William James

R5

Quote: “To get better teachers we should pay them more, possibly according to merit. They should be certified to teach the subjects they teach. To get better students, scholarship standards should be raised. The school day should be extended from 6 to 7 hours, more time should be spent on homework, and the school year should be lengthened from 180 days to 200, or even 220 days. We should change what we are teaching. Social studies are all very well, but they should not take time away from basics, especially mathematics” (Skinner, 1984, p. 947).

Question: The above quote makes me wonder: should America use models from other countries whose education system are excelling above us? What variables are facilitating ‘mediocrity’ within the educational system in America? Nationally, have students who attend school year round improved in their academic performance compared to those students who attend schools from August to May?

Personal Connection: B.F. Skinner wrote the article, The Shame of American Education, twenty-seven years ago and not much has changed within the educational system. There continues to be a struggle with finding ‘highly qualified’ teachers and ensuring an increase in pay for the responsibilities that they have. Another deficit that the American education system continues to exhibit is the inability to hire teachers to instruct in the area in which they were trained; teachers are often asked to teach subjects in which they have had little to no training.    

B.F. Skinner also wrote that, “at little to no additional cost, that students should would come to school and apply themselves to their work with a minimum of punitive coercion and, with very rare exceptions, learn to read with reasonable ease, express themselves well in speech and writing, and solve a fair range of mathematical problems” (James, 1984, p. 948). This is an interesting quote as educators continue to question how they should improve education in a way that would motivate students to want to learn just for the sake of learning. If education was designed in a way to capture the ‘stream of conscious” of every child, then there may not be a need to increase the number of school days because the set days would be well spent by the students. I think that there can be too much emphasis placed on what subject each student should master; is a child who has mastered arts and has exercised his creative mind, but has deficits in math less intelligent than the student who has mastered mathematics, but has deficits in art? In my opinion, education is such a broad scope that it cannot necessarily be boxed into a few pinpointed categories such as math and science. I wonder if the focus shifted from defined elements of education to a broad spectrum, if more students would be motivated to want to learn just for the sake of learning.              

Outside Connection: Skinner listed a number of suggestions that he gathered to resolve the conflict in education, which made me think about William James. Most, if not all the suggestions that were listed can be balled up into a common theme of not getting caught up in the model of education, but to think about the art of teaching. Throughout James’ talks with teachers, he reiterated that the key to implementing a proper education is to grab the ‘stream of conscious’ in each student and to embrace the art of education.

Could the above video demonstrate what B.F. Skinner was trying to get across to his audience in The Shame of American Education? It's an interesting video worth watching.