There seems to be a fair bit of discussion about what would improve the educational system in the United States, (or anywhere, really) so I thought the discussion should probably have its own thread.

I seem to be having some dificulty finding the relevant posts, though, so if you've said something somewhere else and you want it stuck in the quote pile up top here, let me know and I'll try to do that.

zevrem wrote:

And it's actually quite practical. Operant conditioning in the form of reinforcing good behavior in kids is known to work quite well. Gold stars, special attention, M&M's for days without bad behavior from "problem children," the number of ways to implement it is more or less limitless.

OnlyInThisLight wrote:

Operant and Classical Conditioning do not work very well on human beings for anything other than shaping some pretty hilarious reactions via association.  Behaviorism has been pretty unanimously considered by professionals in the psychological field for quite some time to be insufficient on its ownfor shaping human behavior -be that dealing with symptoms of a mental disorder, controlling an addiction or teaching your children to clean their rooms without telling them.  I hate pulling this card, but I do have at least a bachelors in Psychology, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person somewhat studied in it on this forum.  Basically, conditioning works super well for tricking your friend into flinching at the sound of a horn, but not so much at convincing them that gay marriage is okay.  Even then, the conditioned response goes away, whether you keep up the conditioning or not. Behaviorism just doesn't really account for (in fact, it pointedly ignores) the complex cognitive and emotional motivations that influence human attitudes and behavior.

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And it does not work with children.  The token economy you are talking about is dependent on pairing that positive reinforcement with explanations that suit any particular child's age.  You don't just reward good behavior, you explain why it is good (i.e, you incorporate cognitive and developmental psych perspectives) in a way that gradually advances in moral complexity the older the child gets.  Authoritative versus authoritarian.  Even then, such practices have been shown to, in the long run, decrease intrinsic motivation for doing an activity.

Okay I'm done spewing Psych 101.  Kitsa-Bell is more studied than I in this particular department, and works with kids, so they might be able to explain this better.

Are you refering to me?

Let me state for the record that I do not in fact know what the fuck I am talking about.  My credentials are as thus:  failing to complete Psyc 101, (it was... an emotionally turbulent time) and growing up the child of two psychologists, one a PhD and the other... I think my mom has a Masters.  I'm in a weird place where I can easily joke about some of the stranger Kleinian theories, but I'd have to look up the difference between Operant and Classical conditioning.

I do work with children, in what ammounts to a daycare, and although the program is very demanding of its staff (we don't just sit in the room with the kids and keep them from killing themselves, which I swear seems to be the philosophy of some childcare facilities) the required training was... well, I think I ranted about it elsewhere.  I probably have enough background information and informal consultation (see: my mom) to make real use of the opportunity for observation, though.

Most of what I know about conditioning, I learned for my fourth grade science project.  It was kind of over-ambitious, now that I think about it.  Comparing symbol recognition learning between species isn't the sort of thing fourth graders are really expected to come up with, much less execute.

But one thing that I am absolutely sure of is that conditioning of any sort is really only capable of triggering simple actions, while human behavior, even simple-looking human behavior, is very, very complicated.  Ford couldn't have used it to get his assembly line working, so in an economy when so much of industrial production is intellectual, there's no way it would work at all.

I also think I should put a word in about Behavioralism.  There's a reason they were known as "rat runners."  In its time, treating the mind as a black box into which stimulus is input and behavior is output was revolutionary in its time, and it has a proud legacy in modern psychology's ability and willingness to measure its theories against reality.  But this method is woefully inadequate for explaining the behavior of even a single human in a tightly controlled setting making very simple choices, much less a whole society of people making complex decisions in a messy world.  I don't think that Behavioralism so much discounts attitudes and societal beliefs so much as it throws up its hands in the face of them.

And lastly, while an education system that made use of a fictional form of conditioning that would have the ability to shape human behavior in psuedo-rational ways might make an efficient society, it would leave its students exteremely stunted in terms of the ability to make critically rational or emotional decisions, or to innovate.  And that is hardly a society that I would want to live in.

As for what does work in teaching kids... I'll get back to that when it isn't 1 am and/or I don't have to work in the morning.  But I will say, it's all about developmentally appropriate expectations, emotional connection and support, and shiny objects.