Any computer that can be replaced by a teacher, should be

Photo by Steve Wheeler

Here's my opinion, for what it's worth. I write from more than 40 years experience working in educational technology while observing the rapid development of machine intelligence.

Remember the old Arthur Clarke quote? Any teacher who can be replaced by a computer, should be. It raises a few smiles because of its wit, but also serves to remind us that teaching is a complex human, relational profession in which emotional connections are made and where teachers don't simply present information.

And what is more, good teachers will never be redundant. They will always be needed because they can motivate and inspire, making all the difference to children's learning and aspirations.

Teachers can do a lot more than even the most sophisticated computer or the most agile robot. And artificial intelligence may be a great tool for high level computation, and even such rich human activities such as interaction, but has little benefits when it comes to emotional intelligence.

Artificial intelligence has been designed to bring us to the point where it replaces human activity. Even cognitive computing has been developed to mimic human decision making and other natural characteristics of being human. But humans have many characteristics it would be impossible to mimic, including empathy, emotion, appreciation for aesthetics, and most importantly deviance - also known as breaking or bending the rules. The latter is something no computer will ever do voluntarily. It would need to be programmed to do so - and that would still confine it to following those instructions without deviation.

Teachers won't be replaced by computers because it is nigh on impossible to describe accurately what teachers do. Much is intuitive, creative or unpredictable and cannot be made into neat algorithms. The mundane stuff can be offloaded into the mindtools that computers and AI offers, so we can expect routine activities to be automated in the future. But the more specific pedagogical roles of teachers, their reflective and critical processes will always remain the remit of the educator. Technology was created to serve our needs as humans, not to replace us.

NB: This post was written while on the move using my smartphone. There may be errors, but that just shows I'm human. I guess you could call it moblogging.


Any computer that can be replaced by a teacher, should be by Steve Wheeler was written in Auckland, New Zealand and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.