Articulo De Burrhus F. Skinner

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

New methods and new aims in teaching
by Professor B. F. Skinner
Psychological Laboratories, Harvard University

I MPIXOVINGIt education seldom takes tothe form of teachers, teaching. is no doubt important find better

improving

be easy to confuse the technology with the equipment. But
machines are inevitable. Only with the help ofappropriate capital equipment can teachers cope with the problems irnposed on them by the extraordinary cultural changes and the growth in populations characteristic of the twentieth century Although the word “machine” suggests regimentation, such devices are designed precisely to help the individual student. Students were once taught one at a time, and the ideal of individualised instruction isstill preserved in statements of educational policy, but the practice has long since succumbed to the exigencies of teaching large classes. Groups of students move forward at a standard pace. Those who could move quickly are held back and grow bored; those who work slowly are pulled forward beyond their speed, finding their work more and more difficult, until they eventually give up. But speed oflearning, like speed of reading, has no very important relation to the ultimate quality of t h e student’s work. The system has often been criticised, but an effective attack upon it has at last come from the effort to arrange the contingencies of reinforcement recommended by an experimental analysis. By 1984 the fast worker will perhaps be permitted to .enjoy his natural advantage, while the slowstudent will be able to demonstrate that he is capable of comparable achievements given enough time. Another result of applying recent discoveries concernjng learning and teaching has been a reconsideration of the “[et-. minal behaviours” which compose the goals of education Just what changes in the student is the teacher to brmg about? Current specifications are surprisingly vague. A relatedresult has been the construction of sequences of respouses leading to the terminal behaviours thus specified, as the student moves from ignorance to competence, Such sequences are now commonly called programmed instruction, The Principle is not yet well understood, and poorly designed programmes flood the market, hut by 1984 the market place should have had its well-known effect. Excellent programmes-better than any now available if the art and science of programming continue to improve-should be available in a wide range of subjects. Many of the subjects may be unrecognisable, however. I! has often been remarked than an educated man has probably forgotten most of the facts he acquired in school and university. Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. Weteach “subjects” partly because teachers are hired as subject-matter specialists and partly because competence in a given subject is convenient proof of successful teaching. But we may eventually learn how LO teach the things which comprise the important marks of a n education. The specific intellectual skills, abilities, attitudes, and tastes which are now taught mainly as by-products of contentinstruction may, if the experimental analysis of behaviour is fully exploited, occupy the focus of attention in 1984. There will be teachers in 1984. They will not be, as they

build more and better schools, teach less of what is not needed, bring what must be taught up to date, and reach more students through various forms of mass media. But by 1984, we should hope, teaching itself will also havebeen improved. The experimental analysis of behaviour, human and animal, has uncovered facts about learning and teaching which were not available when current methods were devised and which should make it possible to improve education in the plain sense of teaching more in the same time with the same effort, As a result more students should be taught, and each should be taught more and taught it...