Motivating Students: Rogers V. Skinner

BF Skinner

Carl Rogers

This is a scholarly piece but worth the effort. Please read on...

The book, Taking Sides (Noll, 2002) states, “Should Behaviorism Shape Educational Practices?” The chapter compares the theories of B.F. Skinner with those of Carl Rogers. These two psychologists see behavior quite differently. Skinner, a determinist, believes that all behavior can be traced to a causal relationship with the environment, or, more technically, to contingency cycles of positive or negative reinforcement or punishment. Rogers, an existentialist, believes that behavior is dependent on human choice and free will. Skinner, a logical positivist, is only interested in overt behaviors that can be measured. Rogers is comfortable talking about internal motivation. Despite opposite approaches and very different terminology, both psychologists have influenced educational theory and, surprisingly, often agree on the best types of learning. An eclectic teacher may want to use techniques derived from both theories.

Skinner (1974) rails against “mentalistic theories.” These involve mental states such as motivation and various idea and emotional conditions. Rather, education, in behavioral terms, is when “a teacher arranges contingencies under which the student acquires behavior which will be useful to him under other contingencies later on” (pp. 202-203). Desirable taught behaviors must be constructed in advance. Skinner‘s imagination runs freely in his utopian novel Walden Two (1948), and he writes how a small society, run by behavioristic principles, would educate children. The novel’s protagonist explains how, using contingency schedules, he would teach self-control.

"We set up a system of gradually increasing annoyances and frustrations against a background of complete serenity. An easy environment is made more and more difficult as the children acquire the capacity to adjust…. But…these potentially unhappy situations are never very annoying. Our schedules make sure of that…. [and] what they get is escape from the petty emotions which eat the heart out of the unprepared. They get the satisfaction of pleasant and profitable social relations…"(pp. 101-102)

The managers of Walden Two control adversity to build strength rather than allow, as in the natural world, adversity to destroy many and select only the strong. Self-control and other aspects of ethical training are completed in Walden Two by the age of six! These children, now fortified with longer attention spans, are rarely taught anything. They prefer to learn by themselves.

"Since our children remain happy, energetic, and curious, we don’t need to teach “subjects” at all. We teach only the techniques of learning and thinking. As for geography, literature, the sciences--we give our children opportunity and guidance, and they learn them for themselves [italics mine]. In that way we dispense with half the teachers required under the old system, and the education is incomparably better. Our children aren’t neglected, but they’re seldom, if ever, taught anything…. And a good share of our education goes on in workshops, laboratories, and fields" (P.110).

Skinner’s techniques of learning and thinking, mentioned above, include logic, statistics, scientific method, psychology, and mathematics. The students, without much supervision, obtain any other college-level information from Walden Two’s library (P.111) or in the field. Notice that Skinner’s students, naturally curious about the world, learn for themselves. Behavioristic learning is not delivered by lecture, but is, to use today’s terminology, child centered. Much learning is project based: “We teach anatomy in the slaughterhouse, botany in the field, genetics in the dairy and poultry house, chemistry in the medical building and in the kitchen and dairy laboratory” (P.112). Skinner is rarely called a progressive educator, but John Dewey himself would probably approve of Skinner’s methods that “emphasized the idea of children being part of a community and of learning by doing” (Provenzo, 2002).

Now compare the typical classroom with Skinner’s Walden Two. Students in California schools, at least until the age of 16, are forced, under threat of punishment, to go to school. They are forced to do the same work everyone else does under threat of punishment. If they act in a disorderly or unruly way they will be punished. Can the constant threat of punishment be a good thing? Skinner (1971) writes “Except when physically restrained, a person is least free or dignified when he is under threat of punishment” (P.56). Since punishment induces people not to behave in certain ways, to suppress behavior, but not how to behave, punished “behavior is likely to reappear after the punitive contingencies are withdrawn” (P.58). A boy that is punished for yelling out of turn will very likely resume this behavior once a substitute teacher is in the room. A child that refuses to do school work receives a poor grade and a call home (so the parents can inflict additional punishments). The child resumes doing his schoolwork only to raise his grade. Skinner suggests minimizing punishable behavior “by creating circumstances in which it is not likely to occur” (P.60) or by breaking up the contingencies under which punished behavior is reinforced (P.61). For example, by removing gum from the school, it is less likely to be found in the classroom. Then the teacher no longer has to punish students for chewing it and leaving it under desks. If a teacher ignores a student having a temper tantrum, the behavior is no longer reinforced and often goes away on its own without the use of punishment. “It should be possible to design a world [or a classroom] in which behavior likely to be punished seldom or never occurs” (P.62).

One should not become too enamored with Skinner’s thought without examining the writings of his critics. Perhaps the most forceful, Ayn Rand (1972) shakes the foundations of behaviorism by attacking the circular reasoning of “reinforcement,” the illogic in Skinner’s determinism, Skinner’s semantic dodge in accounting for the phenomenon of language, and his hostility toward the power of the human mind and virtue. Rogers (1983) attacks Skinner’s extremist exogenous view. In contrast, Rogers believes that internal motivators exist.

However, Rogers (1983), like Skinner, wishes to change punitive learning environments. He describes one in an impoverished ghetto area. “It was impossible to tell which student he [the teacher] had just paddled because all the students, black and white, looked equally sullen and angry…. Their whole sullen stance was saying, ‘Just try to make me learn anything’” (P.16). When will students learn, and what is the best learning environment? According to Rogers, children will learn when the curriculum has personal meaning and the learning is significant and experiential (P.19). More precisely, Rogers defines the elements involved in experiential learning. It has a quality of personal involvement. It is self-initiated. It is pervasive. The learner herself evaluates it. Lastly, its essence is meaning (P.20). This type of whole-person learning combines both the intuitive and the logical and uses what he calls both masculine and feminine capacities.

Rogers compares experiential, whole-person learning against an atomized type of learning. Some have distorted behaviorism by writing that Skinner cares only for pigeons pressing levels. Indeed, Skinner often looks at man as a machine as a contrast to Rogers (1965) who prefers to examine the complete human being. However, Skinner also feels that learning should be significant, useful, and self-initiated. Skinner as well as Rogers (1983) could have written the following paragraph:

"When we put together in one scheme such elements as a prescribed curriculum, similar assignments for all students, lecturing as almost the only mode of instruction, standard tests by which all students are externally evaluated, and instructor-chosen grades as the measure of learning, than we can almost guarantee that meaningful learning will be at an absolute minimum" (P.21).

Both Skinner and Rogers wish to arrive at child-centered learning. The road they take, however, is different. Skinner, a pragmatist, values what works. He discards traditional pedagogy because it’s inefficient. A teacher must set up external contingencies to allow learning, which is naturally reinforcing, to take place. Child-centered learning leads to better learning, not because the child is free, but because it is efficient and reinforcing. Freedom does not really exist. Rogers, an existentialist, values meaning. He believes that people are free to chose and if the learning is meaningful, the learned outcomes will, by themselves improve. Rogers (1983) admits that humans can be examined as both (unfree) machines and subjectively free individuals.

"A part of modern living is to face the paradox that, viewed from one perspective, man is a complex machine…. On the other hand, in another significant dimension of his existence, man is subjectively free; his personal choice and responsibility account for the shape of his life…. If in response to this you say, 'These views cannot both be true,' my answer is, 'This is a deep paradox with which we must learn to live'” (pp. 280-281).

Do Rogers’ methods work? Will a classroom where students make most or all the choices of what books to read and how they should be graded be a classroom in which learning takes place? John Steadman Rice, in his article The Therapeutic School (2002), criticizes Rogers and other founders of humanistic psychologists for promoting a therapeutic ethic instead of content learning in the schools. Rice states that, according to the humanists such as Rogers, if society is to work well, people must be set free from cultural and societal repression” (P. 21). Education must become involved in the child’s feelings. Thus, students are taught to think well of themselves, to have high self-esteem. Quoted in Rice’s article, Rita Kramer argues that self-esteem has replaced understanding as the goal of education. Unfortunately, these same students that think their math scores are outstanding rank internationally at the bottom for math.

Under the influence of Rogers, Maslow, Glasser, and their adherents, education has ceased to be about instruction, or the passing on of an accumulated body of knowledge; in essence, it has become group therapy. It is not the case, then, that students did not receive an education; rather, they received an education, but in the vocabulary of emotion and in the practice of self-absorption. Tests designed to tap into those competencies would likely tell a different story than data from, say, the Scholastic Aptitude Test-which continues to measure academic, rather than therapeutic, ability (P. 28).

Despite these criticisms, both Skinner’s behavioristic approach to education and Rogers’ person-centered model of instruction are still popular. I examined my children’s learning software, especially Reader Rabbit’s Kindergarten, Davka’s Ready for Reading (Hebrew), and The Learning Company’s Gizmos and Gadgets (engineering). All three of these software programs use common behavioral techniques such as immediate rewards for the correct answer, sustain infinite patience in eliciting the desired behavior, and avoid punishment. Rogers’ theories have also entered educational technology. Miller and Mazur (2000) developed a person-centered model of instruction for designing Web-based environments.

By emphasizing students’ interests and abilities, courses taught in virtual environments such as certain applications delivered via the internet, can create an atmosphere of mutual participation and allow for accommodations of various skill and ability levels. Students can exercise the freedom to choose, which is encouraged by the user-controlled hypermedia web environment. However, the elements promoting the success of such as approach — user responsibility, ability to be self-assessing and proactive in learning — are the very elements, when lacking, which will result in an instructional experience that is non-productive at best and frustrating at worst (p. 298).

In conclusion, the eclectic educator will find much to use from both theories, the behavioral and the person-centered. Choosing between behavioral and person-centered models, the educator may wish to assess the amount of choice available to the student and the rigidity of the learner outcomes.

Bibliography

Miller, Christopher T. and Mazur, Joan M. (2000). Towards a Person-Centered Model of Instruction: Can an Emphasis on the Personal Enhance Instruction in Cyberspace? Annual Proceedings of Selected Research and Development Papers Presented at the National Convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 1-2, 293-299.

Noll, William James (2002). Taking Sides. Clashing Views on Controversial Educational Issues (12th ed.). Guilford, Connecticut: McGraw-Hill/Dushkin.

Provenzo, Eugene F. (2002). Teaching, Learning, and Schooling. A 21st Century Perspective. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Rand, Ayn (1972). Philosophy: Who Needs It. New York: Penguin.

Rice, John Steadman (2002). The Therapeutic School. Society, 39 (2), 19-29.

Rogers, Carl. (1965). Some Thoughts Regarding the Current Philosophy of the Behavioral Sciences, The Journal of Humanistic Psychology, V (2), 182-194.

Rogers, Carl. (1983). Freedom to Learn for the 80’s. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merrill Publishing Company.

Skinner, B.F. (1948). Walden Two. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, Inc.

Skinner, B.F. (1971). Beyond Freedom and Dignity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

Skinner, B.F. (1974). About Behaviorism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.