Can
humans be trained?
The task
is to learn about the psychological school of thought called behaviourism, whose
founder has stated that you could give him “any healthy child and he
could train the child to be a thief, a professor, a musician or
whatever”.
Behaviourism
is based on the idea that human beings can be studied just like animals
and that our behaviour and development can be directed through the stimuli
we get from our surroundings and to which we will respond in a certain
way. The classic experiment was conducted by Pavlov who used dogs. Pavlov managed to
make the dogs respond to a bell indicating that food were on its way.
The
most famous behaviourist is the American Frederick Skinner who developed a
psychology based on the theory of stimuli and response. Skinner wanted to use
this for the benefit of humanity. He wanted to use the theory
scientifically to educate children efficiently. His thoughts were used quite
a lot in the fifties and the sixties when the western world after the
“Sputnik shock”* wanted
to educate “the intelligent reserve” – which referred to black
children and poor children from the slums - in order to compete with the Soviet Union.
* In
1957, the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite. This event was important
because the Sputnik was the first geostationary satellite. So, the
Soviets had demonstrated their technological knowledge which seemed to be
bigger then the American one. The Americans perceived this event as shock,
because it was not out of the question that the Soviets would use their
knowledge also in a military sense. So the USA tried to win back the
technical superiority.
