I saw this commerical were this woman saves on daycare because her kids are being watched by a robot. It got me thinking of something I’ve thought of in the past. In the future, will teachers be replaces by robots (or computers)?
Pros:
You don’t have to pay them
They’re unbaised
Smarter than people
Bias can be a good thing, sometimes. Especially at higher levels, some things can simply not be weighed purely objectively, and ultimately their level of non-bias will be determined by the criteria the programmers use to determine the “correct” option in any given case. There’s a lot of nuance as to, say, what algorithm or data structure to use in a Computer Science class, you need to take into account many possible considerations I think a strict “teacher bot” can’t discern. Even if you could value everything objectively, and teach students all these nuances, in the job world they’ll still have to deal with people who HAVE biases, and need to learn what these are and how to deal with them before they’re thrown full force into it.
And computers aren’t really smart, they’re finicky logic machines that humans have to drive, kicking and screaming, into doing what they’re supposed to. It will necessarily inherit the collective biases of whoever programs the system, unless we can implement very general algorithms that produce emergent intelligence, but then it would likely have the same views (and biases, and mistakes for that matter) as who it learned from; just like people.
Remember that knowing something and teaching it are also very, very different skills. Any schmuck who’s a genius in their field can’t necessarily impart that wisdom on people who aren’t on the same intellectual level as them, just because a computer has a vast database of (let’s assume correct) knowledge, doesn’t mean it can impart it onto a child with any degree of efficiency, especially when taking into account different learning styles.
Would a young child playing the ‘why?’ game on a teacher-bot make its CPU explode? I wonder.
Teachers play a bigger role than simply dispensing information. Haven’t you ever had a teacher that inspired you with their energy, their dedication, their sincerity? Can a robot make a classroom full of kids laugh about lines in Shakespeare plays? Does it know when kids need praise and when they need hard words?
A good robot might be a better teacher than a bad human, but I doubt a robot could ever replace a truly good human teacher.
Caveat: Unless it has human level intelligence, at which point the premise becomes moot, since it’s just employing a human with a metal body.
I’m kind of drawing a blank here. Is it unusual to go through 16 years of education without encountering an inspirational teacher? Maybe I don’t have an inspire button.
In any case, it is isn’t an either or decision. You find the best teacher in America for a given subject and you record their lectures including the question and answer sessions. Why pay 10,000 people to something mediocre,’ when you can have one person who does it great and use it over and over. I can’t remember any teacher that was interesting as Cosmos or The Civil War or Connections. As far as the drill and repetition is involved, computers are actually pretty good for that. You might end up spending billions of dollars developing world class course materials, but you never have to do it again.
Please note that a lot of home schooling actually involves online instruction today.
I’m not surprised by this at all. That report is kind of creepy looking, though.
A great many schools and classrooms from kindergarten to college are already incorporating video lectures. However, those don’t replace an educator who’s actually present in the classroom. The educator is necessary to determine whether the children are actually learning or not, to repeat or rephrase material that children are having difficult with, and to determine the pacing of material and other decisions dynamically based on what’s taking place in the classroom. At the moment, computers and robots just can’t do these things. Perhaps at some point in the far future they will be able to. However, given the high expectations we had for artificial intelligence a generation ago, I find it noteworthy how little progress has been made in the area.
And all of those programs were written, produced, directed, and presented by robots? Those were teachers who were taught by other teachers.
Once we have AI capable of replacing teachers, AI will be able to replace everyone.
The classroom model may just not work well for you. But it does for a lot of people.
The problem with that is that lecturing is an interactive experience. It’s why it’s so tiring. The questions change from year to year, from group to group. Kids come into the classroom with different background knowledge, different perspectives, different ways of looking at the world. First period and third period need somewhat different lectures: lecturing to Little Town, Montana vs. NYC would have almost nothing in common. A good teacher is constantly watching the kids and monitoring understanding and making little adjustments in pacing and approach depending on how it is going.
Furthermore, a good lecture is made relevant through audience participation. I teach writing and economics. In both cases, those make more since because I let my kids guide the examples–they pick out the product we are going to talk about or the argument they are going to make, and I show them how to do so effectively. I show them how the stuff they already have in their head can click into the things I want them to do.
Also, the most effective teaching I do doesn’t involve lecture at all: it’s the endless tutoring sessions. It’s hard for me to imagine a robot going through an essay with a student, forcing them to listen to their words read aloud, asking them leading questions so that the look critically at their own words, pushing them to think more deeply about a subject. And in economics, it’s vital to sit there and watch individuals work through problems, catching where they are going wrong, and, more importantly, recognizing why they are making the mistake they are making and teaching them what questions to ask themselves to get out of the dead-end and back on track. This ties in with the interactive lectures: all that individual tutoring keeps me tied to the current zeitgeist and I tweak my lectures in response–so even the kids that never come in benefit from all the time I spend with the kids who do.
Lastly, some people need personal inspiration. Some of my kids work hard because they enjoy learning, some work hard because it’s part of larger goals (like college, or keeping their parents off their backs) but not a few work harder because they like me and want to please me. (and most kids are motivated by a combination of all three) I’m not bragging when I say that: part of my job is to be likable so that they will work harder to be noticed, to impress me–when I joke around with students or notice when they are down or do any number of things to seem quirky and cool, it’s as pedagogical as it is personal. Which doesn’t mean it’s insincere, it means I’m a good match for the needs of the job.
I’m not going to say “There’s no way a robot could ever do my job”, because who knows what the future will bring? But I really don’t see any way a DVD could do my job.
I love this response.
Not in public (unionized) schools.
First I notice you said the classroom experience does work for a lot of people. You didn’t say most. I reject the idea that a class should be taught differently in NYC versus little town. There might be different tracks based of the students, but each track will be the same no matter where they are taught. You talk about one on one tutoring and inspirational teachers, but that simply has little or nothing to do with the typical school experience. Better to have lectures that are recorded by the best of the best teachers. The software will gradually accumulate the answers for questions and use those for student questions. When a teacher gives one student one on one instruction, that means they are ignoring the rest of their class. When it is averaged across a classroom, it only amounts to a few hours per year per student. With computerized online instruction, each student can receive a customized educational experience that is adjusted to each students needs constantly. Frankly what you are spinning is a fantasy to has little relation to a real world educational experience. Most students will spend of their time being taught by drones are that teaching to the test, not “The Dead Poets Society”. Online computerized instruction is already being widely used, so it is rather silly to insist that it can’t be done.
The trouble is that most students will never be exposed to such teachers. They will spend most of their time being drilled by mediocrities. Discussing some idealized educational experience isn’t a reality based response. It is better to make sure the non-interactive parts of the curriculum are actually taught by the best of the best. It makes good sense to spend millions of dollars developing the courseware for one class when you can reuse it millions of times.
Why on earth would it be the same? If I am teaching market economics in Montana, I am going to use different examples of what is a “market” than if I am in New York. Five years ago my students remember 9/11 and I could talk about it meaningfully when discussing Rhetoric. Now they don’t–they were small children–and I have to find other examples. Two years ago I had a group that was incredibly up on current events and passionate about politics. I spoke very differently to them than I did the next year, when I had a group that couldn’t have been less interested in anything they hadn’t personally experienced. Why do you think that’s a poor practice?
You base this on what? I am surrounded by inspirational teachers every day. Not every teacher connects with every student, but there is a lot more of it than your personal experience suggests.
It’s not the questions that matter, it’s the why of the question, it’s what the question reveals about the underlying misunderstanding. The same question can indicate very different things depending on what other questions lead up to it or follow from it. Technology might someday be dynamic to keep up with that, but it’s no where near there today.
At my school, one-on-one instruction happens before school, at lunch, during study hall, and after school. And for most kids it’s probably less than a few hours per year per subject (though it’s many, many hours with some kids and some subjects). However, those few hours of instruction in small increments are incredibly powerful when mixed with dynamic lecture and small group work in the classroom (small group work is also a great way to get semi-individualized attention in.
I don’t think we have technology anywhere near responsive enough to understand the five different ways kids come to understand the law of supply, or that can know exactly which hints to give which kids to help them figure out that their thesis statement is too general and how to fix it.
I have been continuously in education as a student or teacher for 30 years now. I attended ten different public schools in five different states. I’m certified and teach in two radically different subjects and have attended more professional development conferences for both than you can possibly imagine. I think I have a pretty good grip on reality here.
And we have it here for kids who are behind in their credits. It’s widely regarded as a joke by students and teachers, and I don’t think anyone who has been through it feels like it was an adequate substitute for the actual courses.
Depends on how they’re programmed, doesn’t it?
I’d really like to know who would be programming them to be biased if they were going to be placed in public schools. :eek: Do you really think people would get away from making them biased against certain students? Let’s say for example they were biased to treat girls better than girls. The programmer (regardless of sex) would be called a sexist. Would someone really want to be known?
Also, if there biased against certain type of students because their programer was biased. They could always be recalled or the governmen could call in gasp another programmer. If someone is sexisit, racist, ect, they’re probably never going to change.
Try programming a robot to respond to “I don’t understand.”