On Certain Assumptions Underlying Contemporary Educational Practices

Abstract

Education is one of the most important services a culture can provide for its citizens, yet certain of the educational practices in our contemporary culture are predicated on mentalistic and ultimately counterproductive assumptions about (a) the nature of students' intellectual skills and (b) the process called learning as it applies to the classroom. Behavior analysis has its own set of assumptions about educational matters based on its view of verbal behavior, particularly concerning equivalence relations.