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)

Chapter Two, The Use of Explosive Ideas in Education

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

How We Shall Proceed

“The first chapter of each section considers the nature of the explosive idea itself.”  (p. 16)

“The second chapter in the three-stage design recalls the bridge of philosophy….What does a respective idea mean when its assumptions are critically analyzed by philosophic specialists?” (p. 17)

“Insofar as each third chapter is successful, it demonstrates how professional education becomes dependent upon basic knowledge from other sources than education.”  (p. 17)

Anticipating the Explosive Ideas

“Why, then, were they [culture, class, and evolution] selected?”  (p. 17)

The Functions of Philosophy

“One, epistemology, is concerned with examining and establishing criteria of reliable knowledge.  A second, ontology (sometimes defined synonymously with metaphysics), tries to discover criteria of reality.  A third, axiology, searches for criteria of value.”  (p. 19)

“To what extent do children in the South obtain unbiased knowledge of the Negro problem?  To what extent do children anywhere in America obtain a picture of economic and political events not colored by the propaganda or vested interests of some official or unofficial pressure group?  To what extent, also, do they have opportunity to consider under critical and responsible educational direction the changing mores of our age — especially the values of sexual morality?”  (p. 20)

Types of Educational Philosophy

“Idealists, for example, are idealistic ontologists — that is, they discover the principles of reality in their conception of the universe as spiritual or mental in substance.”  (p. 21)

“Materialists are materialistic axiologists — that is, they find the meaning of value in material events such as economic patterns.”  (p. 21)

“Pragmatists are pragmatic epistemologists — that is, truths are determined by their practical workability in ongoing experience.”  (p. 21)

“Let us call our own preferred types by the following four terms:  essentialism, progressivism, perennialism, and reconstructionism.”  (p. 22)

The Sphere of Practice

“Each of the following three sections concludes with a chapter of application to educational problems and activities.  The practices selected — curriculum, learning-teaching, and control — are obvious enough at first glance.”  (p. 24)

“To mention one other that will interest us again:  concomitant learning is the sort that occurs through direct association with people — usually through informally rather than formally planned experiences.”  (p. 25)

“One widely held view of teaching that we must be wary of is to identify it with indoctrination.” (p. 26)

Control:  “Who shall determine the policies of education?  How shall they be determined?  Who shall carry them out?” (p. 26)

“Should not teachers and even students also have a voice?  And what about the state and federal governments?”  (p. 26)