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What Skinner Did Next
Would you prefer half of a quarter pizza or quarter of half pizza?
—Discordant Attentional Prompt
Skinner never advocated for punishment. “Punishing a child,” he said, “served only to produce escape or avoidant behavior that might be even more undesirable than the behavior it was designed to punish (25).” How, then, did punishment become ingrained in every aspect of learning? Was it just a strange quirk of history? Why would rigorous animal studies involving positive and negative reinforcement schedules end up in the classroom? Skinner was instrumental in shaping educational psychology because of his strong belief that all behavior is described with scientific laws. His legacy in schools leaves much to be explained. ...
