Teachers Who Know Everything and Cost Nothing

This week I had lunch with an ex-student who is thinking about traveling to Korea to teach English. She told me that another of my students was in Korea now teaching English. And I just got an email from another former student asking for a law school recommendation. She has been, you guessed it, teaching English in Korea. It seems that the Korean government is doing a good job subsidizing my former students.

But this, according to today's NY Times, may soon change. South Korea is working to replace native English speaking teachers with robots who are cheaper and more reliable. South Korea now plans to deploy 8,400 robots in the nation's kindergartens by 2013. And budgetary pressures in the program to enlist native English speakers is leading the government to turn to robotic teachers.

A front page essay from the Smarter than You Think series also in today's NY Times explores the growing uses of robots in teaching at all levels. According to Benedict Carey and John Markoff, scientists around the world

are developing robots that can engage people and teach them simple skills, including household tasks, vocabulary or, ... elementary imitation and taking turns.

While they quote computer scientists who say that they have neither the intention nor the ability to replace human teachers, clearly budget conscious schools and governments will seek to employ robots as teachers.

Teachers are threatened not only by robots, but also by electronic and distance education. A study last year for the US Department of Education found, to the great chagrin of many teachers and educators, that

“On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.”

The automation of the workforce is attacking the arts as well as teaching. As Paul Woodiel writes on the Times Oped page today, broadway's musicians and violinists are being replaced by synthesizers.

One question rarely asked in such discussions is: "what is good teaching?" or "what is great music?"and what does it teach? It may be that robots and computers are indeed better at teaching basic skills and customizing learning for individual students. Are electronic synthesizers better at playing the violins on the Great White Way?

But what seems, at least at this point, beyond the reach of robotic teaching is the flash of inspiration that opens a student's mind to the beauty and truth of the world. Then again, most students don't want such teaching--just as most broadway theatre goers don't need the human touch of the violin--which may mean that there are quite a few job openings for professor bots and synthesizers around the world.