In class yesterday I had a flashback to my high school biology class unit on Pavlov and his dogs. I collected an assignment with an accompanying direction to NOT staple the work. My students were baffled. What are they to do without staples? I had students that literally asked what to do if they had more than one page. I also had students that I watched proceed to my desk to staple their papers anyway. It seemed that since stapling is what they have always done, it is what they should always do.
Normally a minor event such as this would simply entertain me and I would forget about it. But this particular day I found myself pondering just how many more things out there we are conditioned to do - usually without even thinking about it. When we see a line, we get in it. When the bell rings my students proceed to their next class. When the alarm goes off in the morning, we wake up. The list could go on and on.
I am not quite sure if being overtly conditioned is a bad thing. The rebel in me is only peeking her little head outside the hole so I guess I am more willing to accept this as a typical way of life. Although I can't help but wonder if we are all becoming mindless drones...
By the way...staples should be used less frequently anyways. The steel industry generates higher levels of stack emissions than waste incineration. There are new "stapleless" staples that do the same job.
32 comments:
I thought it was pretty amusing that day as well. I still really don't understand what happened that day, if it was all a big misunderstanding, or we have OCD with staping our papers. I just believe that for many years of our life, we have just been trained to staple our papers if we have more then one. It probably felt so weird to hear a teacher say, don't staple our papers that we were all kind of in shock and really didn't know what to do.
I remember this in class the other day about the stapleing. You said not to and kids in our class didn't know what to do and i remember seeing someone up by the stapler. Lucky me i stayed in my seat and listened. Maybe everyone is used to stapleing there paper as a usual rutine or they just didn't listen.
Ivan Pavlov was a scientist who discovered conditioning, what is now refered to as Pavolivian conditioning or classical conditioning. He found this to be true by conditioning a dog to salivate when he heard a tone, linking this to the soon arrival of his meat. In many ways, humans are conditioned to do such things as eating when hungry, move from period to period with the ring of a bell and stop at a red light. We were taught these things during the critical period, we conditioned ourselves to follow these unmarked rules under any circumstance. Breaking these habits is a diffciult task, because the are all reinforced daily.
I think its seems almost impossible to stop such a schema but hopefully we will be able to deal with the fact that not everything follows the same path and that things have the right to change. Like not stapling to sheets of paper that would normally be stapeled.
I remember that in class and I actually thought that was really funny. I was just sitting at my desk, gazing off into nowhere, when you said, "Do not staple the papers." Instantly, everyone was in a state of panic. It's funny how people become so programmed like robots to always do everything methodically. I hope that's actually a word: methodically. It sounds right, I think. I don't see a spell check, and I can't think of any simpler words with a synonymous meaning. I guess I'm just going to have to go with it.
SYSTEMATICALLY! That was another word I could have used. Yeah, that's definitely a word.
I had a flashback to about 2 months ago when I read this post. In Physics, we were assigned a FCAT project and each group got one of 9 possible topics. The first group that presented talked about living things and they mentioned Pavlov's dog. The dog was included in the behavior section of the presentation.
I learned our reflexes make us react in a certain way. When we learn to connect a stimulus, or a signal to which an organism responds, to a reflex we are conditioning. This process is the basis of learned human behavior. Nowadays, this information is taken advantage of by commercial advertising. Commercials are constantly manipulating the response to a stimulus, like the product’s name, which at first doesn’t provoke any feelings. So, you may have point when you “wonder if we are all becoming mindless drones.”
I thought this event was pretty funny, am not going to lie. Did you se Grant's face( no offense) it was priceless he was like what no stapling what he seemed so confuse and worried at the same time that I think he forgot how to think. Of course it wasn’t just him it was everybody who felt the urge to get their papers stapled.
I believe in a moment of crisis people tend to loose themselves in all the commotion and don’t know how to react, that's how you separate the leaders from others the ones who don’t let their mental emotion get the best of them but still continue to search for solution.
I don’t think were mindless drones I think we are just so accustom to things that when change comes we don’t know how to act.
In psychology this week we are learning about conditioned resonses and Pavlov's dog experiment!
To me a conditioned society is a stable society. Without each and every person conditioning themselves to the same ideas and methods, we'd all be equivalaent to a flock of chickens with their heads cut off! Schools would be unmanagable, the workplace a disaster, and the streets would be chaos. Imagine if a lightning bell was alarming a town and half the towns population heard that bell and ran outside to play! Just imagine!
No matter if we like it or not, our lives are controlled by these stimuli that trigger something in us to follow a routine that we have become accustomed to. For years, we have been conditioned to do certain things and if we didn't follow through, then there could be possible negative consequences. No one would be able to help this outcome. Its a natural reaction. I think that our lives shouldn't be required to have as much structure as they currently do, but I don't see this changing any time soon. We aren't mindless drones, we are products of a society that believes in structure.
I totally agree. On a Saturday morning, my alarm for school went off at 5:45 am. I woke up, took a shower, got dressed, and headed for the bus stop which was three blocks away. In my mind, it was Monday and I was completely oblivious to the fact that it was Saturday. I stood there waiting for about 10 minutes for the bus which did not arrive and I was still alone. I called my friend that usually walk to school with in the morning and she did not answer so I assumed that I missed the bus. I hung up the phone, looked on the date and realized it was Saturday. In the words of Stoklosa, I felt like an imbecile. I was really extremely vexed. If I had only thought about what day it was I wouldn't have gotten dressed in vain but I guess that's what happens when you operate like clock work. We all need to think a little.
the fact that you changed one little direction and it caused mass chaos was hilarious. Right after you said do not staple your work, the entire class erupted in to a rush for the stapler, despite your directions. Finally, when the kids realized what you said, they were appalled that a teacher would actually prefer her students to not staple their paper. We are conditioned like dogs and don't even know it.
The incident was a bit humorous. I don't usually staple my papers so the direction to not staple our papers didn't really excite me. Actually, that particular day i DID have my papers already stapled together, so I just removed the staple. The idea you brought up, that we are becoming drones, is a true statement whether or not we want to believe it. We think we have evolved into a society rooted in independence, yet we all still incorporate the tasks of daily, traditional living into our lives. We can only turn on the TV or flip through channels if the remote is nearby. It's a minor example, but it foreshadows more significant conditions. We are a society selfishly conditioned to luxury.
I believe that students today are too overtly conditioned, for example in our class when you said not to staple our assignment kids were so puzzled and had no clue what to do. If they could not comprehend a simple task as not stapling an assignment I'd hate to see them in college trying to be independent.
I do believe we are becoming mindless drones. Most teachers have a certain way they would like things done and drill them into your head. For example with essays we write in class, students tend to go write the way they were taught in middle school. This is most likely due to the fact that our teachers in middle school gave us this certain format of how to write an essay and drilled it into our brains. When we are given the chance to go outside those boundaries we find ourselves in a quandary and don't know what to do. This is just what I have noticed over time and think that people should stop worrying about what people have told them in the past, and move on to better things.
What can I say that’s how we've always been taught. Most teachers freak out on you if you turn in your papers without staples. So blame them. I'm not going to lie; I was a tad bit confused when you gave us these instructions. I wasn't sure if you didn't want us to staple the two essays together, or if you didn't want us to staple it at all. When you said it the second time that helped get it through my mind. It was comical to see the other people still go up, as you gave the instructions not too. Things like this aren't too weird in our class though; those two girls in the corner do a lot of things like that.
It was funny to me, looking at the different facial expression as you said don't staple. I one kid freaking out what do I do, what do I do. Then I saw another kid who had already stapled his paper and probably saying to himself what do I do. I guess it's because we've been taught our entire lives to always staple our papers. Or Maybe no one was taught listening skills their entire lives.
I have to say that there are many things that you could say that we have been "trained" to do. Yet at the same time I don't think that some of these actions are bad to continue to do. For instance, your example of the stapler would baffle me in the same way. Using a stapler is very convenient and makes a lot of sense as well. If not, all the papers would be disorganized. So for me I would be in the same state of how I should attach my papers.
I think that us as students, and people in general seem to be so accustomed to their normal routine that anything that they don't usually do makes them uncomfortable.We have been constantly trained to staple our papers and do other things like go to our next class when the bell rings, and we almost are like little robots. Whenever we are told to turn in papers, our first reflex is to staple them together and then turn them in. But when we were told to NOT staple our papers, our minds turned into a jumble and we were all in a frenzy and confused as to what to do.
Stapleless staples huh...I remember when you told us not to staple our assignment as well,i was just lazy and folded the corners together.But yeah it was hilarious to see the perplexed faces on some people who looked as if their life came to a screeching halt.I think more people should be using the innovative new staples.These state of the art stationary miracles can make a minuscule dent in helping this doomed earth but thats worth it.
I totally agree. Ivan Pavlov is used all the time in psychology to describe how our minds can adjust to anything. The student obviously could not adjust to the fact that she wasn't able to staple some papers.I was trying myself to figure out how this phenomena were linked even when you told her it doesn't need it. I guess you can blame the awkward mornings in first hour!
I remember this incident in class. It was pretty funny now that you put it like that. I learned about Pavlov's dogs last year in psychology, and conditioning was actually something I found very interesting. You can condition a person to do almost anything you want them to, it is pretty fantastic. In my class last year when we were learning about this my teacher did an experiment. She gave us a cup with the pixie stick powder. Every time she rang the bell we stuck our finger in it and licked it off. We did it a couple of times and then she changed the rules. When she rang the bell we could no longer lick it off. The results were very similar to Pavlov's experiment. We found ourselves salivating every time the bell was rung. Conditioning is such a cool thing.
I actually love the moment when Zach and Vlad proceeded to walk up to your desk and staple their papers, and then remove them. I don't understand how people can be so shocked with the littlest stimulus change. We are just so routine, that when someone changes our quo it sends our minds into a state of panic. I think we should learn how to cope with change in a better manner, instead of frolicking around the classroom.
I totally had a flashback of Pavlov too! We think alike...(I had AP Psych. last year)It is really interesting to see htat research apply to real life, because no kidding, I wanted to staple my paper too, becasue my final essay had two pages, and I thought maybe you didn't understand but apparently you did. This can be a disadvantage though...because what happens when something that we are conditioned to do, turns out to be a bad thing? How reluctant are we going to be when we are told to stop? Will we? Will we stilll think that it is "right" just becasue we have done it so many times, we may think it is harmless?
I agree. Staples are a bane on society. I, for one, am in complete and total support of the paper clip. Underappreciated, misused and abused, the paper clip simply does not get the praise it deserves. Unlike its bastard brother the staple, the paperclip can be reused, and after you grow tired of it, you can bend it into awkward positions. Most entertaining.
Live long and prosper, paperclip.
I don't think being conditioned is really such a bad thing when it's simple things like going to your next class when the bell rings. Although, it does make our race seem kind of lazy. Do we really not have enough time to think about what we will do next, and have to rely on preconditioned thoughts? Of course, this isn't really our choice. The human mind works in subconscious ways, but it is weird to think of what one day I might be preconditioned to do after some kind of stimulus goes off... and not necessarily by choice either.
I remember this day very clearly as well. A few people were shocked that you said not to staple their papers and had a hard time listening the first time. I am curretly learning about Pavlov in my psychology class and the ways in which people are conditioned to learn. Most have a hard time breaking habbits and this day proved just that.
This is true, I couldn't believe that after 3 or 4 times that you said not to staple any papers together because you needed to put them next to each other to compare people still went all the way to your desk and stapled them. And other asked again and again. It really is weird to think about it, but when something has become so natural for us to do, when you're told to do it other wise the mind can find itself confused, therefore having to ask again what should be done.
I love that I was in the class when that happened:)I'm glad it did, these people make me laugh everyday. Anyways, I believe that everyone is becoming robot. Just look at the school band.They march because they are told to,play when they see a waving hand, and don't make a mistake during the whole march/concert.
Sometimes we should "break the rules". When he bell rings, let's all go running around the school, that's more interesting...And let's not use anymore staples, let's use gum to stick our paper together!
Pavlov really paved the way for classical conditioning with his experiments on Dogs salvation. Yes all of us are conditioned to certain stimuli in our life which then creates our conditioned response. I do not think that this is a bad thing, being conditioned to certain stimuli mostly helps us get through an everyday routine.
And I actually would like to read about this Strapless Stapler, it sounds really cool!
I find it a funny coincidence that Pavlov's classical conditioning was discussed in Psychology this month too. I think school trains students too much to do the expected, instead of thinking for themselves. That is the key problem with school, where there indeed is not enough self-thinking, and students all follow "the herd."
I remember the staples story you told us. And it actually got me thinking that day about the things we're conditioned to do every day. Waking up, changing classes, leaving school. It's all inevitable. If we didn't have the ability to become conditioned and to repeat actions in a certain way, an organized society would not be possible. I'm not saying that it's good to get on the bandwagon and to act the same as everyone, because as similar as we all may be we are still very different, but anarchy and a free-for-all world wouldn't exactly lead us anywhere.
I remember this day too. It was really funny seeing everyone freak out because you changed one little thing. We have been taught to always staple papers together and when you said not to staple them, everyone acted so disoriented. It was really funny how confusing it is when you are so used to something and then out of nowhere, the rules change.
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