“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.

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B.F. Skinner 30
American behaviorist 1904–1990

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