“I will not waste chalk. Ay, caramba!”

Student: Valeria Muscato

What kind of Elementary School would you choose for your children?  Would you choose a behaviourist school in which the students have no participation and their errors are seen as a fail to the response after had received the same stimuli several times?

One of the most famous American TV shows, “The Simpsons” depicts how students at Springfield Elementary School are taught through the Behavourist Approach.  According to theorists,

“this theory is a worldview that operates on a principle known as ‘stimulus-response’. Behaviorism is caused by external stimuli (operant conditioning). All behavior can be explained without the need to consider internal mental states or consciousness.” (www.learning-theories.com) 

The Head of the school, Mr. W. Seymour Skinner, may be associated with the real B.F. Skinner, the father of modern behaviourism because both of them share the same surname. In addition to this, whenever “The Simpsons” begins, there is an opening sequence in which the audience can see Bart Simpson writing on the board the same sentence a hundred times. Due to his bad attitude, he is punished by Mrs. Krabaple, Bart’s teacher.  She thinks that through constant repetition Bart may change his behaviour. This shows a clear example of the belief that the more you receive the stimuli, the fastest you create an automatic response.

Another example of behaviourism is a scene where Lisa’s teacher, Mrs.Hoover, shows her limited knowledge as she constantly needs to check the answers on the teacher’s book (season 3, 18th episode) without taking care of learning. Lisa gets angry because of this situation and hides her teacher’s and all the other teacher’s books in her locker. As a result, the teachers get desperate to such a point that one of them quits because he cannot deliver classes without his prized book. This shows that many teachers at The Springfield Elementary School do not know how to teach to their students because their teaching is not creative and they do not care about their students’ needs or interest. As a famous pedagogue, Jim Shrivener (1994) points out “the explainer teacher has limited knowledge of teaching methodology and during her/his classes the students are not being personally involved or challenged”.

It is also important to point out that the teachers, who teach with this approach praise their students for being smart. As B.F. Skinner (1961), father of Behaviourism, points out this is called positive reinforcement. For example; Lisa is one of those smart students and she knows that good marks will always be congratulated by, the Headmaster of the institution, Mr. Skinner. This reward will make smart students to repeat the same action in order to reinforce the teaching-learning process.

In conclusion, it appears right to say that the teaching approach depicted in Springfield Elementary School in The Simpson is the bahaviourist and one could question the reasons why this is so, but that should be issue for another essay.