gat

The classic statement of behavioristic intelligence is E.G. Boring’s 1923 definition, "Intelli-gence
is what an intelligence test measures." Echoes of Boring reverberate in Conant’s sterile definition
of education as "what goes on in schools." Education is whatever schools say it is. This is a
carry-over of Percy Bridgman’s 6 recommendation for an ultimate kind of simplification in physics
sometimes known as operationalism (which gives us the familiar "operational definition"), e.g.,
Boring’s definition of intelligence. This project in science grew out of the positivistic project in
philosophy which contends that all significant meaning lies on the surface of things. Positivism
spurns any analysis of the deep structure underlying appearances. Psychological behaviorism is
positivism applied to the conjecture that a science of behavior might be established. It’s a guess
how things ought to work, not a science of how they do.
B.F. Skinner’s entire strategy of behavioral trickery designed to create beliefs, attitudes, and
behavior patterns in whole societies is set down in Walden Two, a bizarre illustration of some
presumed uses of emptiness, but also a summary of observations (all uncredited by Skinner) of
earlier undertakings in psychological warfare, propaganda, advertising research, etc., including
contributions from public relations, marketing, schooling, military experience, and animal training.
Much that Skinner claimed as his own wasn’t even secondhand—it had been commonplace for
centuries among philosophers. Perhaps all of it is no more than that.
6 My discussion here is instructed by the lectures of Michael Matthews, philosopher of science.
7 Physics professor, Harvard. He won the 1946 Nobel Prize. Perhaps the most influential American writer on the
philosophy of science in the twentieth century.
The Limits Of Behavioral Theory
The multibillion dollar school-materials industry is stuffed with curriculum psychologized through
application of behaviorist theory in its design and operation. What these kits are about is
introducing various forms of external reinforcement into learning, based on the hypothesis the
student is a stimulus-response machine. This surrender to questionable science fails its own test of
rationality in the following ways.
First and foremost, the materials don’t work dependably. Behavior can be affected, but fallout is
often negative and daunting. The insubstantial metaphysics of Behaviorism leads it to radically
simplify reality; the content of this psychology is then always being undermined by experience.
Even some presumed core truths, e.g., "simple to complex, we learn to walk before we can run"
(I’ve humanized the barbaric jargon of the field), are only half-truths whose application in a
classroom provoke trouble. In suburban schools a slow chaos of boredom ensues from every
behavioral program; in ghetto schools the boredom turns to violence. Even in better
neighborhoods, the result of psychological manipulation is indifference, cynicism, and overall loss
Table of Contents
Page 306