I think today we have reached the point where not only can we dream about a better way of life but we can make specific proposals and that's where my own work comes in I've been for 35 years concerned with behavior a Pennsylvanian psychologist Skinner was the most radical practitioner of behaviorism he believed that each person starts out as a blank slate and is molded purely by their environment he began his work not with humans but with pigeons he trained them using a system called operant conditioning he could get them to display the behavior he desired by conditioning them to respond to rewards they would peck on the little button and if they pecked the right number of times they would get a reward ie some seed and so they soon learnt that they must Peck six times and very fast and they get the seed and then they would do that again and again and he could train them to do all sorts of things I mean he trained pigeons to play ping pong no wonder then that Skinner thought he could also train humans of any age to behave better in the early 70s Skinner set up an experiment at a youth borstal and the BBC followed his progress here Skinner describes the inmates at the start of the project few of them have had families they have lived with closely almost all have dropped out of school too little or no education few have ever held a job for any length of time and all have violated the laws so often or so violently that it has been necessary to lock them up in the Boston basic food and accommodation were provided Skinner's masterstroke was to introduce a reward system if the youngsters behaved well and attended lessons they could earn points and improve their living conditions room was dirty couple days and you went out of the courage and properly dressed I would like you see if you can deliver next week all right rival attracts flr eye points could be exchanged for more delicious food at mealtimes admission to game rooms the rental of a private room or television set or even a short vacation away from the school the results were dramatic boys who had been convinced by the school system that they were unteachable discovered that they were not they learned reading writing and arithmetic and acquired manual skills they did so without compulsion and the hostile behavior characteristic of such institutions quickly disappeared you Skinner's successes were seen as momentous achievements and his work lives on in every child star chart and employee reward scheme around the world Skinner believed he had found a catch-all explanation for every facet of human behavior but when he turned his attention to language he was to come very publicly unstuck at this time many scientists were asking where our remarkable ability for learning speech comes from Skinner's answer was relatively straightforward he said language is acquired by system of operant conditioning that is to say children come into the world they cannot speak they have no language and they acquired by imitation from their parents and that is reinforced by system of of rewards and punishments the kind of rewards that operate in daily life in which parents give them without even knowing that they do so this idea and it's a it's a persuasive idea was challenged linguists at the day thought this was too simplistic and that more subtle forces were at work in the early 70s the BBC's horizon program decided to settle the debate first the only Skinner was asked to sit in on a language experiment designed to show that copying and rewards are not enough to make young children absorb complex grammar here an older child is tested to see if she can copy what she has heard so the dragon goes first Lucy knows Linus doesn't she but in another test a younger child can't do it you say whatever I say Lucy is on the box Lucy is on the box Lucy's being on the box pleases me Lucy's on the box please with me that - is lying down pleases me news isn't that linus is lying down pleases me if I'm getting anything look okay okay good very good dragon the little boy can fly an airplane it appeared that small children could not copy everything they had heard no matter how rewarding the experience I am willing to admit that I cannot account for all the verbal behavior of a child but I don't feel it's accounted for either by inventing some fictional explanation I'm not suggesting that you do I don't think you do but I think the best thing is simply to say that there are still areas which were quite ignorant what skinner seemed to have missed was that humans are not simply blank slates to the girl each of us is born with it