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In April, 2009, the B F Skinner Foundation called me. The Foundation is operated under the direction of Julie
Vargas, one of Skinner's daughters, and her husband Ernest, located in Cambridge, Mass. Julie is retired as a professor
in Educational Psychology at West Virginia, one of the leading behavioral programs in the country. She is the author
of four books, most recently Behavioral
Analysis for Effective Teaching (2009) They heard I was a behaviorist who ran a
book shop and had some technical ability. They were selling a DVD with 37 audio files totaling about 700 minutes
of B F Skinner reading aloud his 1948 book Walden Two. He had recorded it onto cassette tapes a few years
before his death, as a birthday present for his daughter Julie. The Foundation had two goals- to disseminate the material,
and to raise some money. They were copying the DVD, putting a label on it, and selling it for $20 in a jewel case. They
figured they needed 100 copies and wondered if I could help at a good price.
I said sure, but I'd like
to see it look more like a $20 audio book. I am a behaviorist, and a bookseller. And I have published a couple other titles.
I designed a wrap for clam-shell box, to look like a commercial product. I got them an ISBN for the "Book-on-DVD"
and a bar code so any retailer can scan it. I tried to put information on the package which would attract audio-book
"readers". Julie provided me with graphics and photos, for the front cover, spine, and back. I tried
to talk Julie into using the photo from the cover of Skinner's biography by Daniel Bjork, a stunning portrait by Mariana
Cook (She authored a half dozen books, mostly scientist portraits. In Jan 2009 her photo of Barack and Michelle OBama
taken in 1997 was published in the New Yorker). Julie is a cost-saver like me, and she liked her own photos,
so we used family photos for the package. But it was fun to track down Mariana Cook and talk books and portraits.
The first 50 copies sold out at ABA in Chicago. The next 30 copies sold out at FABA in Florida. Not a best-seller
by NY Times standards, but exceeding the rate we expected.
The best part of the whole project was tracking
down what I had forgotten. The "last" chapter- #37- was not part of the original Walden Two.
It is the addendum that Skinner wrote imagining that George Orwell (author of 1984, remember?) had shown up anonymously
at Walden Two. It is reprinted in Skinner's book, Upon Further Reflection.
This inspired
me to review some other Skinner revisitations. The most striking is the 1966 forward to the seventh printing of his
first book Behavior of Organisms, which was first printed in 1938. In the new forward, Skinner is both modest and
clear that operant psychology had good roots in 1938, but that the science has grown to make his seminal work primarily of
historic, not practical, value. He calls his own book "out-dated". Skinner was excellent at self-criticism,
which is how his science grew.
Around 1982, one of my students found an error in Walden Two, catching
Skinner using "negative reinforcement" when he meant punishment. At my urging she wrote him, and received a warm,
hand-signed letter from him on Harvard stationary in return. We all make mistakes he wrote her. She has it
framed in her office, working at a prison in Alabama.
Both Skinner and the public have continued to praise
Walden Two, written in 1948. I have never found Skinner to remove any emphasis from the quote which I placed on the
front of the DVD, taken from a letter he wrote to a high school class, " If you want to see what I do believe, read Walden
Two."
I had the pleasure of chatting with Skinner in 1981 at the Association for Behavior Analysis meeting
in Milwaukee. My adviser Israel Goldiamond had introduced us and then wheeled off to give a talk. At Izzie's encouragement,
I told Skinner about my doctoral research, accepted but not yet not yet published in JEAB. My friend
Joe Layng, now Chief Scientist at Headsprout, took the photo.
The other audio treasure I would mention is a recording
of Skinner giving his hour-long lecture, "On Having a Poem". Psychology Today had a cover
caricature of Skinner as a pigeon hatching his egg, and a story of Skinner explaining "creativity" and complex verbal
behavior from an operant perspective. His lecture is better than the Psych Today article. Hello?
The
Foundation sometimes has the recording available on their website. www.BFSkinner.org A little birdie says I could
lend out my copy, with better audio equalization, for teaching purposes, to anyone who knows what B F stands for.
In surfing the used book market, I note that the copies of Skinner's books that sell for over $500 are mostly copies
of Behavior of Organisms, 1938, his first book. Book collectors are not necessarily interested in science.
It behooves us to be familiar with Skinner's best work, starting with Walden Two, in his own words.
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