Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived," but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life.
B. F. SkinnerSomething doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
B. F. SkinnerNo one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out.
B. F. SkinnerAt this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
B. F. SkinnerPunitive measures whether administered by police, teachers, spouses or parents have well known standard effects: (1) escape-education has its own name for that: truancy, (2) counterattack-vandalism on schools and attacks on teachers, (3) apathy-a sullen do-nothing withdrawal. The more violent the punishment, the more serious the by-products.
B. F. Skinner