While the process view of communication has been widely advocated by respected scholars in the field, this perspective does not characterize current practices in the teaching of speech communication. Many pedagogical practices in speech communication have remained unchanged for 50 years; however, the past decade has seen the development of a trend to specify the outcome of speech communication instruction in behavioral terms. The formulation and implementation of behavioral objectives requires the adoption of the behaviorist perspective. The behavioral view of stimulus and response, cause and effect, and independent and dependent variables provides the underlying rationale for the notion of behavioral objectives and clearly places this approach to communication education in the archaic realm of causal determinism. While maintaining that the statement of the objectives is a needed and necessary task of any teacher for the purposes of classroom organization and accountability, the statement of the objective in behavioral terms is inappropriate for the teaching of much of the content of the communication discipline. (Author/WR)