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Ogden R Lindsley

Thus, in 1965, as Og tells it, he once again "parachuted" into enemy territory. Only this time the territory was educational research and the place was Kansas. The "parachuting" was also more peaceful, more along the lines of Missoula, Montana forest fire-fighters. Lindsley's game plan was to bring the free operant to education. Thus, he accepted an appointment as Director of Educational Research, Children's Research Unit, at the Kansas University Medical School. At the same time, he accepted an appointment as a Professor of Education at the University of Kansas in Special Education.

At "KU" Og began assembling a group of doctoral advisees, including Eric Haughton and Tom Lovitt. This would soon form the core of what has since become known as Precision Teaching.

The Precision Teaching Era

In the late middle 1960's Og and a team of people developed the "Standard Behavior Chart" (which would, years later, be renamed the Standard Celeration Chart) and team. This team consisted of Lindsley, Eric Haughton, additional graduate students of Lindsley's, Sandy Houston (the administrative assistant) and Helen Brennan (the printer).

Early Ph.D's directed by Og included those of Eric Haughton, Tom Lovitt, and Carl Koenig.

In 1967 Lindsley and his associates created the "Behavior Bank," using an IBM mainframe computer. The main idea for the "Bank" was for people to deposit charted data (on the Standard Behavior Chart). Then, later on, the "Bank" would serve as a repository for data that people would "withdraw" and use for inductive research and analytic purposes. Tens of thousands of charts were eventually published in the "Behavior Bank" before it would be shut down. Information about and from the "Behavior Bank" was published in 1969 by Lindsley, Carl Koenig, and J.B. Nichol in the "Handbook of precise behavior facts: Listings of the first thousand published precise behavior management projects."

In 1968 a group of behavior analysts decided to start a new professional journal for the emerging applied behavior analysis field. Sadly, Lindsley and his students were excluded from publishing standard behavior charts and articles using same in the new Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA). To call some attention to this exclusion, they bought advertising space and published a sample chart inside the back cover of the first issue of JABA. This may well have been the first-ever published standard behavior chart, making it all the more ironic that it went into a journal that had a de facto policy against it! Lindsley did publish a small technical note in JABA on wrist counters in its first volume, however, for many years thereafter there were no precision teaching articles published in JABA.

In the late 1960s or early 1970s Lindsley's company, Behavior Research Company, offered "short courses," which, as Og explains, "trained troops for beginning Precision Teaching." Many people took these courses from 1968 to 1974, and many of these became enduring Precision Teachers.

By 1971 Lindsley became a Professor of Education in Education Administration at Kansas University, a position he held from 1971-1990.

In 1972 Lindsley teamed up with Dr. Hank Pennypacker and Carl Koenig to publish the Handbook of the Standard Behavior Chart. Coming on the heels of a special Precision Teaching issue the previous year in Teaching Exceptional Children, the emerging field now had its own handbook.

In 1975 a new Midwestern Association of Behavior Analysis was organized, and held its first annual convention in Chicago, Illinois. This association would become renamed a few years later to the Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA), an international organization. Lindsley was one of many behavior analysts who helped found ABA. The Association for Behavior Analysis would become, over the years, a primary meeting place for precision teachers or anyone interested in the standard celeration chart. And, Lindsley began an annual series of invited addresses at ABA that have continued to 2000.

For instance, in 1977 Lindsley presented a paper titled "What We Know that Ain't So," at ABA. This presentation introduced the concept of "learning pictures," which had been identified and named over the previous year. Or, in 1979 Lindsley presented "Rate of Response Futures" at ABA in a panel that included his old mentor, B.F. Skinner.

In 1976 Lindsley remarried, marrying Nancy Hughes. As Og put it in his own words: "We married on 4 July, 1976 in Danforth Chapel on the Kansas University campus to celebrate our U. S. Bicentennial. We released hundreds of red, white, and blue balloons - our wedding trademark colors. Even today, 24 years later, many folk gather and set of fireworks and have parades to celebrate our anniversary! It is Wonderful!!"

At some time during the 1970s a series of separate Precision Teaching conferences were held. In the early years these conferences were held in Wyoming, or in Florida. Again, Lindsley was a key organizer and driving force behind these conferences.

In 1980 one of Lindsley's students, Patrick McGreevy started the new Journal of Precision Teaching. While Og refrained from publishing much in the early volumes, but would publish a series of papers about Precision Teaching in it during the 1990s.

By the early 1980s the problems with education had become a crisis of immense proportions. The "world's largest education experiment," Project Follow-Through, revealed Direct Instruction as the best method of teaching, all across the board, for any and every measure. Yet, the entrenched educational establishment refused to acknowledge the Follow-Through results. Finding this disturbing, Lindsley organized a symposium at ABA in 1984 about the cover-up of Follow-Through. As Og has suggested, this reaching out beyond Precision Teaching may have contributed to him getting elected President of ABA in 1985.

Precision Teaching and Direct Instruction found common cause, as indicated, for instance, in a symposium at ABA in 1987 with Siegfried Engelmann.

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