The Revenge of Big Bird
THE REVENGE OF BIG BIRD (true story)
Decades ago, as a young lass in my early 20s, I was happily employed as a Child Care Worker at a residential treatment center for “emotionally disturbed” children. It was an idyllic job, common sense humanistic values of love, acceptance, compassion, and generosity prevailed at all levels from the Director to the peons like me, the cook, and even the janitors. Each child had a “treatment team” consisting not only of parents, CCWs, family counselor, etc. but also frequently one of the cooks or janitors. Consensus was highly valued, and seldom breached.
This was all fine and good, until some “higher ups” somewhere decided to change everything, without regard to what any “lesser than”s thought about it. The new “cure-all treatment” these "experts" rolled out all over us, had a name: behavior modification. This was the new “big idea” that supposedly produced remarkably consistent “positive” results, by systematically punishing “undesirable behaviors” and rewarding “desired behaviors”. Undesirable or desired by whom? ... and for what reason? These matters were "irrelevant", i.e. not allowed to clutter the mind or soul of behavior modifiers. Their job is only to manipulate the sticks and carrots just so, as to systematically impose (by force if necessary) behaviors deemed by others as “appropriate”, like eye contact, lack of “self-stimulation”, compliance with directions from staff, etc. The use of cattle prods was seriously discussed on at least one occasion as a possible “negative” reinforcement.
I don’t recall the exact moment when I decided to resign in protest. Actually I think it was a more gradual process, of plowing through layers of disbelief, shock, grief, feelings of betrayal, fear of unemployment: in short, kind of like I imagine a factory worker might feel, working in a US manufacturing plant that had just been purchased by Bain Capital. Everything was reduced to a commodity, i.e. tokenism: tokens for eye contact, tokens for compliance, etc. to produce token behavior designed to comply with someone else’s idea of what is “appropriate”.
I didn’t leave quietly, and I was not the only one. We (myself and a close friend and co-worker, John Green, who also was feeling similarly impacted by the invading behaviorists) decided to put on a skit, at that years Christmas party. Our little swan song, as it were. I played Mr. Hooper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Hooper), and John G. played Big Bird.
The story line was quite straight forward. Big Bird was wanting to buy one of his dear friends a gift from Mr. Hooper's store, but he just didn’t have quite enough tokens. There was wrangling and haggling about the price, during which Mr. Cooper delivered a punch line: “It’s a dog-eat dog world Big Bird! Get over it!”. We managed a last-minute conversion by Mr. Cooper “just this once” to achieve a semblence of a “happy ending”. Everyone "got it", including many of the kids I think.
Imagine my surprise and delight, when Big Bird bursts onto the Campaign 2012 scene, during the first debate no less. Now I can’t help but think, that this is Big Bird’s revenge at long last: a devastating blow to the Forces of Evil that only know domination, exploitation, manipulation, degradation, and meanness as their MO.
We love you Big Bird!!!! Your voice is being heard across the nation. "SAVE PBS and BIG BIRD"
You are kicking Rethuglican ass for our planet, our children, and our grandchildren. May you prevail.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I just ran across this on Alternet and thought of you and our exchange about BF Skinner: 
This helps me remember more vividly why I was so repulsed by the Skinnerians, having to do
with their self-aggrandizement, as the new Masters of the Universe who --in their Utopian zeal--
were discovering how to control the masses ... all with the best of intentions of course.
During the height of Skinner’s fame in the 1970s, it was obvious to anti-authoritarians such as Noam Chomsky (“The Case Against B.F. Skinner”) and Lewis Mumord that Skinner’s worldview—a society ruled by benevolent control freaks—was antithetical to democracy. In Skinner’s novel Walden Two (1948), his behaviorist hero states, “We do not take history seriously,” to which Lewis Mumford retorted, “And no wonder: if man knew no history, the Skinners would govern the world, as Skinner himself has modestly proposed in his behaviorist utopia.”
snip
In the mid-1970s, as an intern on a locked ward in a state psychiatric hospital, I first experienced one of behavior modification’s staple techniques, the “token economy.” And that’s where I also discovered that anti-authoritarians try their best to resist behavior modification. George was a severely depressed anti-authoritarian who refused to talk to staff, but for some reason, chose me to shoot pool with. My boss, a clinical psychologist, spotted my interaction with George, and told me that I should give him a token—a cigarette—to reward his “prosocial behavior.” I fought it, trying to explain that I was 20 and George was 50, and this would be humiliating. But my boss subtly threatened to kick me off the ward. So, I asked George what I should do.
George, fighting the zombifying effects of his heavy medication, grinned and said, “We'll win. Let me have the cigarette.” In full view of staff, George took the cigarette and then placed it into the shirt pocket of another patient, and then looked at the staff shaking his head in contempt.
snip
Skinner's operant conditioning? Rewards, like money, are “positive reinforcements”; the removal of rewards are “negative reinforcements”; and punishments, such as electric shocks, are labeled in fact as "punishments." Operant conditioning pervades the classroom, the workplace and mental health treatment.
Great article:
http://www.alternet.org/why-are-americans-so-easy-manipulate-and-control?paging=off
Neither is Miss Piggy, who just arrived on her Harley, ready to kick some Repuglican ass.
<a href="http://photobucket.com/images/miss%20piggy" target="_blank"><img src="
" border="0" alt="Miss Piggy Pictures, Images and Photos"/></a>
