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I remembered my experience studied in semi military high school (Taruna Nusantara High School, TN) when read about behaviorism theory. TN is a well known boarding senior high school in Indonesia. The school gains reputation from its strong emphasis on national values and military-like disciplines, in addition to exceptional academic and leadership achievements. During the first period of schooling, I was ‘forced’ to live independently and to take off my dependence with families by staying in the dorms and not allowed to make any contact with outside parties. I was very young during that time, doing things and governing myself independently was very hard in the first time. The regulations and practices applied in school were really shocked me. Sometimes I was wondering if I can survive and get used to it. Now, fifteen years have been passed since the event. I think, that was the most precious experience ever had. Like or not, that event is one of my important experiences that carved my personality and in overall, changed my life. I have been taught to become more confident and independent and that helps me in personal and professional life.

My experience is perhaps one example of behaviorism learning. However, this theory isn’t free from critiques although it has advantages like proposing environment stimulus and responses to produce learning outcome, proposing behavior change by exercise and repetition, etc. The inability to explain complex learning condition is one of the main critiques because learning is not just relationship between stimulus and responses. This theory also has tendency to direct students to think linier, convergent, and uncreative (shaping process).

That punishment plays an important role in the learning process. Skinner didn’t believe Guthrie’s assumption because of three reasons. First, the influences of punishment on behavior changes are very temporary. Second, a bad psychological effect may be conditioned (a part of the character of the inmate) when the punishment runs in long sentence. Third, the penalty pushed the inmate to find another way (though wrong and bad) to make free from “punishment”. This may lead the inmate to do thing that sometimes worse than the first mistake he had done.  Skinner is more confident in what is called negative reinforcement. This is not the same as punishment. The difference is when the punishment should be “given” (as a stimulus) to make a different response from the usually, while “negative reinforcement” (as stimulus) should be “reduced” to make the same response becomes stronger. The opposite of “negative reinforcement” is “positive reinforcement” (positive reinforcement.) Both aim to strengthen the response. The difference is if the positive reinforcement should be added more, the negative reinforcement should be “reduced” in order to strengthen the response.