A Clockwork Course

Authors

Harvey Overton, Western Michigan University

Abstract

We can now forget a career of anxious Mondays, or returning to the classroom after a week-end of fretting about how to get our students to grasp some concept in aesthetics or epistemology. Our course objectives are stated with precision. Learning is administered in graded doses, with students unfailingly advancing from stage to stage as they are positively reinforced for productive responses. As classroom managers (in another era we were called teachers) we assiduously avoid strategies producing aversive reactions, knowing that they are counterproductive. Instead, we engineer relevant contingencies that generate the behaviors that are visibly effective. And all the joyless instruments of measurement proclaim that we are good. The clockwork course is our shepherd and we shall not want.

Recommended Citation

Overton, Harvey (1975) "A Clockwork Course," Perspectives (1969-1979): Vol. 7: No. 1, Article 3.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/perspectives/vol7/iss1/3