4: Education and Behavior

When I was a young teenager, my dad would run ‘goofy-like’  from the mailbox to our front door with the annual phone books in hand and scream, “THE NEW  PHONE BOOKS ARE HERE!!!! THE NEW PHONE BOOKS ARE HERE!!” He would do this for no other reason to embarrass me and my sister for we lived in the same neighborhood as our school and everybody would see him.  I experience the same feeling upon the arrival of the annual test scores and school reports.  It is as if all the powers that be in the district are running like my dad with scores and reports in tow screaming, “THE NEW TEST SCORES ARE HERE!!! THE NEW TEST SCORES ARE HERE!!”

I wonder if this was the relationship between education and behavior, James envisioned when he presented his fourth essay in “Talks to Teachers?” In this chapter, he defines education as “the organization of acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior”     (p. 15). James also discusses “ the various ideals of education that are prevalent in the different countries, we see that what they all aim at is to organize capacities for conduct” 
(p. 16). 

What conduct is our system of education aiming to organize?  Once upon a time the NCLB law was enacted and schools not making ‘grade’ were announced to the public as ‘failed schools’.  At which point, various sorts of assistance would come in to save the day.  To foster even more improvement, schools began rewarding teachers extrinsically.  The thought behind this reward system was to promote healthy competition and ultimately raise test scores and school performance rates.   An unfortunate by product of extrinsic reward is greed, and naturally this initiative in some cases resulted unethical pedagogical practice. 

If you cannot locate William,
he is probably hanging out
with the computer.