Education in the United States for most of the last 50 years has built its knowledge base on a single dominating foundation--behavioral psychology. This paper analyzes the history of behaviorism. Syntheses are presented of the theories of Ivan P. Pavlov, J. B. Watson, and B. F. Skinner, all of whom contributed to the body of works on behaviorism. A brief outline is presented of four competing interest groups, each attempting to to define curriculum: the humanists, the developmentalists, the social meliorists, and the social efficiency educators. In the second section of the paper, the views of a number of critics of behaviorism as a psychological perspective and as the source of the knowledge base in teacher education are examined. These critics include Richard M. Restak, Arthur Koestler, Bertrand Russell, Bruno Bettleheim, Elliot Eisner, and Leslie Hart. The final section of the paper presents alternative sources for the knowledge base. The works of Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper are discussed, and the prospect for conceptualzing learning offered by recent research on the hemispheres of the brain is appraised. (JD)