OK, I am supposed to write about Behaviorism as it relates to education. I have had my fill of behaviorism which is the same way that I felt going into it. I don't like it as a pursuit relative to other fields in psychology, and to predict and control are not the goal I would ask from studying the human condition. There are so many things that people can learn through experiences and conversations and relationships that cannot be taught by incrementally-reinforced tidbits. I like Behaviorism even less in respect to all of the things that it is good at--predicting and shaping behavior, and doing so seamlessly so that it is almost a passive process.
This article describes a young delinquent's experience as of being trapped in a Skinnerian Education facility called Learning House at Stanford University in the 1970's (The Minotaur of the Behaviorist Maze: Surviving Stanford’s Learning House in the 1970’s). This child's experience, months of life lived in the most bizarrely inhuman (though not abusive in any way) environment I have heard about. Young graduate students, without child-rearing experience of their own, were raising these children according purely according to theory, doling out heavily systematized reinforcements and punishments according to an almost completely incomprehensible checklist of social interactions. The result was that the child learned to show no distinguishing outward characteristics or volition. Fewer loose ends for the behaviorist "monks" to grab hold of. She became completely distanced from her emotional core as a defense mechanism.
This is the kind of thing you get when you start with the assumption that you can control all aspects of a person's psyche and the world's psychological operations just by parsing the question incrementally, and by knowing what kind of stimulus makes the pigeon twirl to the left.
I am a Constructivist all the way, though I do not deny Behaviorism its place.
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