Trained for Social Change: Creating Social Activists Through Operant Conditioning

The Western Journal recently ran an article detailing a New York Times initiative called the 1619 project. The aim of this project is to build upon the racial tensions exacerbated by the modern social justice movement by teaching elementary school children that the Revolutionary War was fought to protect the institution of slavery. There are several reasons why this is factually incorrect; however, if our children are continually exposed to this type of propaganda, they will grow up believing it. According to The Western Journal, 3,500 schools across all fifty states have adopted this lesson. Donald Trump was praised for his state of the union address, where among other things, he boasted that children shouldn’t be forced to go to failing government schools.  The truth is that the federal department of education controls the curriculum across the board. It doesn’t matter what school children go to ̶ they will be exposed to the same lessons. Why would the federal department of education allow such a lesson to be taught? The answer is simple; the school system is a catalyst for shaping young minds and conditioning children to be agents of social change. Children in elementary school today will be tomorrow’s change agents for social justice.

The goal of education is not to create free thinking individuals, but a compliant citizenry that accepts government control over their lives. This is achieved through operant conditioning techniques, a process otherwise known as stimulus response conditioning. Founded by B.F. Skinner, operant conditioning works on the premise that behavior can be controlled and modified by manipulating the environment and reinforcing acceptable behavior through negative or positive reinforcers. Positive reinforcement means awarding behaviors by adding a stimulus, and negative reinforcement means removing certain stimulus which may lead to the acceptable behavior. In other words, our children are either being praised for going along with the program or ridiculed and punished if they don’t. In 1969, the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare released a booklet entitled “Reducing Behavior Problems: An Operant Conditioning Guide for Children,” where operant conditioning is defined as the following-

“In its simplest form, operant conditioning involves the systematic use of consequences to strengthen and weaken behaviors under specified stimulus conditions. Operant behavior is strengthened by some consequences called reinforcers and weakened by other consequences called punishers. Withdrawal of reinforcing consequences will also weaken behavior. This procedure is called extinction.”

Behaviorists such as Skinner have been studying human behavior for decades. They have known how to produce compliant behavior and are developing new ways to do so. In Skinner’s Beyond Freedom and Dignity he highlights how behavior can be manipulated through people’s natural tendency to want to fit in. “People who get along together well under the mild contingencies of approval and disapproval are controlled as effectively as (and in many ways more effectively than) the citizens of a police state (Skinner, 1971). What he is saying is that through the techniques of operant conditioning, children in our schools, out of fear of standing out or causing problems will go along with what they are taught. This behavior will be reinforced through reinforcement schedules to the point it becomes ingrained in who they are. In other words, this is how our children are growing up to be social justice activists, through behavior modification techniques.

"Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled, they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished ... The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen." -----Bertrand Russell quoting Johann Gottlieb Fichte, the head of philosophy & psychology who influenced Hegel and others – Prussian University in Berlin, 1810[16]

John Dewey, known as the father of modern education, believed that public schooling should be used as a means of socializing students and creating the type of citizenry that fits societies needs. In other words, education should focus on creating a work force and not free-thinking individuals. This is very much in line with the type of education system we have today. Dewey also believed that reading and high literacy rates were detrimental to this agenda and schools should focus on reducing curriculums focused on the development of reading and writing skills. Today, America is facing a literacy crisis where 30 million Americans cannot read or write above third grade level.  Many of the problems facing the teaching of writing are highlighted in this writer’s paper “The State of Writing in American Education.” One example is the fact that the English language itself is being taught as a form of white supremacy and systematic oppression. This is being done to condition students with the belief that America needs to change while reinforcing the misperception that our nation was founded on racism and slavery.

The Department of Education is also founded on the same ideals that Dewey believed in. In fact, much of Dewey’s vision for education was motivated by the Soviet system. In the book “Toward Soviet America,” Communist party chairman William foster espouses his vision for a federally controlled education system ̶

"A U.S. Department of Education; implementation of a scientific materialist philosophy; studies revolutionized, being cleansed of religious, patriotic and other features of the bourgeois ideology; students taught on the basis of Marxian dialectical materialism, internationalism and general ethics of a new socialist society; present obsolete methods of teaching will be superseded by a scientific pedagogy. The whole basis and organization of capitalist science will be revolutionized. Science will become materialistic, hence truly scientific. God will be banished from the laboratories as well as from the schools.

Does this not explain the current state of American education? Does this not give some understanding of why so many kids are coming out of public schools begging for socialism and hating their own country?

The Federal Department of Education, under the Trump administration no less, has recently signed on to the United Nations sustainable development initiative. This puts the global agenda at the heart of all education initiatives, particularly dealing with the faux issue of climate change. President Trump is the head of all federal agencies and has it within his power to ensure our schools are teaching the constitution and American values. “No parent should be forced to send their child to a failing government school,” The President remarked in his state of the union address. If behavior modification continues to be the goal, all schools will be failing our children. With each passing generation we are moving further and further away from liberty and closer to Communism. Except, it won’t have to be implemented by force. They have us begging for it.

“The most controversial issues of the twenty-first century will pertain to the ends and means of modifying human behavior and who shall determine them. The first educational question will not be what knowledge is of the most worth? but what kinds of human beings do we wish to produce? The possibilities virtually defy our imagination.” (Goodlad, 1997)