ABSTRACT
There are now available a number of variations of the traditional reinforcement-extinction procedure which may be used to facilitate teaching and to assess the sensory capacities of individuals so that teaching may be better programmed according to abilities. Effective programming requires a continuing sensitivity and responsiveness to the subject’s performance which derive from Skinner’s revolutionary proposition, “The rat knows best.” This credo, which of course translates “The child knows best” (Lindsley, 1971a), has profound implications for education since it implies that it is procedures, not students, which fail. Given that the only measure of a teacher’s success is the student’s progress, the teacher is forced to examine the possiblity that errors in performance may be attributable to errors in programming.
