We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
B. F. SkinnerRead
The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.
Interpretation
Positive reinforcement is about the quality of encouragement rather than the quantity provided.
B. F. Skinner emphasizes that the effectiveness of positive reinforcement lies in how it is implemented rather than just how much is given. This suggests that thoughtful and well-timed encouragement can lead to better learning outcomes and behavioral changes compared to merely overwhelming individuals with rewards.
In practice
In a classroom setting, a teacher could use this quote when discussing behavior management strategies.
We do not choose survival as a value, it chooses us.
Each of us has interests which conflict the interests of everybody else... 'everybody else' we call 'society'. It's a powerful opponent and it always wins. Oh, here and there an individual prevails for a while and gets what he wants. Sometimes he storms the culture of a society and changes it to his own advantage. But society wins in the long run, for it has the advantage of numbers and of age.
No theory changes what it is a theory about; man remains what he has always been.
I am opposed to the military use of animals. I am also opposed to the military use of men.
The ideal of behaviorism is to eliminate coercion: to apply controls by changing the environment in such a way as to reinforce the kind of behavior that benefits everyone.
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.
A university is not, thank heavens, a place for vocational instruction, it has nothing to do with training for a working life and career, it is a place for education, something quite different.
As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit
You don't understand anything until you learn it more than one way.
Our kids didn't do this to themselves. They don't decide the sugar content in soda or the advertising content of a television show. Kids don't choose what's served to them for lunch at school, and shouldn't be deciding what's served to them for dinner at home. And they don't decide whether there's time in the day or room in the budget to learn about healthy eating or to spend time playing outside.
Throughout elementary and middle school, I was used to hearing other words: Smart. Studious. Well-spoken. Well-read. They became pillars of my self-confidence, enabling me to build myself up on what I contributed rather than what I looked like.
It is in fact a part of the function of education to help us escape, not from our own time - for we are bound by that - but from the intellectual and emotional limitations of our time.
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