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We\u2019re going way back on this one, and while it may seem controversial, hang in there. It will make sense by the end.<\/p>\nWe\u2019re going way back on this one, and while it may seem controversial, hang in there. It will make sense by the end.<\/p>\n
B.F. Skinner is sometimes called the father of operant conditioning. This is the practice of teaching animals to perform complex tasks by means of a reinforcement.\u00a0 The practices that Skinner pioneered have gone on to be used in various forms with animals ranging from elephants to cats (who were previously believed to be untrainable).\u00a0 Skinner managed this by building controlled environments (sometimes called Skinner boxes) for the animals and then shaping the animal\u2019s behavior until it performed the desired tasks.\u00a0 He managed to link tasks together as well so that animals could perform quite complex sequences.\u00a0 Pigeons, not generally known for their intelligence, were taught to knock over pins with a tiny bowling ball.<\/p>\n
The controlled environments were specifically designed for the animal being trained.\u00a0 Rats had levers to push, which they could manage easily with their paws. Pigeons, lacking paws, were given buttons or discs to peck at.<\/p>\n
Among other skills, Skinner demonstrated that pigeons in particular could be taught to recognize words, colors, shapes, varying intensities of light, and perform other tasks, some of which were explored for military purposes (pigeon missile guidance systems \u2013 and no, that\u2019s not a joke) or used in search and rescue operations (this was utilized by the Coast Guard).<\/p>\n
Skinner applied his methods to many different animals with generally good success. One animal that he was never very successful with, though, was the raccoon.\u00a0 Raccoons are well known for innovative problem solving and if you\u2019ve ever tried to keep them out of your trash bins, you know they are smart<\/em>.\u00a0 Skinner attempted to teach raccoons to put coins in a piggy bank. He was able to teach them to pick up the coins, but he was never able to get them to let go of the coins once they had them.\u00a0 Similarly, when he tried to teach them bowling, the raccoons refused to release the ball once it was in their possession.<\/p>\n Transferring Skinner\u2019s theories and methods from animals to humans seems like a stretch, and yet in a recent podcast from Hidden Brain<\/em> some of those methods \u2013 the ones that have evolved into Clicker Training \u2013 are being applied to some very high level task learning among orthopedic surgery residents.\u00a0 The episode, entitled When Everything Clicks: The Power of Judgement-Free Learning,<\/em><\/a> explores both the effect on the student and the role of the teacher.<\/p>\n It\u2019s this last part that stuck with me.\u00a0 The moderator said this:<\/p>\n \u201cThe challenge in teaching pigeons doesn\u2019t actually lie in teaching pigeons. It\u2019s in designing a box where pigeons can learn.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n When Skinner failed to train raccoons, his explanation was that the raccoons thought the objects were food and therefore wouldn\u2019t let them go. In other words, the fault was with the raccoons.\u00a0 If the raccoons could just get over their greed, they would learn like pigeons or rats or dogs. However, he failed to note that raccoons aren\u2019t pigeons or rats or dogs. They have a unique set of requirements. In the same way that a pigeon in a box designed for a rat would struggle to learn, a raccoon in an environment not suited to its particular characteristics would produce a similar stalemate.\u00a0 Similarly, if the trainer didn\u2019t break the tasks down into manageable pieces the animal would become frustrated and learning wouldn\u2019t occur. These increments look different depending on the animal in question and rest to some extent on what the animal can already do.<\/p>\n So, if an animal isn\u2019t learning, either the environment is wrong, or the tasks are not sufficiently incremental, or the teacher does not understand the animal\u2019s motivations.\u00a0 Whichever way, the burden of the learning is on the teacher. <\/em><\/p>\n This is not traditionally how education has operated. Teachers have long functioned as repositories of knowledge and students are meant to sit and absorb it until asked to repeat it back in some approved way.\u00a0 If they can\u2019t do that, we blame the learner, just as Skinner\u00a0 blamed the raccoons.\u00a0 If, however, the teacher takes the time to understand the needs of the learner and creates conditions to optimize success, if s\/he analyzes the tasks sufficiently and breaks them into manageable increments, and does not assume<\/em> that the conditions and needs and increments are the same for every student but instead tailors those variables as needed\u2026..learning will happen.\u00a0 It turns out raccoons can<\/em> be trained; one of Skinner’s assistants managed it.<\/a><\/p>\n All children can learn. All.\u00a0 \u00a0Maybe that child is a wombat in a room full of chameleons.\u00a0 Or a porcupine in a room full of baby pandas.\u00a0 Maybe you have wombats and pandas and otters and porcupines and sloths, and chameleons all jumbled together. If they aren\u2019t learning, then we need to rethink what sort of box we\u2019ve designed for them and how we can fix it so that learning can occur for each specific child.\u00a0 And we need to teach teachers the skills necessary to build better boxes, to analyze tasks so they can be chunked appropriately for each specific child.\u00a0 This dovetails neatly with Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development<\/a>: you can take the learner beyond the limit of what they can already do, if you provide appropriate support to help them practice additional skills until they can do them independently.<\/p>\n And in case you are dismissing this out of hand, know this:\u00a0 that same assistant of Skinner’s went on to train a spider to detect lasers.<\/a> A\u00a0spider<\/em>.\u00a0 If a spider can learn, surely there isn’t a child anywhere that is truly unteachable.<\/p>\n