Defence of Skinner as early ed reform critic B F Skinner facts and Direct Instruction Date sent: Sun, 25 Jan 1998 13:53:39 -0500 To: education-consumers@tricon.net From: "J. E. Stone" Subject: B F Skinner facts and Direct Instruction At the risk of needlessly burning up everyone's time with something that has been previously discussed at length, I want to add to David Feeney's remarks about B. F. Skinner and his daughter, Professor Julie Skinner Vargas at West Virginia University. I have know Professor Vargas and her husband, Professor Ernest Vargas, for years. I see them at scholarly meetings. Not only are they well published educational psychologists, they are among the few teacher-educators who would agree practically all of the criticisms of public schooling that one reads in the ClearingHouse! Knowing of their spoken and written views on education, they would shout for joy in reading Hirsch's THE SCHOOLS WE NEED AND WHY WE DON'T HAVE THEM. In fact some years ago, Ernest Vargas and I worked on a paper about the adversities confronted by teacher-educators who do not adhere to the progressive/learner-centered orthodoxy. I mention all of this because the same ill-informed criticisms of Direct Instruction that I saw a year or so ago on another list are again bubbling up. The discussion at that time was prompted by some rather personal attacks on the character of Professor Doug Carnine--a well known proponent of DI. These recent discussions have pertained to the Federal legislative proposal mandating that reading instruction be grounded in replicable research. I do not like the idea of the Federal government having direct involvement in this kind of education issue, but Direct Instruction would well fit the legal requirement. The material below was my attempt to sort out some of these issues for the loop last year. Having taught learning theory for 25 or so years, I would urge those who repeatedly criticize DI and Skinner to inform themselves more thoroughly about that which they criticize. In fact, I may post one of Skinner's articles on education just so the everyone can judge his ideas for themselves. I have no objection to disagreement with Direct Instruction or Skinner, but most of those which I have seen posted are based on fundamentally flawed understanding of their object. John ************************************************************** Discussion of DI and Carnine on THE LOOP from January 1997. I know Doug Carnine personally and have known of him professionally for years. I can tell you unequivocally that he is NOT on the side of the educational establishment and, to the contrary, is one of the greatest friends we have in the academic/educational world. He and Ziggy Engelmann are among a very small group of educational psychologists who have been opposed to the all of the pedagogically correct nonsense (progressive education, whole language, open classrooms, developmentally appropriate instruction, etc.) and their precursors since these ideas originated in the nineteen sixties. I might add that they have had their brains beaten out by the schooling establishment for their efforts. In fact, it may shock you to know that B. F. Skinner was himself was among the first and certainly among the most visible of the early opponents of what was then called humanistic education. This is back in the early to mid sixties when the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California and Carl Rogers were leading the way in convincing the education world that improved self-esteem should be the primary aim of education. Roger's ON BECOMING A PERSON and A. S. Neill's SUMMERHILL were mandatory reading for education majors at the time. This is back in the days when Dr. William Coulson who is now one our best friends in the fight against all of the above was, I believe, with the Esalen Institute. Contrary to something I read about a philosophic alignment between Skinner and Rogers--perhaps written by Anita Hoge--there was such a disagreement between the two that one of the intellectual highlights of era (in education circles) was a series of debates between Skinner and Rogers broadcast on public radio. Skinner basically argued that schools should seek objectives of the sort we today associate with E. D. Hirsch's Core Knowledge curriculum and that we should use teaching methods that will assure that kids learn. Rogers argued that "personal growth" should be education's main concern and that teacher and parent efforts to instill specific knowledge, beliefs, and values would prevent true "growth." I can tell you all of this with a great deal of confidence because I was a graduate student first at the University of Kentucky and later at the University of Florida while it was happening. I have met Rogers and Skinner and I studied under Art Combs who was another of the leading humanistic thinkers of the era. I worked with Ira Gordon who was the director of the Piagetian based Parent Training Model in the Follow Through project--one of the early programs for federally sponsored educational intervention into families. I can tell you that if it were not for people like Engelmann and Carnine, there would have been no one saying that the problem of getting kids to learn in schools does not require families (and society) to be straightened out, it requires the schools and the theories taught in the teacher training programs to be straightened out. I don't want to bore you with a dissertation on the topic but there is fundamental problem that we consumers of education have in being clear about what we favor and what we oppose. This controversy about Carnine and Direct Instruction is just the most recent illustration. Some educational programs and techniques are hopelessly flawed but many can be used for good or for ill. Miseducation frequently arises when good techniques are twisted to fit an agenda that is contrary to that which parents and communities intend. Many valid education initiatives are subject to being perverted in this way. For example, "choice" and homeschooling are both excellent policies but they could be turned to miseducation by teaching that trains kids to be pickpockets or prostitutes. The real problem is not the particular education program or technique so much as it is a monopolistic education establishment selectively adopting and shaping programs and techniques in ways that fit their purposes and not those of parents and taxpayers. In other words, we need to look at results, not theory. Mastery learning has been destroyed by that process. It started off as an approach to teaching that said good teaching is that teaching which results in measurable student achievement. The idea was that teachers will specify that which students are expected to learn and they will consider they have done a good job only when students can show that they have learned that which was expected. This concept of teaching success was a great advancement over the traditional concept embraced by the education establishment, i.e., good teaching is more or less a matter of doing what the teacher training programs say is good teaching, i.e., it is the process that counts, not the results. With the traditional definition, students might experience so called "good teaching" and learn nothing. Of course, after the various state departments of education and people like Bill Spady got finished with mastery learning, it effectively became a device for dumbing down education (everyone had to reach the same lowest common denominator) and it was redirected from its original academic aims to affective and personal and social development objectives. Look at Charles Sykes assessment in DUMBING DOWN OUR KIDS. To my knowledge, the original mastery learning people are as opposed to what is now ML and OBE as everyone in the LOOP is. Skinner and behaviorism has been misunderstood, misused, and trashed to the point that it would be laughable if the consequences weren't so serious. What is especially crazy is that the academics who hate the Skinnerians the worst are the liberal/progressive/developmentalist touchy-feely crowd who refer to people such as those of us who inhabit the LOOP as wacko Christian fundamentalist right-wing extremists. The mistaken linkage of Skinner with Carl Rogers is well known and use to discredit the several books written by parent critics. They think its hilarious that methodologies like Direct Instruction are attacked by the very people they are intended to help. They will probably be hysterical when they hear that Doug Carnine is under fire. I have nothing but the greatest appreciation of authors like Charlotte Iserbyt, Peg Luksik, Pam Hoffecker, Berit Kjos, Anita Hoge who have plunged in, raised issues, asked questions, challenged answers, and done some very thoughtful research. The truth is that much of the information we get from the public education establishment is biased and self-serving. We aren't going to get otherwise unless we become informed ourselves but we need to be sure about the details. Direct Instruction and the DI Follow Through model were the work of a small group of researchers who were very much from outside the mainstream education establishment. The education research community did everything they could to keep them out. They were funded reluctantly but their evidence was irrefutable and the feds could not legally reject them. The government spent $500,000,000 (1975 dollars) over a period of 7 years to compare all of the best approaches to education. Despite less-than-hospitable circumstances, Direct Instruction was the only model that enabled disadvantaged kids to keep up with non-disadvantaged peers. The other approaches--mostly ones based on humanistic/developmentalist thinking--ACTUALLY PRODUCED WORSE RESULTS THAN THOSE HAD BY DISADVANTAGED KIDS WHO WERE NOT ENROLLED IN ANY PROGRAM. The establishment was outraged and the whole assessment of Follow Through conducted by Abt Associates was attacked in Harvard Educational Review. (If you are interested in knowing where much of the nutty stuff you fight in your local school originates, pick up a copy and take a look.) When all attempts to discredit DI and Follow Through failed, the ed establishment types managed to manipulate the federal National Diffusion Network into disseminating all the Follow Through models as equally worthy. It is true that DI is informed by behavior principles and that it employs phonics. More importantly, however, it is a teaching methodology that is pragmatically shaped by the results it produces and not by doctrinal considerations. In the classroom it looks like a fun version of the drill and practice that was routinely used in schools years ago. It is, in my opinion, one of the most promising and best vindicated approaches in all of educational research. It indeed would be a tragedy (as well as an incredible windfall victory for the education establishment) for Direct Instruction to be rejected. As a professor whose discipline is educational psychology, I can't resist a parting word about behaviorism generally. Skinner's primary interest was not education. Rather his aim was to move psychology away from philosophy and Freud and toward the natural sciences. His "experimental analysis of behavior" led to a science of behavior that is science in same sense that physics and chemistry are science. It is no more pro or anti Christian than physics or chemistry. Applied to education, it stands for the idea that a researcher can claim a teaching method works only if that method is tried out under controlled conditions and shown to work. His experimental analysis of behavior with animal subjects led to the discovery of operant conditioning, i.e., how reinforcers work. These are what most of us call incentives and disincentives. For example, if a teacher tells a child that they must finish their math before they can read a favorite book a behavior analyst would say that the teacher established a positively reinforcing contingency. Skinner's colleagues and followers applied operant principles to some of the most formidable problems in education and psychiatry and had enormous success. Ivar Lovaas at UCLA succeeded in developing a program for treatment of a virtually untreatable condition called early infantile autism. Others did wonders in helping children with all forms of retardation. The numbers of children who have been saved from being warehoused for a lifetime by operant conditioning is staggering. The same kind of successes were encountered in treatment of mental health problems and in the care of patients at institutions. Most notably, patients with disabling conditions like panic disorders and a wide range of phobias have been successfully treated. I could go on at length in this vein. The point is that his science has proven valid and successful in the real world. Although one hears of "behavior modification" being applied in the public schools, there are extremely few competent practitioners other than in special education. The reason is that despite a burst of interest in the late sixties and early seventies, virtually all the teacher training programs rejected behavioral teaching methodologies by virtue of their disagreement with the progressive/developmentalist/humanistic orthodoxy that has been around since the time of Dewey, Hall, and Kilpatrick. The vast majority of negative publicity one hears about "behaviorism" comes from the trashing it routinely receives in schools of education and from misapplications in the public schools by teachers and administrators who may be trying to do a better job but who just don't know what they are doing. These are some of the absolute worst instances of wrongful experimentation in the school setting. Forgive me for going on at such length, but I would have been remiss had I not urged you to learn more about Direct Instruction before concluding that it is somehow irreconcilably opposed to educational aims of responsible parents and teachers. Regards, John EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE Subject: B. F. Skinner Facts Date sent: Sat, 24 Jan 98 20:19:52 -0000 From: "David R. Feeney" On 1/24/98 11:16 PM, Quentin49 wrote: >Skinner was all wet in this area, screwed up >his >own child with his "baby box" experiments, but some of the techniques he >discovered have been useful in improving learning instruction. It is sad to see these inaccuracies persist about B. F. Skinner. Here are some facts: B. F. Skinner, who died in August, 1990, had two daughters. Both are still alive, in late middle age and degreed, well adjusted individuals. Deborah Skinner is a professional artist in Great Britain. Julie Skinner Vargas is a tenured professor of educational psychology at West Virginia University, and was a member of my thesis committee. Julie also administers the B. F. Skinner Foundation in Cambridge, MA. Julie, in particular, was well acquainted with the peculiar cultural myth of "Skinner kept his daughter in a box, and she committed suicide". Julie shared the humor that often ensued from correcting people in a way only she, Skinner's living daughter, could. I won't bore anyone by discussing: *Skinner's lasting contributions to psychology and education; *Skinner's respect for biological explanations of behavior; *Skinner's use of the Aircrib, the socalled "baby box" (which was reviewed favorably by Good Housekeeping magazine in the 1940's... and which was a forerunner of the modern incubator seen in any hospital maternity ward). However, it is important for people to have accurate facts about behavior analysis, and that means correcting pernicious myths about Burrhus Frederick Skinner. Neither of Skinner's two adult daughters were harmed, in any way, through abuse or baby box "experiments". For more information: The B. F. Skinner Foundation web: http://www.lafayette.edu/allanr/skinner.html The B. F. Skinner Foundation email: bfsf@wvu.edu Thank you, David R. Feeney, Webmaster BALANCE: Behavior Analysis League for Accuracy in News, Commentary, and Education -------------------------- The BALANCE Website is a public service of OnLearn/Online Learning Center http://www.onlearn.com EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE From: Quentin49 Date sent: Sat, 24 Jan 1998 18:17:35 EST To: mkfields@rma.edu Copies to: education-consumers@tricon.net Subject: Re: DISTAR Schools Organization: AOL (http://www.aol.com) I have followed your thread on this dicussion with some interest. I have some read Ziegfried Engelmann's books on Direct Instruction and so I think I know what the technique advocates. You are correct in recognizing that it does use a strong dose of stimulus-response-stimulus in the instructional method. The method is highly teacher-directed, but it does not allow the students to be passive. It is also a very highly teacher-student interactive method with the teacher asking many questions and requiring responses from the students. I personally do not see this as bad in leading a lecture-discussion type of format. My Calculus teacher in college led the class in this manner and I found it very conducive to understanding some very tough concepts. It was never boring. I disagree strongly with the suggestion that DI teaches skills taught in complete isolation. This is not at all what Engelmann describes in his books. In DI the classes are scripted, but they are done in a very sequential manner so that each topic builds upon the previous one, there is frequent review and the teacher is supposed to assess how well the students are understanding the concepts through the question-answer responses they get. The intent is comprehension and understanding at a fundamental level, not simple rote memorization and regurgitation. I am also familiar with the ABeka program and know several home schoolers that use it. The description of what you gave for the instructional methods differs substantially only in the fact one is meant to be applied to a single student-tutor situation and the other is used in a group-teacher environment. Attention control techniques with a group differ from those that work with one child. DI requires a fact-based curriculum delivered in an orderly fashion. There is spiraling, although not as much as is required by other methods. Likewise the DI instruction moves from the simple to the complex in math, science and reading. I don't think you would be able to perceive much difference in the content between the ABeka and a good DI curriculum. I agree that BF Skinner was a rather odd, atheistic individual who believed people were simple products of their environments and could be programmed accordingly. I think time has proven most of these ideas of his to be quite false. In particular, the studies on twins separated at birth, has shown that environment plays a much smaller role than anyone conceived in a person's personality and development. Skinner was all wet in this area, screwed up his own child with his "baby box" experiments, but some of the techniques he discovered have been useful in improving learning instruction. I also disagree with you in the Mastery Learning/ABeka comparison. The mastery learning "model" very much matches what you described you do with ABeka. However, very few such models were ever implemented. Most used the ML technique and applied all sorts of other notions to it that guranteed it would never work. An ML model constructed around a solid curriculum and conducted in a small/single group setting will work well. On a large group, where it was supposed to be used, it fails most of the time. Part of the reason the education battles are so hard is that people look for black and white solutions in philosophy and methods. As an engineer, I definitely fall into that category. I prefer an absolute proof to a fuzzy defense every time. What I have found in education is that there are few totallly black/white situations. There are some pretty dark grey ones though. Even the worst progressive methods have some elements to them that are sound. If we could grab those strands and put them together into a single philosophy, weed out all of the nonsense, we might be able to reach a good compromise. It would not be black and white and it might not fit all settings. The radical progressive model is essentially a model of anarchy with no teacher input and total student control. On the other side are mind control techniques meant to brainwash rather than educate. Real education is somewhere between these two spectrums. Today there are very few of the "mind control" methods being employed -- except by the progressives who claim to disdain them! I do NOT think DI or DISTAR fall into the category of "mind control". They are simply improvements to good teacher-directed teaching methods we already were using. Sure it could be misused, but I certainly do not think this is what Engelmann advocates and it is not what occurs in general practice. The fact that some of these techniques correspond to what BF Skinner also found and advocated does not mean that we should discard them. If we do this in every case, there is NO technique we will ever keep. The program you outlined that ABeka uses is sound and would be acceptable by me and many others on this loop. What I know of DI would lead me to say the same for it. What I know of "student-centered" education methods and whole language would lead me to NOT advocate their use. This is based on the efficacy of the method, not the people who may have worked on the particular philosophies at one time or another. I think we do have to remain somewhat flexible in this or we will lose sight of the real goal -- a good education for our children. Thanks again for your simulating comments. EDUCATION CONSUMERS CLEARINGHOUSE