In an American school if you ask for the salt in good French, you get an A. In France you get the salt. The difference reveals the nature of educational control. Education is the establishing of behavior which will be of advantage to the individual and to others at some future time. The behavior will eventually be reinforced in many of the ways we have already considered; meanwhile reinforcements are arranged by the educational agency for the purposes of conditioning. The reinforcers it uses are artificial, as such expressions as “drill,” “exercise,” and “practice” suggest.
Education emphasizes the acquisition of behavior rather than its maintenance. Where religious, governmental, and economic control is concerned with making certain kinds of behavior more probable, educational reinforcement simply makes special forms more probable under special circumstances. In preparing the individual for situations which have not as yet arisen, discriminative operants are brought under the control of stimuli which will probably occur in these situations. Eventually, noneducational consequences determine whether the individual will continue to behave in the same fashion. Education would be pointless if other consequences were not eventually forthcoming, since the behavior of the controllee at the moment when he is being educated is of no particular importance to any one.
The immediate family functions as an educational agency in teaching the child to walk, to talk, to play, to eat in a given way, to dress himself, and so on. It uses the primary reinforcers available to the family: food, drink, and warmth, and such conditioned reinforcers as attention, approval, and affection. The family sometimes engages in education for obvious reasons—for example, because the child is converted into a useful member. The “pride” which a parent takes in the achievements of his children does not provide an explanation, since the term simply describes the fact that the achievement of a child is reinforcing. This fact appears to depend upon the culture. The individual continues to receive many forms of casual instruction from members of the group outside his family, where the variables available to the group are similar to those in ethical control (Chapter XXI). Certain forms of behavior are classified as good or right and others as bad or wrong and are reinforced accordingly. It is not always clear why this is done, however. An extension of ethical control to education may, like family pride, have special advantages for the group, in which case it can be explained only through an analysis of cultural practices (Section VI).
The artisan teaches an apprentice because in so doing he acquires a useful helper, and industries teach those who work for them for a similar reason. The reinforcers are usually economic. When a government engages in military training to improve the efficiency of its armed forces, the techniques are usually based upon punishment or the threat of punishment. When religious agencies turn to education to supplement other techniques, they also use the variables peculiarly under their control. The educational agency, then, is not distinguished by the nature of its variables but in the use to which they are put. There is a difference between the use of economic power to induce an apprentice to work and to induce him to acquire effective forms of behavior, between the use of the threat of punishment to induce a soldier to fight and to induce him to fight effectively, and between the use of the power peculiarly available to the religious agency to reinforce pious behavior and to teach a catechism.
The educational institution. A more explicit educational agency requires special treatment. Education is a profession, the members of which engage in education primarily because of economic reinforcement. As in many other professions, reinforcements supplied by the ethical group are also often important: teaching is not only a way of earning a living, it is “a good thing to do.” In explaining the presence of educational institutions in a given community, then, we have to explain the behavior of those who pay for or approve those who teach. What is received by them in return?
The private tutor extends family education, and the family pays for his services for the same reason it educates its children directly. The private school is a collaborative effort of the same sort. Religious or trade schools are similar extensions of the activities of other agencies. In explaining public education, certain immediate benefits to the group as a whole may be pointed out. The lower grades of the public schools take over the educational function of the family, supervise the children during part of the day, generate behavior which is useful to the family and the community and which permits the family to escape censure. Comparable results from the education of older children are not always clear, and this fact raises a practical as well as a theoretical difficulty. The explicit educational agency is not found in every culture, and the extent to which a given group supports it may vary widely from time to time. When those who supply the ultimate power, economic or otherwise, do not receive sufficient reinforcement for doing so, they withdraw their support. Yet educators seldom attempt to increase the return benefits or to make them more effective as reinforcers.
Aside from any immediate return we have to note the possible long-term effect of education. Like family pride or education by members of the group, the explicit educational institution may be explained by a different sort of consequence to the group to be considered in Section VI.
The reinforcers used by established educational institutions are familiar: they consist of good grades, promotions, Phi Beta Kappa keys, diplomas, degrees, and medals, all of which are associated with the generalized reinforcer of approval. The spelling bee is a familiar device which makes approval or other social reinforcers explicitly contingent upon scholastic behavior. The same technique is represented by modern quiz programs in which “knowledge is reinforced for its own sake.” A certain exchange value is evident when the recently educated individual is offered a job or is automatically admitted to membership in certain controlling groups. The educational agency usually wields no economic power itself, however, except for prizes, fellowships, and scholarships. Some reinforcers may be available in the form of privileges. The institution may also have the support of the family which makes primary or conditioned reinforcers contingent upon a level of scholastic achievement—for example, by granting a special allowance to the student who maintains a certain average. During World War II some military education was taken over by educational institutions, and a new and important reinforcer then became available to the teacher in the form of military advancement.
The venerable place of punishment in educational control is represented by the birch rod and the cane, as well as by the condoning of certain forms of disciplinary violence—for example, hazings. Extreme forms of physical punishment have now been generally abandoned, but we have noted the general rule that when one aversive consequence is dropped, another is often created to take its place. Just as wages paid on a fixed-interval schedule may eventually be used to supply aversive stimulation in the form of a threat of dismissal, so the teacher of small children who does not spank may nevertheless threaten to withdraw approval or affection in a form of aversive control. In the same way, the positive reinforcers available to schools and colleges are often used as the basis for conditioned aversive stimulation in the form of a threat of failure or dismissal.
By-products of control through punishment have always been conspicuous features of educational institutions. Hell-raisings, riots, hazings, and truancy are forms of counteraggression or escape which follow the analysis of Chapter XXIV. Somewhat more neurotic byproducts are common. The advantages to be gained in turning to other techniques of control are therefore obvious. But one mode of control cannot be given up until something else is ready to take its place, and there is evidence that the educational institution at the moment lacks adequate control. Not only has the educator relinquished the birch rod; he can no longer borrow discipline from family practices based on aversive control. As more and more people are educated, the honorific reinforcements of education are weakened; fewer special advantages are now contingent upon education. With increasing social security the economic consequences of an education are also less important; relatively fewer students are out to “make good” in amassing wealth or at least in escaping the threat of a destitute old age.
Educational institutions have, therefore, turned to alternative methods of control. The teacher, often unwillingly, uses the sources of power available to him in personal control to make himself or his teaching interesting; in other words, he becomes an entertainer. Textbooks are supplied with pictures and diagrams which resemble expositions of the subject matter in magazines or the press, and lectures are supplemented with demonstrations and “visual aids.” Especially favorable circumstances for the execution of the behavior to be controlled by the educational institution are arranged: libraries are designed to make books more readily accessible, laboratories are expanded and improved, facilities are provided for field trips and periods of study in especially favorable locations. Subjects which are not easily adapted to these techniques are often minimized or discarded.
The term “progressive education” roughly describes a concerted effort to find substitutes for the spurious reinforcements of educational control. Consequences of the sort which will eventually govern the behavior of the student are brought into the educational situation. Under the traditional system the student who is reinforced for speaking French correctly by an A is eventually reinforced, if at all, when he enjoys books written in French or communicates effectively in a French-speaking community. In progressive education, these “natural” or “functional” reinforcements are employed by the educational agency as soon as possible. Similarly, the student who is studying science is reinforced as soon as possible by his increasing competence in dealing with nature. By permitting a wider choice of what is to be studied, the probability is increased that scholastic behavior will receive such noneducational reinforcement at an early date. It has perhaps always been characteristic of good education to introduce “real” consequences, but progressive education has made an effort to do this as often and as soon as possible. A common objection has been that certain fields of study are thus unduly emphasized at the expense of others in which disciplinary training with merely educational reinforcement cannot be avoided.
The conditioned reinforcers of the educational agency may be made more effective by pointing up the connection with natural contingencies to be encountered later. By informing the student of the advantages to be gained from education, education itself may be given reinforcing value. Many educational institutions have therefore turned to counseling and various forms of therapy as auxiliary techniques.
When educational reinforcements are made contingent upon topographical or intensive properties of behavior, the result is called skill. The differentiation discussed in Chapter VI is characteristic of training in painting, music, handwriting, speaking, sports, and crafts. The noneducational reinforcements which eventually take control are the special consequences of skilled behavior. In teaching a man to play tennis some such educational reinforcer as the verbal stimulus “Good!” or “That’s right!” is made contingent upon the proper grip, the proper stroke, the proper timing, and so on. The resulting “good form” is eventually maintained by the natural consequences of the flight of the ball. Similarly, the educational reinforcement of good technique in painting is eventually replaced by the production of pictures which are in themselves reinforcing. Technical skill in the operation of tools and machines leads first to the approval of the instructor and then to the successful production of objects which are reinforcing.
Knowledge. The entity which is traditionally said to be maximized by education is called “knowledge.” The term refers to some of the most complex kinds of human behavior, and it is therefore not surprising that it has seldom been clearly defined or effectively employed in evaluating educational practices. We sometimes use the term to represent simply the probability of skilled behavior. A man “knows how to write” in the sense that he possesses behavior with pen and paper which will be emitted under suitable circumstances and will generate certain kinds of marks. In a similar sense he knows how to hit a tennis ball or sing a tune or draw a straight line. Usually, however, knowledge refers to a controlling relation between behavior and discriminative stimuli. The response may be skilled, but we are concerned primarily with whether it will be made upon the proper occasion. Thus, skilled movements are needed in driving a car, but knowing how to drive a car is making the proper responses at appropriate times. One knows how to repair a radio in the sense, not of being able to manipulate pliers, screw driver, and soldering iron, but of manipulating them in appropriate places.
Most knowledge acquired in education is verbal. The stimuli which constitute the appropriate occasions may be verbal or nonverbal. A child “knows the alphabet,” not because he can pronounce the names of the letters, but because he can do so in the proper order. One letter or group of letters is the occasion for pronouncing the letter which follows. He “knows the capital of Peru” in the sense that he will correctly answer when asked what the capital is or will make statements about the capital in discussing Peru, and so on. A man “knows his table of integrals” in the sense that under suitable circumstances he will recite it, make corresponding substitutions in the course of a calculation, and so on. He “knows his history” in the sense of possessing another highly complex repertoire. In rare instances parts of the historical repertoire are controlled by nonverbal stimuli—the primary data of history; but historical knowledge is largely verbal behavior in response to verbal stimuli. The repertoire is useful primarily when the individual is in contact with other individuals possessing similar knowledge. In other kinds of knowledge, particularly in science, a greater part of the discriminative stimuli may be nonverbal, and the repertoire is useful primarily in enabling the individual to act effectively with respect to nature. We need not regard such repertoires as “signs” of knowledge but rather as knowledge itself. Knowledge enables the individual to react successfully to the world about him just because it is the very behavior with which he does so.
The contention that a knowledge of history, for example, is simply a verbal repertoire does not mean that education is merely rote learning. The student comes also to understand the facts of history. An adequate explanation of what this means would require an exhaustive analysis of verbal behavior which cannot be given here.1 The individual agrees with a statement about a historical event in the sense that he shows a high probability of making the statement himself. The growing understanding with which he reads and rereads a passage describing a period in history may also be identified with the growing probability that he will emit verbal responses similar to those which comprise the passage. But the high probability which characterizes agreement or understanding may have many sources; knowledge of a given field is coherent and well integrated to the extent that these multiple sources of strength are generally consistent. So far as the present point is concerned, we may note simply that the supplementary sources of strength which distinguish “understanding” from “tending to say” do not require us to modify the view that knowledge is a repertoire of behavior. Understanding is a collateral issue which concerns the variables of which such a repertoire is a function.
A verbal repertoire also gains importance from the fact that it may have concurrent effects upon other behavior of the individual. One such effect is most easily observed when the verbal repertoire and the change in behavior are located in different organisms. The speaker has many effects upon the listener. One of these may conveniently be called “instruction.” The verbal stimulus generated by the speaker alters the probability of a verbal or nonverbal response in the listener. Let us assume, for example, that a man is familiar with electrical apparatus and possesses a set of avoidance responses controlled by parts of such an apparatus which are electrically charged or “hot.” In working with a new piece of apparatus, he acquires, perhaps apart from any verbal instruction, appropriate avoidance behavior with respect to certain features. The process is naturally aversive and may not be necessary if the individual is instructed in the use of the apparatus. When he is told, for example, that certain terminals are hot, he avoids them even though he has not received aversive stimulation from them. But the process of being told is complex. The instruction involves the pairing of two stimuli—a complex verbal stimulus generated as the speaker says “this terminal” and points to a part of the apparatus and the verbal stimulus “hot.” The occurrence of these stimuli together has an effect similar to that of respondent conditioning; the object identified as “this terminal” subsequently evokes the avoidance behavior appropriate to objects designated “hot.” As we observe in the behavior of children, the capacity to be affected by verbal behavior in this way develops only very slowly.
An educational institution often directly instructs the student in this sense, but it usually functions by establishing a complex verbal repertoire which the student later uses in what may be called self-instruction. The speaker and the listener now inhabit the same skin. Upon a given occasion verbal behavior is evoked which instructs the student himself in nonverbal behavior. In a simple example, the student memorizes a set of instructions and then later correctly operates the device to which they are appropriate. In a far more complex example, he acquires an extensive historical repertoire and then deals effectively with a current situation when some of the responses in that repertoire instruct him appropriately.
If we take knowledge to include not only a repertoire as such, but all the effects which the repertoire may have upon other behavior, then the acquisition of knowledge in education is obviously far more than rote learning. Moreover, the educational institution does more than impart knowledge even in this broad sense. It teaches the student to think, in the sense of Chapter XVI. It establishes a special repertoire which has as its effect the manipulation of variables which encourage the appearance of solutions to problems. The student learns to observe, to assemble relevant materials, to organize them, and to propose tentative solutions. Such a practice is essential in preparing him for some kinds of future occasions. We saw that the ethical group and religious and governmental agencies cannot simply establish good, pious, or legal forms of behavior, but must also set up processes of self-control which will enable the individual himself to arrive at good, pious, or legal behavior on novel occasions in the absence of members of the group or agency. In the same way the educational institution cannot be content merely with establishing standard repertoires of right answers but must also establish a repertoire with which the student may, so to speak, arrive at the right answer under novel circumstances in the absense of any representative of the agency.
Since the power over variables available to the educational institution is in general weak, we might not expect to find that it is often misused or that anyone is interested in countercontrol. There are, however, several ways in which the control exercised by the educator is commonly restricted. An educational institution is usually set up and supported in terms of a particular curriculum. A child is sent to a particular school largely because of what the school will teach. Those who are in ultimate control—for example, those who supply the institution with money—may insist that the curriculum be closely followed. The college supported by a religious agency engages in appropriate religious instruction and must not establish behavior opposed to the interests of the agency. Schools supported by a government may be asked to apply their educational techniques in supporting the government and to avoid any education which conflicts with governmental techniques of control or threatens the sources of governmental power.
Since other types of agencies also engage in educational control, they often enlist the services of the educational institution. Economic and religious agencies sometimes supply materials for school use which encourage education in line with economic or religious control. It may be necessary for a governmental agency to restrict the extent to which public schools serve other agencies in this way.