rcprintcd from New Scientist (Vol. 122), May 20, 1964

New methods and new aims in teachingby Professor B. F. SkinnerPsychological Laboratories, Harvard University

IMPIXOVING education seldom takes the form of improving

teaching. It is no doubt important to find better teachers,build more and better schools, teach less of what is notneeded, bring what must be taught up to date, and reachmore students through various forms of mass media. Butby 1984, we should hope, teaching itself will also have beenimproved. The experimental analysis of behaviour, humanand animal, has uncovered facts about learning and teachingwhich were not available when current methods were devisedand which should make it possible to improve education inthe plain sense of teaching more in the same time with thesame effort, As a result more students should be taught, andeach should be taught more and taught it more thoroughly.Each student should have a greater choice of programmesand should be able to pursue any one of them more success-fully.

Some gain in this direction will come from a further aban-donment of coercive techniques. The cane has in most quar-ters been discarded, but teachers still use less obvious formsof punishment, and-whether we like to admit it or not-most students still study mainly to avoid the consequencesof not studying, Even at the university level, the commonestpattern is “assign and test”, in which the student is heldresponsible for learning simply in the sense that he will suffercertain unhappy consequences if he fails. In this system itIS never the teacher who fails nor can it be, for “assigningand testing” is not really teaching at all.

It is not enough, however, simply to abandon coercivepractices. The methods of Summerhill are therapeutic ratherthan educational, Nor will it suffice to replace punitivemethods by “enriching” our schools with real life or by turn-lng from textbooks to non-verbal audio-visual media, ThereIS good reason to make what is to be learned as aRrac-tive as possible, but in doing so we often deprive the studentof the chance to .discover that something is interesting whenlooked into. Brightly coloured illustrations in a reading primermay attract the pupil to the text they accompany, but theyentertain the pupi bejore he reads; a page of black-and-white text offers him a much greater opportunity to enjoythe consequences of reading. The audio-visual aids of 1984will be less concerned with attracting and holding attention.

The consequences of behaviour are particularly empha-slsed in the study of what is technically called “operant con-dltloning”, Behaviour reinforced by its consequences is notto be confused with the conditioned reflexes of Pavlov, andonly certain instances of operant reinforcement are appropri-ately called rewards. What is important here is the extra-ordinary power-fully demonstrated both in the laboratoryand in field applications-to change behaviour in specifiedways through properly arranged reinforcements. Students areonly slightly affected by what they get out of their educationIn the long run. It is the immediate consequences of theirbehaviour which must be carefully examined and altered.Unfortunately, we cannot do this simply by applying somegeneral principle of reinforcement, just as we cannot buildbridges simply by applying general principles of stress andstrain. The teacher must become a specialist in a rapidly de-veloping scientific analysis of human behaviour.

The conspicuous signs of the new technology of teachingin 1984 will probably be the “teaching machines” used toarrange the necessary contingencies of reinforcement. It will

be easy to confuse the technology with the equipment. Butmachines are inevitable. Only with the help of appropriatecapital equipment can teachers cope with the problems irn-posed on them by the extraordinary cultural changes and thegrowth in populations characteristic of the twentieth century

Although the word “machine” suggests regimentation,such devices are designed precisely to help the individualstudent. Students were once taught one at a time, and theideal of individualised instruction is still preserved in state-ments of educational policy, but the practice has long sincesuccumbed to the exigencies of teaching large classes.Groups of students move forward at a standard pace. Thosewho could move quickly are held back and grow bored; thosewho work slowly are pulled forward beyond their speed,finding their work more and more difficult, until they eventu-ally give up. But speed of learning, like speed of reading, hasno very important relation to the ultimate quality of thestudent’s work. The system has often been criticised, but aneffective attack upon it has at last come from the effort toarrange the contingencies of reinforcement recommended byan experimental analysis. By 1984 the fast worker will per-haps be permitted to .enjoy his natural advantage, while theslow student will be able to demonstrate that he is capableof comparable achievements given enough time.

Another result of applying recent discoveries concernjnglearning and teaching has been a reconsideration of the “[et-.minal behaviours” which compose the goals of educationJust what changes in the student is the teacher to brmgabout? Current specifications are surprisingly vague. A re-lated result has been the construction of sequences of re-spouses leading to the terminal behaviours thus specified,as the student moves from ignorance to competence, Such se-quences are now commonly called programmed instruction,The Principle is not yet well understood, and poorly designedprogrammes flood the market, hut by 1984 the market placeshould have had its well-known effect. Excellent programmes-better than any now available if the art and science ofprogramming continue to improve-should be available in awide range of subjects.

Many of the subjects may be unrecognisable, however. I!has often been remarked than an educated man has probablyforgotten most of the facts he acquired in school and univer-sity. Education is what survives when what has been learnedhas been forgotten. We teach “subjects” partly becauseteachers are hired as subject-matter specialists and partlybecause competence in a given subject is convenient proofof successful teaching. But we may eventually learn how LOteach the things which comprise the important marks of aneducation. The specific intellectual skills, abilities, attitudes,and tastes which are now taught mainly as by-products ofcontent instruction may, if the experimental analysis of be-haviour is fully exploited, occupy the focus of attention in1984.

There will be teachers in 1984. They will not be, as theynow are, doing things which can be done by machines, butwith the help of machines they will be teaching effectlveiy,Because they will have more to offer society, both theirmorale and their economic status will be improved, Theywill have the satisfaction of knowing that they are importantas people.