Chapter 5, School as agent of culture II

Brameld, Theodore.  (2008).  The use of explosive ideas in education:  Culture, class, and evolution.  New York:  The New Press.

Teaching-Learning and the cultural process

“The preceding chapter tried to show that the key to cultural process lies in Tylor’s term ‘acquiring’ — but that metaculturally the term appears to suggest different things to different interpreters.  Thus the realist essentialist way of acquiring is primarily by means of conditioning, while the progressivist way of acquiring is primarily through inquiring.  In different words, the essentialist presupposes a psychology of learning epitomized in some such term as ‘passive mentation,’ while the progressivist takes a more functional and organismic approach through which acquiring as learning involves active and critical transactions with the cultural and physical environment.”  (p. 74)

“. . . we now see that cultural theory and research afford solid ground upon which to approach these problems with an innovating attitude.  Indeed, the contention of some essentialist educators that the school has no legitimate role as an agent of cultural change fails to stand up in the face of such research.  The attitude of innovation, when consciously and deliberately developed by the teacher within a cultural matrix, not only negates this contention, but it influences the learner if only by the contagion of the teacher’s attitude.   Meanwhile, the classroom itself undergoes alteration:  the enculturative process defined merely as passive mentation is superseded by analysis, criticism, originality, and participation, with all the modifications in learning and teaching that these processes imply.”  (p. 79)

“For the essentialist, because truth is already embodied in the nature of the universe and culture, the chief task of the school is to place the learner in a position of receptivity and then to see to it that he acquires as much truth as he possibly can by direct exposure.  For the progressivist, truth is not already present, awaiting disclosure; it is always in the making, always unfinished, always subject to correction as learners engage in further interactions with their natural and human environment.”  (p. 80)

The Control of Education and Cultural Goals

“Cultural goals actually permeate both the curriculum and the learning-teaching process, while cultural order and process are, in turn, inseparable from the problem of educational control.”  (p. 80)

“What, after all, is the purpose of all these rules and regulations?  In short, what is education for?”  (p. 81)

“To write of the need for ‘well-educated men,’ of ‘critical thinking,’ of ‘responsible citizenship,’ and similar goals is motivated by sincere intentions, certainly.  It fails, however, to tell us what we most require; it fails to place these generalities in the setting of real cultures through which alone they become meaningful.  Indeed, what any controller needs most to know is:  Where is our culture going?  And, above all:  Where ought it to go in the future?  Then, and only then, can he begin to answer parallel questions for the great enculturative agency he represents.”  (p. 81)

“From our earlier discussion of cultural goals, we recall two major ways of approaching them — the one, cultural relativism; the other, cultural univeralism.  We saw, too, that anthropologists seem to be moving toward accord that neither of these ways of looking at the goals of culture is sufficient in its use.”  (p. 81)

“From the point of view of educational goals, the bipolar concept of relativism-universalism therefore means that effective cotrol must be guided, on the one hand, by values that are distinctive to the particular community within which the school operates and, on the other hand, by the wider values of region, nation, and even the world.  A high priority task of the educational leader is to search for and develop a balance of both kinds.”  (p. 82)

“Here, indeed, is the reconstructionist type of approach to the whole problem of educational control.  This philosophy, related as it is to the science of anthropology, finds that participation is a cross-cultural value which, while not necessarily universal, appears from the evidence to be very widespread.  Therefore, administrations influenced by this approach are likely to create every conceivable opportunity for parents to engage in planning the work of the school, for involving teachers in problems of curriculum and learning, and for including students (beginning at a very early age) in their own share of cooperative responsibilities.  At the same time, they take into account the cultural habits of the individual community:  thus, a community where a high degree of religious or familial authority has been traditional can hardly be expected to move as rapidly toward a reconstructed pattern of control as one that has not.”  (p. 82)

“[the perennialist philosophy] In common with reconstructionism agrees that much more serious attention should be given the goals of education than is usually given.  But the perennialist has a special attitude, rooted as his thinking is in a special set of ontological and other metacultural assumptions.  The goals of education — and, indeed, of culture — are for him expressions of the much wider teleological direction of reality as a whole, a direction from the ‘potential’ to the ever more ‘actual.’  In a fundamental sense, the business of education is to become as conscious as possible of this unfolding of reality and so to enlist the schools in the everlasting effort to achieve it.  And yet, because the ultimate end of culture (for many perennialists, certainly) is not within culture at all, but in the afterlife of salvation and eternity, we discover this to be the great magnetic goal that finally shapes both the order of the curriculum and the central processes of enculturation.”  (p. 83)

“In terms of education control it follows that, unlike reconstructionist theory, perennialist education encourages a strong policy of authority in the hands of those who, by virtue of their higher actualization in the alleged order of reality, are also closer to the goal of education than any other members of a school system — than teachers, for example.  Therefore, these leaders are the ones who rightly control school policy and practice.”  (p. 83)

Note:  see pp. 84-85 for a clear summary of this chapter.

Chapter 5, School as agent of culture I

Brameld, Theodore.  (2008).  The use of explosive ideas in education:  Culture, class, and evolution.  New York:  The New Press.

‘Internalizing’ the Idea of Culture

“To internalize is to fuse the chief characteristics of that idea with one’s own attitudes, feelings, and daily activities.  Culture becomes important to us as persons and as teachers only to the extent that such fusion takes place. . . . To internalize is to move from a merely intellectual formulation, on the one hand, to one’s own personality (one’s own patterns of behavior), on the other hand.”  (p. 66)

“He [Brameld] is, nevertheless, convinced that any student who approaches, say, the idea of culture seriously and responsibly will in the course of time become a very different kind of person and teacher than he would otherwise be. . . . the school too will begin to undergo transformation.  Every school is, in a genuine sense, the creation of those who operate it.  Thus, the kinds of learning and control that occur are, from one point of view, the fruits of whatever orientation toward life and education has developed among the members of a culture directly responsible for the enculturative process.  Teachers, surely, are among the most important of these members.”  (p. 67)

“What difference does an idea such as culture make to our conception of the school curriculum?  What different does it make to the teaching-learning process?  Finally, what difference does it make to the control of education? . . . . The curriculum is thus considered in relation to cultural order, teaching-learning in terms of cultural process, and the control of education in view of cultural goals.”  (p. 67)

Problems of the Curriculum:  the significance of cultural order

“The concept of cultural order, we remember, enables us to view the total environment fashioned by man in terms of spatio-temporal relations — a shorthand term for the fact that every culture may be viewed both in horizontal and vertical perspective, while yet embracing the past, the present, and the future.  This model of cultural order, when it becomes filled with the rich content that such a science as anthropology provides, may now be conceived as a way to organize the curriculum itself.”  (p. 68)

“What could this concept contribute to a distinctive way of unifying and integrating the curriculum of general education?  One answer lies in a controversial contention — namely, that the central obligation of education for most young people should be basically similar, and that the justification for such similarity lies in the struggles and objectives of human beings themselves.  This kind of education should be concerned first of all with the attempt to provide an understanding by the young learner not only of himself but of his relations to others:  other groups, other nations, and equally of theirs to him.”  (p. 68)

“Recall from Chapter 3 that the central core focuses upon problems of intrapersonal and interpersonal relations; that the next wider circle embraces intragroup and intergroup relations (racial, class, and others); and that the widest circle encompasses the relations of whole peoples, nations, and religions.  Thus, through this conception of order, we are able to see the world as a vast intricate network of human relations, from the most intimate to that most inclusive of ‘complex wholes,’ mankind itself.”  (p. 69)

“But, as also has been earlier pointed out, the merely spatial model of culture is defective as long as it lacks the temporal dimension.  We need to think of the curriculum of general education not only in terms of the present relationships of people, but in terms both of their roots in the past and their directions toward the future.  The latter anticipates the problem of cultural goals, to which we return, but the former suggests the need for intensive study of history . . . .”  (p. 70)

“We can better understand the significance of the study of history in a culture-oriented curriculum if we distinguish more clearly between the essentialist approach discussed in the preceding chapter, and the progressivist, also discussed.  It will be remembered that the essentialist, directly or indirectly reflecting as he does the superorganic view of culture, tends metaculturally to regard the order of culture as something ‘out there,’ already determined and structured beyond the control of individual human beings.”  (p. 70)

“Returning now to the study of history in the school, progressivists aware of the metacultural issue are likely to assert that essentialist history is often hypostatized history as well.  Because, moreover, the past is regarded as something that is irrevocably finished, it follows that the kind of history provided by the conventional curriculum is intended primarily to develop in young people an attitude of acceptance toward the out-thereness and completeness of historical events.  Culturally, such an attitude is likely to encourage a conservative frame of mind toward the social heritage.  Hence it is no accident that the essentialist school is usually regarded as an enculturative agent of reinforcement of patterns of culture that have come down to us in the course of time.”  (p. 71)

“History, understood now as the temporal phase of cultural order, may also be interpreted as an operational discipline — that is, the past is approached not as a forever-finished record of objective events but as a boundlessly fertile opportunity to interpret and reinterpret the course of human evolution.”  (p. 72)

“How, then, would a progressivist include history in general education?  If he is consistently operational, he will not, first of all, segregate history from other dimensions of learning experience anywhere nearly as much as do essentialists.  Rather, he will regard it as a vast, fruitful resource to be drawn upon in attacking every conceivable kind of problem — including problems only indirectly related to human experience, such as those of the physical sciences.  Accordingly, history teachers, in the kind of integrated curriculum suggested by cultural order, become resource persons who constantly and cooperatively work with other teachers.”  (p. 72)

Future of the Science of Behavior at Walden Two

Skinner, B. F.  (1948/1976/2005).  Walden Two.  Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

CHAPTER 32 (pp. 267-276)

What remains to be done?  Well, what do you say to the design of personalities?  Would that interest you?  The control of temperament?  Give me the specifications, and I’ll give you the man!  What do you say to the control of motivation, building the interests which will make men most productive and most successful?  Does that seem to you fantastic?  Yet some of the techniques are available, and more can be worked out experimentally.  Think of the possibilities!  A society in which there is no failure, no boredom, no duplication of effort!  (p. 274)

Frazier continues to propose new areas:  cultivation of special abilities; what makes a child’s mind mathematical?  musical?; making better mathematicians, better artists, better craftsmen; improving social and cultural design; the special qualities of the group (communal science); efficient group structure; the Superorganism!

Walden Two and the Outside World, Freedom versus Determinism

Skinner, B. F.  (1948/1976/2005).  Walden Two.  Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

CHAPTER 24 (pp. 191-196)

The discussion with Frazier veers toward other communities and what Frazier terms, ‘unnatural societies’, such as monasteries and  lamaseries.  In addition, Frazier explains that there are opportunities for the young people of Walden Two to go out into ordinary life and discover some of its qualities.  These outings are completed as exercises or experiments.   Frazier argues that Walden Two does not use propaganda or indoctrination because that would change the experimental nature of the community.

What we are trying to achieve through our cultural experiments in Walden Two is a way of life which will be satisfying without propaganda and for which, therefore, we won’t have to pay the price of personal stultification.  Happiness is our first goal, but an alert and active drive toward the future is our second.  We’ll settle for the degree of happiness which has been achieved in other communities or culture, but we’ll be satisfied with nothing short of the most alert and active group-intelligence yet to appear on the face of the earth.  (p. 194)

We should ruin our whole experiment if we overdoctrinated.  You can’t propagandize and experiment at the same time.  To engineer an attitude in favor of Walden Two would conceal symptoms which are absolutely essential to our psychologists.  Happiness is one of our indicators, and we couldn’t evaluate an experimental culture if the indicator is loaded with propaganda.  It’s no mean achievement to build satisfaction in any way whatsoever; but we want the real thing.  Walden Two must be naturally satisfying.  (p. 195)

CHAPTER 29, (pp. 236-260)

But I [Frazier] did plan Walden Two — not as an architect plans a building, but as a scientist plans a long-term experiment, uncertain of the conditions he will meet but knowing how he will deal with them when they arise.  In a sense, Walden Two is predetermined, but not as the behavior of a beehive is determined.  Intelligence, no matter how much it may be shaped and extended by our educational system, will still function as intelligence.  It will be used to puzzle out solutions to problems to which a beehive would quickly succumb.  What the plan does is to keep intelligence on the right track, for the good of society rather than of the intelligent individual — or for the eventual rather than the immediate good of the individual.  It does this by making sure that the individual will not forget his personal stake in the welfare of society.  (p. 239)

Castle argues that Frazier cannot know the course of humankind.  Frazier argues back that Walden Two as an experiment is in the course of answering the question of the future of humankind.  He adds that he can only do what he is doing now — Castle adds that it is a small minority.

And the majority are in a big quandary [Frazier].  They’re not on the road at all, or they’re scrambling back toward their starting point, or sidling from one side of the road to the other like so many crabs.  What do you think two world wars have been about?  Something as simple as boundaries or trade?   Nonsense.  The world is trying to adjust to a new conception of man in relation to men.  (p. 240)

It’s a little late to be proving that a behavioral technology is well advanced.  How can you deny it?  Many of its methods and techniques are really as old as the hills.  Look at their frightful misuse in the hands of the Nazis!  And what about the techniques of the psychological clinic?  What about education?  Or religion?  Or practical politics?  Or advertising and salesmanship?  Bring them all together and you have a sort of rule-of-thumb technology of vast power.  No, Mr. Castle, the science is there for the asking.  But its techniques and methods are in the wrong hands — they are used for personal aggrandizement in a competitive world or, in the case of the psychologist and educator, for futilely corrective purposes.   My question is, have you the courage to take up and wield the science of behavior for the good of mankind?  You answer that you would dump it in the ocean!  (p. 241)

Castle and Frazier enter into a discussion about the determinants of freedom.  Frazier call them “determiners of human behavior” (p. 243).

One class, as you suggest, is physical restraint — handcuffs, iron bars, forcible coercion.  These are ways in which we shape human behavior according to our wishes.  They’re crude, and they sacrifice the affection of the controllee, but they often work.  Now, what other ways are there of limiting freedom?  (p. 243)

The Narrator answers, “The threat of force would be one.”

Right.  And here again we shan’t encourage any loyalty on the part of the controllee.  He has perhaps a shade more of the feeling of freedom, since he can always ‘choose to act and accept the consequences,’ but he doesn’t feel exactly free.  He knows his behavior is being coerced.  Now what else?  (p. 243)

Frazier describes Castle as neither a good behaviorist nor a good Christian!  “You have no feeling for a tremendous power of a different sort” (p. 243).

It’s what the science of behavior calls ‘reinforcement therapy.’  The things that can happen to us fall into three classes.  To some things we are indifferent.  Other things we like — we want them to happen, and we take steps to make them happen again.  Still other things we don’t like — we don’t want them to happen and we take steps to get rid of them or keep them from happening again.  (p. 244)

. . . if it’s in our power to create any of the situations which a person likes or to remove any situation he doesn’t like, we can control his behavior.  When he behaves as we want him to behave, we simply create a situation he likes, or remove one he doesn’t like.  As a result, the probability that he will behave that way again goes up, which is what we want.  Technically, it’s called ‘positive reinforcement.’ (p. 244)

Frazier explains that the old school made the mistake of believing that by removing a situation the subject likes (or applying punishment that isn’t liked) it was possible to control behavior.

What is emerging at this critical stage in the evolution of society is a behavioral and cultural technology based on positive reinforcement alone.  We are gradually discovering — at an untold cost in human suffering — that in the long run punishment doesn’t reduce the probability that an act will occur. . . . Retribution and revenge are the most natural things on earth.  But in the long run the man we strike is no less likely to repeat his act.  (p. 245)

After much discussion of democracy, the conversation turns to Russia.  (Remember this was originally written in 1945 or so, and revised in 1975.)  Frazier contends there are “only” four things wrong with Russia:  (a)  a decline in the experimental spirit; (b)  overpropagandized both its own people and the outside world; (c) its use of heroes; and (d) the Russian experiment is based upon power (pp. 258-259).

The Russians are still a long way from a culture in which people behave as they want to behave, for their mutual good.  In order to get its people to act as the communist pattern demands, the Russian government has had to use the techniques of capitalism.  On the one hand it resorts to extravagant and uneven rewards.  But an unequal distribution of wealth destroys more incentives than it creates.  It obviously can’t operate for the common good.  On the other hand, the government also uses punishment or the threat of it.  What kind of behavioral engineering do you call that?  (p. 260)

Politics in Walden Two

Skinner, B. F.  (1948/1976/2005).  Walden Two.  Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

CHAPTER 23 (pp. 179-190)

Government and politics!  It’s not a problem of government and politics at all.  That’s the first plank in the Walden Two platform.  You can’t make progress toward the Good Life by political action!  Not under any current form of government!  You must operate upon another level entirely.  What you need is a sort of Nonpolitcal Action Committee:  keep out of politics and away from government except for practical and temporary purposes.  It’s not the place for men of good will or vision.  (p. 180)

…we aren’t making war!  We have no imperialist policy — no designs on the possessions of others — no interest in foreign trade except to encourage happiness and self-sufficiency.  What is Walden Two but a grand experiment in the structure of a peaceful world?  Point to any internationalist who really knows what sort of society or culture or government will make for peace.  He doesn’t know!  He’s only guessing!  Through the machinations of power politics he may, if he’s lucky, get an experimental test under way, but almost certainly in such a form that the outcome will prove nothing.  He may, through some colossal accident, achieve world peace, perhaps permanently.  But the chance is negligible.  World politics won’t yield the kind of data necessary for a scientific solution of the basic problems.  What do people want?  What will satisfy them?  How can they be made to want what they can get?  Or how can they get what they want without taking it away from anyone else?  I could go on asking questions like that all day.  And who has the answer to one of them?  Not the politicians!  (p. 189)

Historial Utopias and the Good Life at Walden Two

Skinner, B. F.  (1948/1976/2005).  Walden Two.  Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

CHAPTER 19 (pp. 142-145)

CHAPTER 20 (pp. 146-166)

I mean the minimum [of unpleasant labor] which is possible without imposing on anyone.  We must always think of the whole group.  I don’t mean tha twe want to be inactive — we have proved that idleness doesn’t follow.  But painful or uninteresting work is a threat to both physical and psychological health  Our plan was to reduce unwanted work to a minimum, but we wiped it out.  Even hard work is fun if it’s not beyond our strength and we don’t have too much of it.  A strong man rejoices to run a race or split wood or build a wall.  When we’re not being imposed on, when we choose our work freely, then we want to work.  We may even search for work when a scarcity threatens.  (p. 147)

We can freely admit that we like to work.  Can you believe that we don’t need to keep an accurate account of each man’s contribution?  Or that most of us have stored up enough spare credits to take a long vacation if we liked?  (p. 148)

The Good Life also means a chance to exercise talents and abilities.  And we have let it be so.  We have time for sports, hobbies, arts and crafts, and most important of all, the expression of that interest in the world which is science in the deepest sense. . . . . And we need intimate and satisfying personal contacts.  We must have the best possible chance of finding congenial spirits.  Our Social Manager sees to that with many ingenious devices.  And we don’t restrict personal relations to conform to outmoded customs.  We discourage attitudes of domination and criticism.  Our goal is a general tolerance and affection.  (p. 148)

Last of all, the Good Life means relaxation and rest.  We get that in Walden Two almost as a matter of course, but not merely because we have reduced our hours of work.  In the world at large the leisure class is perhaps the least relaxed.  The important thing is to satisfy our needs.  Then we can give up the blind struggle to ‘have a good time’ or ‘get what we want.’  We have achieved a true leisure.  (p. 148)

The Walden Code:

One:  “Don’t talk to outsiders about the affairs of the community.”

Two:  “Don’t gossip about the personal relations of members.”

Three:  “Don’t say ‘thank you’.”?

Apprenticeship Rule:  “Explain your work to any member who is interested.”

Marriage and Child-Bearing at Walden-Two

Skinner, B. F.  (1948/1976/2005).  Walden Two.  Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

CHAPTER 16 (pp. 119-127)

As the visitors were walking to lunch, they noticed a young couple with their first child.  It turns out that the girl is sixteen.  Frazier explains, “the average age of the Walden Two mother is eighteen at the birth of her first child, and we hope to bring the figure down still further.  The war interfered a bit there.  I believe the girl you saw was sixteen when her baby was born.”  (p. 119)

There is no excuse for the usual delay in getting married or the still greater delay in bearing children — (p. 119)

Certainly most girls are ready for childbearing at fifteen or sixteen. We like to ridicule ‘puppy love.’ We say it won’t last, and judge its depth accordingly.  Well, of course it won’t last!  A thousand forces conspire against it.  And they are not the forces of nature, either, but of a badly organized society.  The boy and girl are ready for love.  They will never have the same capacity for love again.  And they are ready for marriage and childbearing.  It’s all part of the same thing.  But society never lets them prove it.  (p. 121)

Sex is no problem in itself.  Here the adolescent finds an immediate and satisfactory expression of his natural impulses.  It’s a solution which is productive, honorable, and viewed by the community with admiration and pride.  How very different from the secrecy and shame which most of us recall in connection with sex at some time or other!  Adolescence is seldom pleasant to remember, it’s full of unnecessary problems, unnecessary delays.  It should be brief and painless, and we make it so in Walden Two.  (pp. 121-122)

When a young couple become engaged, they go to our Manager of Marriages.  Their interests, school records, and health are examined.  If there’s any great discrepancy in intellectual ability or temperament they are advised against marrying.  The marriage is at least postponed, and that usually means it’s abandoned.  (p. 125)

CHAPTER 17 (pp. 128-137)

The significant history of our times is the story of the growing weakness of the family.  The decline of the home as a medium for perpetuating a culture, the struggle for equality for women, including their right to select professions other than housewife or nursemaid, the extraordinary consequences of birth control and the practical separation of sex and parenthood, the social recognition of divorce, the critical issue of blood relationship or race — all these are parts of the same field.  And you can hardly call it quiescent.

A community must solve the problem of the family by revising certain established practices.  That’s absolutely inevitable.  The family is an ancient form of community, and the customs and habits which have been set up to perpetuate it are out of place in a society which isn’t based upon blood ties.  Walden Two replaces the family, not only as an economic unit, but to some extent as a social and psychological unit as well.  What survives is an experimental question.  (p. 128)

One of the experimental questions that they’ve answered is separate rooms for husband and wife.  In addition, there is a great deal of emphasis on friendship and intimacy.  Another experimental question answered at Walden Two is group care for children over parental care.  “Our goal is to have every adult member of Walden Two regard all our children as his own, and to have every child think of every adult as his parent” (p. 132).

Behavioral Engineering of Emotions at Walden Two

Skinner, B. F.  (1948/1976/2005).  Walden Two.  Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

CHAPTER 14 (pp. 95-106)

What Frazier calls “ethical training” is completed by or before age six.  Children are taken through a series of trainings to provide them with the opportunity to develop self-control.  For instance, there is the Forbidden Soup exercise.  Children are brought in from play, very tired and hungry, and asked to stand for five minutes in front of bowls of hot soup.  When they can stand for five minutes in front of the soup, then only half of the children are allowed to sit down and eat.  The rest must stand for another five minutes.  Eventually, they must stand quietly or silently for the full five minutes.   These exercise are meant to force the children to find within themselves the means by which to control themselves and their emotions.

CHAPTER 15 (pp. 107-118)

The control of the physical and social environment, of which Frazier had made so much, was progressively relaxed — or, to be more exact, the control was transferred from the authorities to the child himself and to the other members of his group.  After spending most of the first year in an air-conditioned cubicle, and the second and third mainly in an air-conditioned room with a minimum of clothing and bedding, the three- or four-year-old was introduced to regular clothes and given the care of a small standard cot in a dormitory.  The beds of the five- and six-year-olds were grouped by threes and fours in a series of alcoves furnished like rooms and treated as such by the children.  Groups of three or four seven-year-olds occupied small rooms together, and this practice was continued, with frequent change of roommates, until the children were about thirteen, at which time they took temporary rooms in the adult building, usually in pairs.  At marriage, or whenever the individual chose, he could participate in building a larger room for himself or refurnishing an old room which might be available.  (p. 107)

We can adopt the best educational methods and still avoid the administrative machinery which schools need in order to adjust to an unfavorable social structure.  We don’t have to worry about standardization in order to permit pupils to transfer from one school to another, or to appraise or control the work of particular schools.  We don’t need grades.  Everyone knows that talents and abilities don’t develop at the same rate in different children.  A fourth-grade reader may be a sixth-grade mathematician.  The grade is an administrative device which does violence to the nature of the developmental process.  Here the child advances as rapidly as he likes in any field.  No time is wasted in forcing him to participate in, or be bored by, activities he has outgrown.  And the backward child can be handled more efficiently too.  (pp. 109-110)

Education in Walden Two is part of the life of the community.  We don’t need to resort to trumped-up life experiences.  Our children begin to work at a very early age.  It’s no hardship; it’s accepted as readily as sport of play.   And a good share of our education goes on in workshops, laboratories, and fields.  It’s part of the Walden Two Code to encourage children in all the arts and crafts.  We’re glad to spend time in instructing them, for we know it’s important for the future of Walden Two and our own security.  (p. 110)

We have no more reason to distinguish between college and high school than between high school and grade school.  What are these distinctions, anyway, once you have separated education fro the administration of education?  Are there any natural breaks in a child’s development?  Many of our children naturally study more and more advanced material as they grow older.  We help them in every way short of teaching them.  We give them new techniques of acquiring knowledge and thinking.  In spite of the beliefs of most educators, our children are taught to think.  We give them an excellent survey of the methods and techniques of thinking, taken from logic, statistics, scientific method, psychology, and mathematics.  That’s all the college education they need.  They get the rest by themselves in our libraries and laboratories.  (p. 111)

Our laboratories are good because they are real.  Our workshops are really small engineering laboratories, and anyone with a genuine bent can go farther in them than the college student.  We teach anatomy in the slaughterhouse, botany in the field, genetics in the dairy and poultry house, chemistry in the medical building and in the kitchen and dairy laboratory.  What more can you ask?  (p. 112)

Education is part of the community.  It doesn’t stop.  A cap and gown, a diploma have little meaning in such a culture or society.  In addition, Frazier explains to the visitors that children are naturally curious and want to learn.  There is little in their Walden Two experience that would discourage a child or keep a child from learning; therefore, external motivation is also not needed.

The Nursery at Walden Two

Skinner, B. F.  (1948/1976/2005).  Walden Two.  Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

CHAPTER 12 (pp. 86-90)

She opened a door and allowed us to look into a small room, three walls of which were lined with cubicles, each with a large glass window.  Behind the windows we could see babies of various ages.  None of them wore more than a diaper, and there were no bedclothes.  In one cubicle a small red newborn as asleep on it stomach.  Some of the older babies were awake and playing with toys.  Near the door a baby on all fours pressed its nose agains the glass and smiles at us.  (p. 87)

When a baby graduates from our Lower Nursery…it knows nothing of frustration, anxiety, or fear  It never cries except when sick, which is very seldom, and it has a lively interest in everything.  (p. 88)

I suppose you’d like to have them know how much work is saved.  Since the air is filtered, we only bathe the babies once a week, and we never need to clean their nostrils or eyes.  There are no beds to make, of course.  And it’s easy to prevent infection.  the compartments are soundproofed, and the babies sleep well and don’t disturb each other.  We can keep them on different schedules, so the nursery runs smoothly.  (p. 89)

CHAPTER 13 (pp. 91-94)

The quarters for children from one to three consisted of several small playrooms with Lilliputian furniture, a child’s lavatory, and a dressing and locker room.  Several small sleeping rooms were operated on the same principle as the baby-cubicles.  The temperature and the humidity were controlled so that clothes or bed-clothing were not needed.  The cots were double-decker arrangement of the plastic mattresses we had seen in the cubicles.  The children slept unclothes, except for diapers  There were more beds than necessary, so that the children could be grouped according to developmental age or exposure to contagious diseases or need for supervision, or for educational purposes.  (p. 91)

After the tour of the Upper Nursery, the group began a discussion of how Walden Two eliminates emotions.  That discussion continues in Chapter 14.

The Arts at Walden Two

Skinner, B. F.  (1948/1976/2005).  Walden Two.  Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

CHAPTER 11 (pp. 77-85)

‘Take music, for example,’ he resumed.  ‘If you live in Walden Two and like music, you may go as far as you like.  I don’t mean a few minutes a day — I mean all the time and energy you can give to music and remain healthy.  If you want to listen, there’s an extensive library of records and, of course, many concerts, some of them quite professional.  All the good radio programs are broadcat over the system of loudspeakers that we call the Walden Network, and they are monitored to remove the advertising.  (p. 82)

‘If you want to perform, you can get instruction on almost any instrument from other members — who get credits for it.  If you have any ability, you can soon find an audience.  We all go to concerts.  We’re never too tired, and the night is never to cold or too wet.  Even our amateurs are quite popular, though usually with other amateurs — taking in each other’s washing, so to speak.  There’s an atrocious military band with a repertoire in the narrow range between Sousa and von Suppe.   But we have excellent string ensembles, and a very good small symphony orchestra.  (p. 82)

“Leisure.  Opportunity.  Appreciation.” (p. 84).  Frazier’s reply to the observation that the conditions for artistic achievement at Walden Two were amazing.