It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious.
It is a difficult assignment. The conditions the teacher arranges must be powerful enough to compete with those under which the student tends to behave in distracting ways." - Meaning and context.">
"Free and Happy Student" in The Phi Delta Kappan (September 1973); later published in Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978)
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Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived", but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious.
It is a difficult assignment. The conditions the teacher arranges must be powerful enough to compete with those under which the student tends to behave in distracting ways.

— B. F. Skinner

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Many instructional arrangements seem "contrived", but there is nothing wrong with that. It is the teacher's function to contrive conditions under which students learn. Their relevance to a future usefulness need not be obvious.
It is a difficult assignment. The conditions the teacher arranges must be powerful enough to compete with those under which the student tends to behave in distracting ways." in the context of ""Free and Happy Student" in The Phi Delta Kappan (September 1973); later published in Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (1978)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "B. F. Skinner" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
B. F. Skinner

About B. F. Skinner

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (20 March 1904 – 18 August 1990) was an American behaviorist, author, inventor, baseball enthusiast, social philosopher and poet.