Classrooms have recently been criticized as total institutions where there is a rigid preoccupation with order and control, and where children are required to be still, to be silent, and to obey. Behavior modification has been described as a major source of change in the classroom. A review of this journal's papers on behavior modification in the classroom indicated that inappropriate behavior has been consistently defined as behavior that interferes with order, quiet, and stillness. It is argued therefore, that behavior modification has supported rather than changed the questionable status quo. Alternative areas for behavior modification in traditional dassrooms and the role of behavior modification in the development of open classrooms are discussed.

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In this study, conducted during the summer months in Texas, 129 volunteer participant households were assigned to one of five experimental conditions: a high monetary rebate condition in which participants received conservation information, weekly written feedback on their electricity use, and monetary rebates amounting to a 240% price change in electricity; a low monetary rebate condition with the same structure as the high rebates except payments amounted to a 50% price change; a weekly feedback condition in which participants also received information but no rebates; an information condition; and a control condition. The dependent measure was percentage reduction in electricity use based on actual weekly meter readings by the research staff. Only the high rebate condition significantly curtailed electricity use by about 12% over the course of the study. Elasticity estimates suggested limited responsiveness in electricity consumption to price changes. Questionnaire data showed a pattern in which actual reduction in electricity was associated with planning a conservation program, attending to feedback, and modifying air conditioning use.Psychologists have recently become involved methods (Winett, Note 1). In experimental in conservation and other environmental pro-studies that have been conducted, usually tection concerns, primarily by developing in-with volunteer community residents, potential terventions and evaluating proposed or re-conservation procedures were introduced and cently enacted programs (Tuso & Geller, their effect on actual energy consumption 1976). Our experimental technologies, used evaluated by daily or weekly reading of enat a microeconomic level of investigation, pro-ergy meters. Interventions already studied vide an important alternative to the frequent have included information packages, feedback, reliance of government and power company and reinforcement procedures implemented by officials on nonexperimental macroeconomic using monetary rebate systems.Rebates are a method for studying consumer responsiveness to price changes. Re-Richard A. Winett is Senior Research Associate at ceiving a rebate for reduced energy use means the Institute for Behavioral Research, Silver Spring, that the price of energy has been changed Maryland.