Virtue and Operant Conditioning

When my son started optometry school, he heard about a program that helped to pay the costs of books. He went to his counselor to apply for it and was told he did not meet the demographics for the grant. On the surface, this is so common that it hardly rates a ho!hum! But when we start piecing all the similar events together, it gets a lot less ho!hum! and more insidious. It is becoming a form of operant condition and behavior modification that affects white male aspirations and careers.

This blog picks up from Standards are the Raw Materials of Virtue: He Who Controls the Standards, Controls Behavior, which ended with a comment about operant conditioning and cognitive behavioral therapy. Corollary posts that discuss forms of operant conditioning are:

1. The Ultimate Revolution, Virtue, Wherefore Art Thou?,
2. Virtue: Religion and Philosophy, What does the Founders’ Vision Embrace?,
3. Part 3—Controlling the Narrative and Cultural Hegemony,
4. Part 2—What is in a Name?,
5. Re-constructing History, Part 9: Is the Education Institution a Cult?