Tuesday, April 08, 2008

Behaviorism and Education

I've been asked to do a review of Judith Rich Harris' "The Nurture Assumption," and I when I finish the book I will certainly do so. I would like to make some comments not on the book per se, but on one of the areas of psychology she criticizes -- behaviorism -- and its continuing detrimental effect on U.S. education.

The American education system is fundamentally based on the following quote from John B. Watson, whom Harris quotes. He claims that all we have to do is

"Give me a dozen healthy infants, well-formed, and my own specified world to bring them up in and I'll guarantee to take any one at random and train him to become any type of specialist I might select -- doctor, lawyer, artist, merchant-chief, and yes, even beggar-man and thief, regardless of his talents, penchants, tendencies, abilities, vocations, and race of his ancestors" (Harris, 6).

I suspect he might be able to accomplish the latter two, but, as Harris points out, he would have to somehow manage to raise IQ 20 points in most of his students in order to accomplish at least the first two.

As Harris points out, Watson was "expressing the basic belief of behaviorism: that children are malleable and that it is their environment, not innate qualities such as talent or temperament, that determines their destiny" (7). The basic theory most public schools work under is that of behaviorism -- which is really just one of the blank-slate theories of the human mind. Certainly Watson is right that what your parents do, etc. doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your abilities. My mother couldn't spell, and my father is almost illiterate due to (likely) severe dyslexia and is thus a coal miner, so one would not have expected them to create a professional writer, let alone a poet. On the other hand, one cannot discount genetics and the home environment, as my brother is dyslexic, like our father, and a visual artist, like our mother. Any myself? My mother read to me when I was young, which I have little doubt influenced my love of reading, especially as it resulted in my becoming literate at the age of 3 (this should give you some indication of what the future review of Harris' book will probably look like). Our father has a high IQ, which was sabotaged by his dyslexia.

The bottom line is this: no one can turn any child into anything they want. Each child has their own abilities, IQ, interests, etc. that have to be taken into consideration. Until the educational system understands this, they will continue to fail to educate our children.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have thought about Harris' book and how it compares to the blank slate. In this connection, Arnold Kling on his econlog's blog opposes "the blank slate" position and suggests that genetics is largely determinant on what a child turns out to be. But there is considerable confusion among these opinions: are we talking "merely" about a person's personality and temperament, or the whole person the child grows into. Kling is referring to personality and temperament traits, and I agree those are largely inherited. Perhaps a person born with a hot temper can be taught to control it, but underneath he will still have a temper. Perhaps temperament is 80-20 genetic vs nurture? But I believe that "temperament" is not all that significant, when compared to what makes a civilized adult. Benjamin Franklin and John Adams had wholly different personalities--one was adopted by the Parisiens as a fun-loving and delightful romantic--the other was a dour Puritannical Bostonian. But who really cares about those differences compared to the extraordinary lives they led and the huge contribution they each made to founding this country ? Obviously, there are some major work habits, ethics, persistence, and cultural training that trump personality. Now Harris, who titles her book "The Nurturing Assumption," gives the controversial impression of saying that parental influence and nurturing is ineffective--presumably because genetics has predetermined their children's personality. However, that's not what she concludes in the book. Instead she is saying that parental nurturing is irrelevant because it is the peer group that determines the youngster's development. Thus, she is really an environmentalist, but points to the peer group rather than the parent as determinant. This is really a let down to me, as the reader, because she is merely saying that environment is key but parents should recognize that the peer group will trump parental influence. But, that assertion is not necessarily true--homeschoolers deliberately attempt to minimize the influence of today's moral relativity on their children--and they succeed!. People who move to the country, or send their kids to charter schools, or shepard them into church and Sunday School, or find diversions from TV and video games, all are overcoming some of the destructive influence of prolonged adolescence common among most of their possible peer group. So, to the extent that parents can shape the peer group their children are exposed to, the parents can remain the major nurturing force in their child's development. Again, we see things are not all that simple--one can sell books with a provocative title, but in truth every human being develops in a complex fashion, and becomes an amalgam of many forces, both biological, spiritual, and environmental. In summary, I propose that two-parent nurturing remains the most positive force in child rearing. To the extent that parents can instill optimism, faith, preserverance, good manners, humility, and self confidence in their offspring--those essential elements of maturity and character will trump good or bad genes, good or bad physical environment, and most peer groups. I would even venture that such values and character trump IQ. And bad nurturing and schooling can spoil even the best IQ as many of today's intellectuals" demonstrate daily. Bill Greene

Troy Camplin said...

You are anticipating much of what I'm going to say about my impressions just of chapter 1. I can immediately see where she's going, and where she went astray in her interpretations. I think she is right about the Freudians and behaviorists, but I think she's missing a larger pattern. Stay tuned. Tomorrow I plan to post something on it, based on a discussion my wife and I had about one of her main points: the language used by children.

John said...

On the other hand, over half the teachers in North America (and probably nearly all the recently graduated ones) have embraced a watered down, politicized version of Howard Gardener's "multiple intelligence" theory. The buzzword for the last 5 years has been "differentiation," and it was "diversity" for 10 years before that. IQ hasn't been disregarded so much as deconstructed. Classroom teachers today are encouraged to suspend value judgments, to develop 2-5 lesson plans per class depending on students' inclination and abilities, and to organize learning in a thematic, project based way so that students can make the best of their diverse "intelligences" (i.e. stay inside their comfort zone). For better or worse, the "post IQ" conception of student learning seems to be the trend.

People will usually admit that genes play a role in shaping these "multiple intelligences," but they place all their moral emphasis against the idea, and to discuss it is usually regarded as an exercise in bad taste. Needless to say, the idea of an evolved primate brain that uses a flexible domain-general intelligence mediating between domain-specific cognitive modules in order to organize information from internal and external inputs according to epigenetic rules isn't usually discussed, either.

Troy Camplin said...

That's part of the problem, too: schools seem to get the water-down version of good ideas. Specifically, those in charge of education seem to only ever have a superficial understanding of anything, whether multiple intelligences, Bloom's taxonomy, or whatever. They would be at a complete loss with things like epigenetics.

Todd Camplin said...

I remember reading that Anna Ryan thought that the people that were Adam and Eve where not like humans. Strangely I agree with her, but not for the same reasons she intended. The creates described in the Bible did not have a sense of death until they gained the knowledge of 'good and evil.' After these being ate the fruit, they became human. Call me crazy, but this sounds like a transition for a lower thinking creature like an ape to a higher thinking being like a human. The human can understand that she will die. Apes have no real knowledge of their ultimate demise. Scientist admit that there was this moment of transition in a group of ape like creatures. The Bible story helps to illustrate this idea of transition through its beautiful poetry. By forcing the story of creation and the story of transition into humans into facts, it takes the beauty out of the stories. Facts are dead. Fact: the earth is the third planet from the sun. How does this fact lead to any greater truth? It doesn't, however in the context of the story of history, being the third planet from the sun made people think they were less important in universe than people first thought. The story of history has greater meaning than just the facts. In the same way as the story of creation. If the Bible is just facts, then it is a dead book followed by a dead religion. However, I believe the bible is filled with stories that have greater meaning. Sure, the Bible has facts supporting many of the stories, however, focusing on the facts will kill the life the Bible that gives to so many people hope.

Troy Camplin said...

Well put. Belongs on another posting, but well put. You should take this and post it over at the site where my evolution posting was originally done.