The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: ASCD Author Jim Popham Remembers '77
It's difficult for me to recall any annual ASCD meeting without thinking of the 1977 Annual Conference in Houston, Texas. ASCD President Philip L. Hosford had asked me to take part in a formal, general session debate versus Art Combs, another former ASCD president, on the topic of "Behaviorism Versus Humanism." I was supposed to defend behaviorism against a guy who was an obvious favorite of the membership. Clearly, I was going to go into the debate as a definite underdog.
To make the contest a mite more even, I decided to accentuate the difference between Art and me by buying two cowboy hats—one black and one white—and giving him the "good guy" white hat while wearing the black hat of villainy as I extolled the virtues of behaviorism.
The trouble was, when I arrived in Houston, I discovered there was a major rodeo going on at the time, and there were no cowboy hats to be purchased—white, black, or grubby gray. To deal with my dilemma, I bought two straw farm hats and two cans of spray paint. There I was, in the Hyatt Regency Hotel, with newspapers spread on the floor while doing a dose of headwear recoloration. For the most part, I was operating in the psychomotor domain.
The next day, paint dry, I showed up at the conference and discovered that Art was wearing a turtleneck sweater—very casual for that era—thereby proving that humanists are not to be trusted. When, at the outset of the debate, I presented him with his white hat and donned my black one, he joined right into the whimsy.
I can't recall who "won" the debate, but I frequently experience uncontrollable behaviorist leanings—especially when I wear a black hat!