Dr. Phil on history: what the evidence says · JRE #1254
SUBJECT: HISTORY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
They did an experiment Back in I think it was the 60s They did something called teaching machines. Have you ever seen that?
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Dr. Phil described a 1960s "teaching machines" program that reportedly removed failure entirely and was allegedly abandoned after students who had experienced 100% success rates could not cope when returned to ordinary classrooms. Historical records confirm that B.F. Skinner and others genuinely developed "teaching machines" and programmed instruction starting in the 1950s, breaking lessons into small self-paced steps with immediate reinforcement, and these were used experimentally in U.S. schools through the 1960s. Academic accounts of the era attribute the eventual decline of these programs to mixed teacher and student reception, not to a documented incident in which mastery-trained students collapsed upon facing failure. Searching found no source corroborating the specific anecdote Dr. Phil recounts; it does not appear in the standard histories of teaching machines or programmed instruction reviewed here. The underlying technology and time period are accurately described, but the specific failure-collapse anecdote is unsourced and could not be verified.