B.F. Skinner: Quotes about learning

B.F. Skinner was American behaviorist. Explore interesting quotes on learning.
B.F. Skinner: 60   quotes 28   likes

“Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.”

B.F. Skinner Walden Two

Source: Walden Two

Way , Failure , Understanding , Learning

“A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.”

B.F. Skinner book Beyond Freedom and Dignity

Source: Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1972).

Way , Learning , Personality

“It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious.”

B.F. Skinner

"Free and Happy Student" in The Phi Delta Kappan (September 1973); later published in Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978).
Context: 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. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious.
It is a difficult assignment. The conditions the teacher arranges must be powerful enough to compete with those under which the student tends to behave in distracting ways.

Learning , Teachers , Future

“Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.”

B.F. Skinner

"New methods and new aims in teaching", in New Scientist, 22(392) (21 May 1964), pp.483-4.

Education , Learning

“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. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious.
It is a difficult assignment. The conditions the teacher arranges must be powerful enough to compete with those under which the student tends to behave in distracting ways.”

B.F. Skinner

"Free and Happy Student" in The Phi Delta Kappan (September 1973); later published in Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978)

Way , Future , Learning , Teachers