Harvard: The Application of Everything I Learned Before

I was fortunate in 1970 when Dr. B.F. Skinner responded to a fan letter I wrote him with great enthusiasm and a few tokes of cannabis, after reading his novel, Walden Two. I later hitch-hiked to Cambridge to see him at Harvard, and he invited me to be his student in the doctoral program. There I became a behavior scientist, eventually working with the brilliant Bea Barrett, one of his former post-docs, for a decade, and being mentored by Ogden Lindsley, Eric Haughton, and Tom Gilbert, all of whom worked with and/or studied with Dr. Skinner at some point and were pioneering thought leaders in the application of behavior science.

I came well-prepared for Harvard, although I would not have known that beforehand, given that many of my fellow grad students were from Ivy League schools, and initially a bit intimidating. But the Dominican nuns, excellent teachers in my elementary education, and the Jesuits in high school and college, who emphasized critical thinking and service to the world, taught me to write, think, and speak fluently.

Those fluent skills became the behavior components of my professional repertoire. Combining and applying those components, I learned quickly from my mentors, conducted important research based on what they taught me, communicated effectively, and became a contributor to the fields of instruction and performance improvement.

Applying Skinner’s measure, rate of response — which he considered to be his most important contributon — we discovered the stages of learning. One cannot even SEE the stages of learning if one does not include the time dimension when measuring behavior. And one cannot distinguish what we later came to call fluent performance – the ability to perform quickly, smoothly, and confidently. – without measuring it in time. Percent correct leaves educators, trainers, and others blind to important changes in the development of skilled behavior, moving from hesitant acquisition of new behavior, to practice for fluency, and application or combination of fluent components. We discovered in countless experiments and instructional sequences that to be masterful at any skill, one needs fluent behavior components. That was a major discovery of Eric Haughton and his students, especially Clay Starlin.

We know how to design instruction for that process, but very few other educators or trainers know about it because they ignore the time dimension in their measurement of skill. This is, to introduce a brief tangent, what in my view underlies the failure of American education. When educators threw out “drill and kill” — the traditional, often unpleasant forms of practice used in education prior to the 60s or 70s – they did not replace it with effective, positively engaging practice procedures. So, very few learners achieve fluent component behavior, except by chance. This undermines application of that behavior in performance for far too many students. Yet those of us in the lineage of Skinner’s measure have learned to routinely advance students by two or more grade levels in curriculum per school year. It’s not magic, it’s just applied behavior science with the right measurement.

Sometimes in everyday life, when we achieve fluent behavior components through intentional practice or even in play, we spontaneously apply those components in new and innovative ways, without further training. This discovery, made and first applied in the 60s and 70s by pioneers in Precision Teaching (including me), led to educational programs that enabled both students in school and corporate trainees to advance far more rapidly that others to acquire flexible, agile, innovative repertoires. Later, some of our more scholarly calleagues referred to this process as “generative,” and to the design and implementation of instruction that builds on fluent components as “generative instruction.”

This blog is a reflection on my own history. I practiced the components of critical thinking and logic, writing, speaking, and math under the tutelage of the Dominicans and the Jesuits, who provided a lot of practice. When I arrived at Harvard, and subsequently worked with Barrett and my other mentors, I was well-prepared. At Harvard there were brilliant people in many fields of interest, countless innovators and thought leaders in classes and seminars, walking on campus, at nearby MIT, and around Harvard Square. That environment provided a rich set of contexts in which new combinations and applications of my behavior components emerged. I found that my previous education and practice enabled me to innovate. And my 50+ years of professional life have been devoted to a series of innovations, discoveries, and applications that have come out of my prior history and current context.

In that way, Harvard was my Application environment. And 50 years of generativity have taken me on a long and interesting journey.

I suspect that many readers who’ve made it through this blog can see similar patterns in their own lives: early years preparing you with practice of behavior components which later became the foundation of application and innovation, evolving into the career you have and who you are now.

It’s always interesting to me when I can take what I’ve learned from Skinner’s behavior science and turn it on my own case, or view others through the lens that it provides.

And I am profoundly grateful for that!

We Humans Are Crouchers – Or Should Be!

It just occurred to me, as I move slowly back to yoga and other stretching and strengthening exercises after a knee replacement, that we homo sapiens likely evolved, at least in all the places we hunted, to crouch when we hunted, fought, or played in the foliage.

Probably even before we were homo sapiens our ancestors were crouchers. We needed to stay halfway down on our knees, sometimes for prolonged periods, hiding below the bushes or behind the chunks of ice, etc., and be ready to jump out, or jump up and/or send a spear or arrow or slingshot to the hunted critter, or to the enemy.

That's how I think we evolved as hunter gatherers, and being able to crouch and jump up was a critical survival capability. It takes strong legs, flexible knees, and coordination. Some athletes have it, and so do many youngsters. But as we age we lose that flex and pounce capacity rapidly, if we’re not careful. It potentially points to a larger mobility challenge and opportunity, which requires those muscles and more.

I say this because when one has had a knee replacement, being able to crouch and spring up fluently is the golden fleece, and may or may not be regained fully. Even a rough approximation will make me happy!

Gotta do that PT!

Something Vincent the Cat Taught Me

Vincent the cat, my friend for 18+ years, left us this morning. I and his buddy of 8 years, Noah the cat, are gonna miss him very much.

With the loss of a long-time animal companion, it's natural to reflect on the role such beings play in our lives. I suspect that "pets" serve many functions for people. I often joke, being a man living solo in sometimes hermitage conditions with cats, that my cats are my social life. Vincent the cat was with me during the second half of my marriage, and as my children grew through their pre-teens and teenage years. And he was with me after that for almost 10 years. For about a year, he was The Cat, before I met Noah, whom I adopted to give Vincent a playmate.

As I think of my relationship with Vincent, beside the fact that he was a comforting presence every single night and morning as he slept at the foot of my bed, he was also someone i simply turned to pet, to hang with for a few moments, randomly during the day, because of his beauty and sweet disposition. I was grateful to have him as my friend for those reasons. And even as he aged, and mostly slept, ate, and purred when petted, he was still a benign presence in my life. I would stop by him randomly during the day to pet him and check in. He was always glad to stretch out and show me his belly to rub. Nothing dramatic or big, but important, along with his very different friend, Noah, who is always getting into mischief, always wants to be the Alpha, and continues to be quite assertive in his social engagement, purring, biting my nose affectionately when he jumps up on the bed, etc. In many ways, with Vincent, it was simply his sweet, gentle presence in my life that I valued and for which I was grateful.

Reflecting on how I and others relate to their various animal friends, I think it's obvious that each one is different, and that as with our human friends, they play unique roles in our lives. I would go so far in the case of cats, and I am sure this is true with dogs and horses and other animals, that – despite some arguments by philosophers to the contrary – they have "personhood." They each have unique personalities, patterns of behavior, and roles they play in our lives based on who they ARE, which of course is the result of their genetic endowment and environmental history (as my teacher, Fred Skinner would have said).

So, missing Vincent is not missing some generic "pet," but rather is missing a particular personality, an individual with whom I had a special relationship, and with whom I lived for a longer period than with anyone else in my life except my wife of 20 years.

Sand Slipping Through Our Fingers

Our lives are like fine sand, slipping through our fingers. We must simply pay attention, enjoy the texture and the flow. Savor the beauty of the Whole Thing.

I Think I Might Be Anti-Academic!

I was thinking today about my history with academe. I never really identified with it, always like an outsider grasping tidbits from the various academic institutions I’ve attended or been affiliated with. I have a PhD, a Master’s Degree, and a BA in Philosophy, but my highschool graduation was the last one I attended. I learned a lot more in the offices of my Professors than in their classes, and I learned even more from the great mentors and thought leaders I was blessed to know, and to become their protege to varying degrees.

My Philosophy major in college had very little to do with a vocation or getting a degree, though I knew this was the process. I got to study for two years in the Seattle University Honors Program, which at that time (1968) was a remarkable Great Books program, all seminars, studying, talking and writing about literature, history and thought (philosophy/theology) from ancient India and the Middle East up to the 1950s. It was a remarkable journey and taught me how to write even better than the Jesuits had taught me to do in highschool. It was because I was often under pressure to do an all-nighter to produce a 20-page paper (composed on the typewriter with correction fluid) based on some scholarly readings and discussion. I finished up in college in 3 years because I took so many credits, but the learning happened with a few of my good friends, with the wonderful late English Professor, Arlene Olwell, and from the conversations and readings in the honors program. Then I went to Notre Dame for a PhD program in Philosophy, and really did not want to come back to graduate “with my class” at Seattle U. The diploma seemed somehow pointless. It was how much I got to learn from great teachers that made it worthwhile, and the next steps were to other teachers. I transferred to Harvard Experimental Psychology at Dr. Skinner’s invitation, yet it had never occurred to me that I would be there. I didn’t really learn that much in class that was interesting to me. That program was a gauntlet, not an educational program. Dr. Skinner no longer had a lab, but I had weekly meetings with him for two years to read and discuss his books, and to help (along with MANY others) giving him feedback on drafts of his book, About Behaviorism. It was the time I got to spend in Dr. Skinner’s office, and the classes I took in primate Anthropology from Irven DeVore, or E.O. Wilson’s initial appearance on the scene. Og Lindsley often responded to people who said they wanted to go to graduate school by asking: “Do you want to get a union card, or do you want to learn and discover something?” I just wanted to do the work because we were discovering so many things, and I did not care much about the union card. Finally, as I look at the world of higher education now, and see colleges either becoming vocational schools or degree mills or struggling in other ways, I have come back to one of the reasons I explicitly did NOT want to be a University Professor — for academic politics. (The other reason is that I want to live where I want to live, not where the job happens to be.)

These days, as I watch what has become of the field of behavior science to which I was introduced in 1967, and particularly a certification process that mostly requires passing a test, and degree mills multiply and…. I become even more anti-academe.

I think the answer is more like what Joe Harless wrote in his book, The Eden Conspiracy (www.EdenConspiracy.com). In that book, Dr. Harless proposed an educational system that is accomplishment-based, not subject matter based. I can get behind that idea, and the programs that have emerged from the original experiment (which you can read about in the second edition of the book), are remarkable. Not “academic,” but enabling of what people want to do and produce, whether it’s as a dental assistant, a videographer or film producer, a news anchor, a welder, or a factory automation manager. Pretty interesting stuff, too!

Let me end by sharing the funniest part of the letter that Dr. Skinner wrote in response to my fan letter to him while slightly stoned, enthusiastic about his behavior science and its application, fictionally described in Walden Two.

Dated August 11, 1970, and the last paragraph is:

”I myself had only one student last year and will probably have none this year. I no longer have a laboratory so I a m not in a good position to supervise experimental work. I am impressed by your commitment, however, and will do what I can to give you help. Possibly a spot in this vicinity could be found ewhere you could do graduate work without too much of a waste of time.”

In my 20 years of friendship with and being mentored by Dr. Skinner, I learned that he had essentially zero tolerance for academic politics. This was, according to those who came before me, sometimes a disadvantage for grad students because he did not play politics for them, but instead let their work stand on its own. If you asked for something, he would usually provide it. But he neither prompted, nor promoted nor poked you to meet deadlines, etc. (It was all free operant, speaking here to my behavior science friends.) I learned that I could depend on him for insightful, honest and thoughtful ideas and responses to my questions. He changed my life more than any other person unrelated to me by blood.

Gratitude

I think that Gratitude is perhaps one of the most excellent forms of “prayer.”

It combines a kind of inherent humility and recognition that "I" am not in control of The Whole Thing – whatever your philosophy or religion says THAT is. And it is truly open-hearted, if it is real.

And it is a kind of active “Thank you,”, which seems like the best stance one can take toward the Universe, whenever possible.

I wrote something long ago about gratitude being the first step into Love, and I think it is.

Noah the Cat

As Jessie said, Noah is a fancy cat. He’s a Flame Point Siamese, from PAWS. He’s about 5 years old now. Belonged, according to PAWS, to a hoarder. He was one of 30+ cats in a trailer. They said the smell was beyond comprehension, requiring a gas mask. Noah is fearless. If one runs up to him, or almost steps on him, or opens the fireplace right in front of him, he just sort of looks at you like, “What next?” He is aggressively affectionate. His greatest reinforcers seem to be bodytime and food. Any bodytime is good, but rubbing his belly appears to be the best. He always presents himself to have his belly rubbed when I walk down to the house from the studio on a warm day. Just goes “thunk” onto the warm cement, shows me his belly, and chirps in one way or another. As the narrator said in one documentary about cats, they have evolved perfectly to get what they want and need from humans. He will also push you out of the way, no matter who you are, for his preferred food. He came into a household where Vincent the Cat, originally named Van Gogh by the folks at PAWS because he is orange and has a clipped ear, was the Alpha cat — the only one. He had been for a while, my dear friend, slept on my bed every night. But, I think because a human clipped his ear at one point, he always hesitates, goes under the table to stay in control, seemingly worried we will cut off his other ear. Once you approach him and reach out, though, he’s sweet and affectionate and gentle, and very humble for a cat. Noah bowls him over, insisting on being the Alpha, despite Vincent’s being older and senior. These days they press up against each other a lot, sometimes like Yin and Yang on the couch or a patio chaise. I’m not sure Vincent likes it. He seems to tolerate it. Noah comes over, plops down, and snuggles right against him. Every so often, Vincent gets up, looks disgusted, and just moves elsewhere. But often Noah follows. So Vincent seems to tolerate his friend’s closeness most of the time, maybe even liking the cozy warmth shared with his cat house mate. This is my social life.

Learning to Dance

In some of the Great Traditions of cultural wisdom and spiritual practice, there are personal and spiritual practices related to intimate partnership. While some of them are clouded by what we would now consider to be horribly sexist and patriarchal beliefs and practices, some are devoted to the esoteric spiritual practices possible between partners. The idea of polarity is a big factor in some of these traditions, including Tantric sexual yoga practices, Taoist chi-strengthening routines, and modern versions of these. There are esoteric diagrams and teachings about living with intimate partners, about sexuality, contemplation and meditation, often in great detail.

The underlying notion in those traditions is that the intimate relationship can be a “cave of practice” in which two people bump up against every possible selfish pattern of behavior imaginable, see and change those patterns, and evolve with coming together as an engine of spiritual and personal evolution. There is certainly wisdom to that perspective, and many ordinary people are fortunate enough to have found forms of that nurturing, forgiving, and evolutionary process on their own. In any case, it is a legitimate form of yoga (which means union) in which we peel layers from our illusory self-sense and become more “real” in relation to everything and everyone. And if we are fortunate, in authentic communion with an intimate partner.

A modern day writer on the topic of intimate relationships was the late Dr. Sue Johnson, whose book, Hold Me Tight, is a remarkable exploration of intimate relationship with recommended practices.

Her premise is that the core of a lasting intimate relationship should, or perhaps must, be akin to that unconditional bonding that occurs between Mother and Child. It is the backstop, the depth of respect and love that is forgiving and accepting of the other. When things go wrong, she says, that unconditional love is breached, and one or both partners are deeply hurt. They each respond with characteristic patterns, what she calls a “dance.” An important part of her recommendation is to become mutually aware of those dances, vulnerably confess to them, share the pain that they have caused, notice what triggers them, and mindfully proceed to learn different dance steps.

In Sue Johnson’s view, the success and longevity of an intimate relationship depends on learning to dance together.

And that is certainly a form of yoga.

Beauty

Walking through the woods on a path, fall colors emerging, first puddles of the season on the trail. I recognize that it’s very easy to find beauty in Nature. The shapes and forms that She shows us are beautiful in their perfect imperfection, in their diversity, and in their individual uniqueness. If we stop to see the leaves and trees; the colors and flowers and berries; the imperfectly shaped everything – we see beauty everywhere. Same on the waterfront with the beauty of ocean waves, the clouds, all of the light, that changes constantly. We also recognize beauty in animals, and the faces of other humans, in our lovers, our children, our friends – in all their alleged imperfections. They, and we, are part of Nature, too.

Whether we believe it all came from a Creator God, or from the Evolution of variation and selection from an explosion of energy becoming matter at the speed of light, or that it is simply This Now – Nature is beautiful in a compelling and mysterious way. Thus, we have the nature poets, painters, filmmakers, photographers, and naturalists. We love natural beauty. We love finding and displaying beauty in so many ways.

It is considerably more challenging for us humans to create objects and displays that are beautiful, with lines and shapes rather than the fuzziness of Nature. We often see beauty, but creating objects that elicit the “beauty response” is an entirely different matter. Just any old lines or shapes won’t do. They won’t all produce the “beauty response” in humans.

That’s part of the mastery of great architects, such as Hossein Amanat, who designs beautiful buildings and monuments with the lines of human architecture. There are a lot of curves, and he draws much from classical Persian, Greek and Middle Eastern architecture. But he has also designed stunningly beautiful buildings with modern lines and sensibilities, integrating classical beauty seamlessly. He includes space and shapes and proportions that align with the great discoveries about beauty and emotion among those who have been designing structures for thousands of years. Seeing and creating beauty is an ancient art, based on ancient geometry and engineering. Frank Lloyd Wright was another great one, and his creations had a lot of sharp lines. Interestingly, though, his buildings were often couched in Nature, almost part of it.

We humans have to work at creating Beauty. Nature just is beautiful!