e kids grow wild or to teach them the elements of social living.
The fundamental misconception may have been to think that children seek lawlessness, when, in fact, clinical and observational evidence shows that they seek structure, boundaries; that they are well aware of their unbridled wanton impulses and of the effect they have on their ability to exploit the resources of society.
Then, the pendulum swung back, and neologisms replaced classical terms for traditional ideas. Behaviorists gave us stimulus-response as an explanatory operational construct. An atomistic theory suggested reflexes and conditioned reflexes as basic units of behavior. B.F. Skinner shaped the behaviors of his pigeons through manipulating reinforcement. Parents and teachers began to do the same to human guinea pigs--our children.
Lee Canter, unknown in scientific circles, discovered behaviorism through Assertion Training (a.k.a Assertive Training, Assertiveness Training). He focused on teachers' manipulative strategies of schoolchildren's behaviors. Assertion Training is a behavior therapy technique by which anxiety habits of response to interpersonal situations are overcome by encouraging the patient to express spontaneously felt emotions in the actual situation. Role-playing, or behavioral rehearsal, is often used to bring about change in emotional and other behavioral patterns by teaching the subject to assert himself or herself. It occurred to Canter that teachers had been socially and educationally conditioned to respond non-assertively, i.e. without consideration for their own wants and feelings--in passive, "wishy-washy" ways. The non-assertive teacher fails to act, because of fear or confusion regarding the adequacy and appropriateness of his or her actions. If non-assertive teachers fail to act, hostile teachers overact, i.e. they reduce their level of latent anxiety through aggressivity which they are wont to rationalize as the "need...