Good Critical Thinking About Education

Education is a means used by the society to teach a person to survive, and education has long become the aid to the family, community and other social groups in teaching a person to behave in a certain desired way that is, in turn, reinforcing these social groups in their conditioning attempts. Education primarily aims at forming a certain pattern of behavior that will be used by a person in the real world, where the consequences he or she meets will most likely be non-educational. Without developing such behavior education has no value, as the student needs to become able to apply the received responses practically.
There are many educational agencies, including families, communities, business companies, religious groups, governments, etc. They all use various techniques to shape and keep a person’s behavior under control. These controlling techniques differ depending on the aims the agencies try to achieve. For example, family members may choose different techniques of control from those of the army or a company, as they control and reinforce a child’s behavior mainly through primary reinforces, such as food and shelter, and through secondary reinforcements, such as demonstration of love and approval as a response to the child’s desired behavior; families rarely use force or threat of force as a controlling technique, but the situation differs upon the culture. Likewise, army educators are more likely to use force as a punishment for not receiving a desired behavior, rather than display of affection and approval, as a reinforcement because of the specifics of the organization. Educational institutions, from private tutors to big colleges, co-exist with the aforesaid educational agencies as entities that provide assistance in developing the desired behavior. Their existence is reinforced not only by the economic and ethical reinforcement of the educators, but also by the groups, whom they assist. For example, families and communities need educational institutions, as the latter help control children and adolescents and develop the desired behavior; they also control the students’ time and location, thus, assisting the community and governmental forces in social regulation. At the same time, educational institutions do not exist everywhere, as in some cases their existence is not supported and reinforced by those, who have power over the matter, and such situation varies in different cultures. For example, nowadays, in some cultures women are not allowed to be educated, and for this reason the number of educational institutions that accept women, is very low, if any, because the existence of such educational institutions is not reinforced and does not in turn reinforce the powerful social groups.
The main products of education are skills and knowledge the students obtain and are able to apply practically. The set of controlling techniques is, thus, aimed at developing certain patterns of behavior that students will be able to successfully repeat in a non-educational environment, were reinforcement and consequences will be different from the ones that were present in the educational environment. The acquired skills are thought to produce future reinforcement as a result of their successful application (Skinner, 2014, p. 408). Knowledge, as a behavior the student practically applies, is not simply a set of crammed verbal instructions, but rather a complex behavior developed through analysis of verbal and non-verbal instruction, that allows the student not only to repeat the learned behavior, but produce similar responses in situations similar to the ones given in educational instructions (Skinner, 2014, p. 408). For this reason, education cannot be regarded as rote learning, but as a mechanism that develops the student’s ability to study, understand, analyze and process information and respond adequately in non-educational environment.
As educational institutions form students’ behavior that will subsequently affect their lives in the society, many social entities try to countercontrol what is taught by the educators. Having various types of power over the educational institutions, such entities reinforce them to include certain subjects or topics in the curriculum in order to promote their own interests and form the students’ behavior according to their needs. According to Skinner (2014), it is in the government’s best needs to control such influence on the educational institutions. Indeed, nowadays, the First Amendment forbids the government to establish or prefer one religion over the other or religion over non-religion, to fund teacher salaries at religious schools, and at the same time the government can control the harmful economic influence of certain religious groups on schools (“Establishment Clause”, n.d.). This prohibition helps different social groups countercontrol each other’s influence in educational institutions.
Education as a social tool to form a desired behavior has an important role in adapting students to the life in society. The existence of various educational institutions is reinforced by various entities, including other educational agencies, such as family, community, etc., as the latter are reinforced by the assistance that established educational institutions provide. Various techniques are used by educational agencies to establish and control the behavior of the students, and their use depends on the aims of such agencies. Nowadays, the conditioning mechanism of educational institutions is very different from what existed several decades ago, as schools are no longer using physical punishment and are in constant need to develop new reinforcement mechanisms to keep the students interested in developing the needed behavior. Some entities, including religious and commercial groups, can influence the educations institutions mainly by economic reinforcement, and the government and non-governmental organizations should control such influence in order to keep the balance in education.

References

Establishment Clause. (n.d.). Retrieved March 23, 2015, from https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/establishment_clause
Jeffries, D. (2013, March 11). Is technology and the internet reducing pupils' attention spans? Retrieved March 23, 2015, from http://www.theguardian.com/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2013/mar/11/technology-internet-pupil-attention-teaching
Skinner, B. F. (2014). Science and human behavior. The B. F. Skinner Foundation.