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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?

B. F. Skinner

Unable to understand how or why the person we see behaves as he does, we attribute his behavior to a person we cannot see, whose behavior we cannot explain either but about whom we are not inclined to ask questions.
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Explanation Justice Person Question See Understand
It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.
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Control Freedom Improvement Issues Men Mistake
A permissive government is a government that leaves control to other sources.
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Control Government Leaving Source
Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.
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Happiness Man Production Skill
Some of us learn control, more or less by accident. The rest of us go all our lives not even understanding how it is possible, and blaming our failure on being born the wrong way.
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Blame Born Education Failure Live Ourselves Understand Way Wrong
Twenty-five hundred years ago it might have been said that man understood himself as well as any other part of the world. Today he is the thing he understands least.
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Himself Man Nature Past Understand World
The juvenile delinquent does not feel his disturbed personality. The intelligent man does not feel his intelligence or the introvert his introversion.
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Disturb Feeling Himself Intelligence Men Personality
A person’s genetic endowment, a product of the evolution of the species, is said to explain part of the workings of his mind and his personal history the rest.
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Explanation History Mindset Person Work
We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.
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Attitude Character Nature Novel Respect Seen Selection Theory
Science, not religion, has taught me my most useful values, among them intellectual honesty. It is better to go without answers than to accept those that merely resolve puzzlement.
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Acceptance Education Honesty Intellectual Value
But restraint is the only one sort of control, and absence of restraint isn’t freedom. It’s not control that’s lacking when one feels ‘free’, but the objectionable control of force.
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Absence Control Feeling Force Freedom
At this very moment enormous numbers of intelligent men and women of goodwill are trying to build a better world. But problems are born faster than they can be solved.
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Born Intelligence Man Moments Problem Solve
Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.
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Education Forget Graduation Survive Teacher
We shouldn’t teach great books; we should teach a love of reading. Knowing the contents of a few works of literature is a trivial achievement. Being inclined to go on reading is a great achievement.
B. F. SKINNER

Achievement Book Education Greatness Love Reading Study Teacher
We have seen that in certain respects operant reinforcement resembles the natural selection of evolutionary theory. Just as genetic characteristics which arise as mutations are selected or discarded by their consequences, so novel forms of behavior are selected or discarded through reinforcement.
B. F. SKINNER

Attitude Character Nature Novel Respect Seen Selection Theory
We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word ‘admire’ then means ‘marvel at.’
B. F. SKINNER

Admire Explanation Extent People Word

Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?

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Was putting a man on the moon actually easier than improving education in our public schools?

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