B.F. Skinner is dead. But his ideas about learning (including aversion therapy) still have a lot of influence. This story from New York shows just how much...
A storm has been brewing over the last few weeks about a profoundly simple yet controversial educational strategy. And the eye of that storm is centered clearly in New York State. The issue is aversion therapy.
Aversion therapy is an aspect of a particular theoretical approach to learning called Behaviorism.
In a nutshell, Behaviorism is the idea that behavior (animal or human) can be studied objectively (or scientifically) and measured without examining the inner states (the emotions or thoughts) of a person (or animal) being studied. Once it has been studied and understood, voluntary behavior can be altered through operant conditioning - the application of consequences (pleasant or unpleasant) designed to modify (increase or decrease) a particular behavior. The idea was made famous by Burrhus Frederic Skinner - B.F. Skinner. And the idea works. Operant conditioning changes behavior in everything from earthworms to Ph.D. candidates.
When an unpleasant consequence is used to decrease some undesirable behavior, the process is often called aversion therapy. And a private school in Massachusetts, the Judge Rotenberg Center, swears by aversion therapy. Rotenberg, according to a recent article in the Albany Union Times, is "a residential center for troubled youngsters with psychiatric or emotional disorders or for those with autism." It has about 170 students from New York. The school has a total of about 250 students at any time and maybe half wear electrodes on the skin on their arms and legs. At the moment some 70 to 80 of those students with electrodes are from New York; the school uses the electrodes to shock students for bad behavior.
The Union Times article poses this philosophical question: "Should pain play a part in learning?" Clearly the answer in Behaviorist learning theory circles is "yes." But not everyone in education is a Behaviorist...
The story has been picked up by the Boston Globe. The Globe has run three different articles on the situation this week. On May 20 the headline was N.Y. aides ask curb of shock use at center. The article covered discussions among New York education officials about the possibility of developing a policy to prohibit the placement of students at facilities that use electric shock. New York places about 1000 students a year at out of state schools and spends $170 million a year on such placements for special education students.
An article in the Globe on May 22 was headlined A question of 'tough love' vs. torture. That article looks at some of the moral and ethical aspects of the practice and gives a glimpse of the school's history. A May 23 article was headlined N.Y. debates Mass. school's shock use; the state's Board of Regents put off voting on the matter.
So for now, electric shock remains an allowable form of behavior therapy for public school students in New York State - under some circumstances at least. And six or seven dozen New York State students with autism, emotional disturbance, and mental retardation receive such shocks on a regular basis at a single residential school for such children in Massachusetts...
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