Skinnerian Approach and Freire

One of the concepts addressed today was the Skinnerian Approach. With the strict curriculum and harsh behaviorism that takes place in the classroom, it made me think of Freire. In the Skinnerian Approach, the curriculum is taught in such a way that creates robots. If everyone is doing the same thing, such as raising their arm straight out at a diagonal just like the teacher, then they become dehumanized and thus, become robots. The Skinnerian Approach creates robots whereas Freire points out that teaching students to become robots is a bad thing. Freire sees that education today helps to emphasis the mechanicalist way of thinking and being. Each student is prepared to be a part of the workforce instead of becoming a critical and analytical thinker. With curriculums that follow a Skinnerian Approach, we have no hope of disabling the concept of teaching for the workforce and therefore, the product of robots. As educators, we need to strive to dismantle that way of thinking. We need to develop critical thinkers, just like McLaren suggests. By creating critical and analytical thinkers, we can have people graduating into the world instead of robots or machines. Plus, with all of the demographic trends and shifts, we need people who can think for themselves and find a solution to the problem instead of just sitting back and waiting for someone else to figure something out. Everything is intertwined and as we change or tweak one thing, so much more ends up changing.