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The Future Deconstruction of the K-12 Teacher
An anonymous reader writes: English teacher Michael Godsey writes in The Atlantic what he envisions the role of teachers to be in the future. In a nutshell, he sees virtual classrooms, less pay, and a drastic decrease in the number of educators, but thinks they will all be "super-teachers". From the article: "Whenever a college student asks me, a veteran high-school English educator, about the prospects of becoming a public-school teacher, I never think it's enough to say that the role is shifting from 'content expert' to 'curriculum facilitator.' Instead, I describe what I think the public-school classroom will look like in 20 years, with a large, fantastic computer screen at the front, streaming one of the nation's most engaging, informative lessons available on a particular topic. The 'virtual class' will be introduced, guided, and curated by one of the country's best teachers (a.k.a. a "super-teacher"), and it will include professionally produced footage of current events, relevant excerpts from powerful TedTalks, interactive games students can play against other students nationwide, and a formal assessment that the computer will immediately score and record.
I tell this college student that in each classroom, there will be a local teacher-facilitator (called a 'tech') to make sure that the equipment works and the students behave. Since the 'tech' won't require the extensive education and training of today's teachers, the teacher's union will fall apart, and that "tech" will earn about $15 an hour to facilitate a class of what could include over 50 students. This new progressive system will be justified and supported by the American public for several reasons: Each lesson will be among the most interesting and efficient lessons in the world; millions of dollars will be saved in reduced teacher salaries; the 'techs' can specialize in classroom management; performance data will be standardized and immediately produced (and therefore 'individualized'); and the country will finally achieve equity in its public school system."
I tell this college student that in each classroom, there will be a local teacher-facilitator (called a 'tech') to make sure that the equipment works and the students behave. Since the 'tech' won't require the extensive education and training of today's teachers, the teacher's union will fall apart, and that "tech" will earn about $15 an hour to facilitate a class of what could include over 50 students. This new progressive system will be justified and supported by the American public for several reasons: Each lesson will be among the most interesting and efficient lessons in the world; millions of dollars will be saved in reduced teacher salaries; the 'techs' can specialize in classroom management; performance data will be standardized and immediately produced (and therefore 'individualized'); and the country will finally achieve equity in its public school system."
And who answers questions about the lectures?
performance data will be standardized and immediately produced (and therefore 'individualized')
What? How is that individualized in any way? Is this not the very inverse of individualized?
Wow, sounds like "one size fits all" to me. What a dismal world.
Some kids do great with books and classroom materials. Others of us excelled with a rapid flurry of hands-on programming and lab exercises, with healthy doses of welding, machining, soldering, and troubleshooting.
This sounds like a dismal future for public school, and a bright opportunity for private & charter schools.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
I dunno. I'm not an educator, but I'm pretty sure that when I was in school that there was more to the class than just the lecture. I don't think you can just roll a copy of something from "The Great Courses" and declare yourself done.
I would be very worried about any teacher that would reduce their own job to that.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Say some kid doesn't quite get what they were talking about in the lesson, and has additional questions. Where would that kid go? The local tech wouldn't be of any use - the kid's family would need to hire an outside tutor or some such. And if the family can't afford a tutor, well that's too bad.
This is the stupidest thing I have seen all day, all week, all month.
Leave education to the professionals please. Pay more and hire better folks.
At a time when we are realizing that students aren't all the same and we need to adapt our teaching strategies to each of them, this dude brilliantly claims that the future is to sit them all in front of a screen with no support. We need to hire more teachers, not less. Size of classroom is one of the most important variables for the effectiveness of teaching.
What this most reminds me of -- A drummer friend of mine was told, as a teenager by an older adult drummer in the 80's, not to take up the instrument because in the future all drumming would be done by electronic drum machines.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
God save us from educational reform. We have had 30 years of it and things only get worse and worse. Less relevant course work, too many tests, talent driven out of the system, destruction of decent school lunches, no PE, etc. All that is left is sports and tests. The last 30 years has been an exercise in how to destroy an educational system.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The TFA is an excellent example of that fraction of the population who has no idea what a K12 teaching job actually entails, but somehow thinks they understand it completely. As one of the respondents in this thread (who did understand it) put it, real teaching jobs will be one of the last to go, as they entail interaction between human beings. It's in the interaction that the best teaching happens. That's why K12 classes need to be smaller, and not like my 200+ member Biology 1 lecture at university forty years ago.
My step-daughter was literally math-illiterate upon entering college - very poor math SATs, couldn't multiply 1-digit numbers without a calculator, and didn't know that a+b commutes but a-b doesn't. I spent several hours a day 3-4 days a week with her, and through tremendous effort and lots of tears she earned all A's in Calculus 1 and 2 and Statistics. There is simply no way she could have even passed without my help (and a boost of self-motivation by a short stint in the real world earning near minimum wage with no college degree and no future).
Rich people will hire tutors to do the same thing. Poor people can't afford to and rarely have anyone like me around to help. So the rich will get ahead regardless of ability; other than a few exceptionally talented ones, the poor will get further behind, continuing the cycle of failure and poverty.
There is something about individual interaction that can't be duplicated with a computer or projection screen. A 50-to-1 student/teacher ratio with little individual one-on-one instruction is going to make things much worse.
We may not have flying cars, but we already have a one-size-fits-all educational system. Mainstreaming, where slower learners and those with reduced cognitive function are added to classrooms (with and without aids, depending on severity) brings up the bottom, and all but the brightest on standardized are discouraged from entering "gifted and talented" programs. Teaching is aimed at producing the maximum number of passing grades on standardized tests.
The top and bottom 2% are weeded out - charter schools or G/T at the top, traditional special ed for those who will never achieve. The other 96% are lumped together and the teacher is salary-bound to make as many of them pass as possible. That means standardized worksheets and test prep pretty much from day one. The result? The bottom 10%, which would require extraordinary help to pass, are dropped as a waste of effort, the next 30% get most of the attention to try and get them to make the grade, and the rest of the class pretty much floats for the year with little or no real instruction because they learn well enough from the books and videos to get a passing grade. Anyone in the top 30 percentile points is bored to tears.
There are exceptions to this, of course. Some teachers put in lots of extra time and effort, others are the truly gifted teachers who weave engaging lesson plans and get the kids interested enough to retain the knowledge and pass the tests without crazy drilling. But, for the most part, when your job depends on hitting a number and there's no accounting for whether you have the smart class or the dumb class you're going to get a rhythm down and stick to it. At least if the test scored come back poor, you can open you planner and show all the drills and fact sheets you went over showing you covered the material.
It's pretty damned sad.
(Oh, and as for private schools...have you seen the cost? It's unlikely a family with 2 children who aren't in the top 10% of wage earners are going to be able to afford 12 years of private education. The opportunity is there, but the consumers to support it are pretty thin.)
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Every technical revolution in education since Edison's wax cylinder phonograph or prior has been prophesied to replace classroom teachers.
A brief list:
The Gutenberg press.
Edison's phonograph.
Classes by mail.
Voice radio.
Television.
Two way video.
Multi user computer terminals.
Microcomputers.
Multimedia software.
The internet.
This too will become a minor fad, blossom, fade, and find a very minor place in the ongoing art of education.
that the author is pointing out is that it'll be incredibly profitable to run these sorts of "schools". Sure, they won't work. But who cares so long as the money keeps flowing in. And what alternative will you have? Unless you're rich there won't be any. Sure, some of the /. crowd might realize that's morally wrong, but the rest of America will continue to blame themselves. It's something we do a lot of and goes back to that whole puritanical self flagellation thing that's been buries in our skulls.
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People like to point fingers, especially when something as important schools are failing our kids
The only thing is, it is not the schools which have failed the students
No, not the teachers either (although some of the teachers shouldn't be there in the first place)
The root failure is the way modern education has been run
We put 20-odd kids inside a room, give them standardized books, putting them through a standardized curriculum and expect all of them to come out to be successful
Kids are different. Some are smarter than others. Some are more active than others.
Some like abstract things such as math / science
Others find beauty in languages, and so on
Furthermore the way a kid learns may not be the same as the way another kid learns
The way we put the kids through the education is like that proverbial doctor who prescribes aspirin to all his patients no matter what kind of illness(es) the patients happen to have
The meaning of Education is to Bring Up , to Train
What exactly are we training our kids? To be a conformist? To follow the leader? To grow up to be a sheeple?
That "English teacher" in TFA, Mr. Michael Godsey, does not even have a clue about education
He doesn't care about his students
He doesn't care if his students are being properly trained
He doesn't care if his students learn anything
All he cares is about how much he gets paid
That is why I say, the root cause of the failure is Education itself --- and as an extension, we ourselves have failed our children
We have stopped educating our children
Instead, we put them through a conveyor belt, and expect them to be molded by the school system
We have forgotten that as parents we are the primary custodians of our children, that the chief job we as parents are to train our children
Oh, I can hear it now ... many moan and bitch about not having time, about how tired they are after coming home from work, and so on, and so forth
Well ... to me it's all nothing but excuses
If we are to bring up our children with excuses it would be better if we have no children
If we are to have children of our own it's our duty to bring them up, to train them, to make sure that they can grow up tapping into their full potentials - no matter which field they decide to be in when they grow up, that they are well equipped to carry out whatever that they do
The biggest problem with education is trying to make a horse drink water - the horses that don't feel like drinking at the moment monopolize the resources of everyone and dictate the techniques used. Everyone is led by the teacher in a ritualistic dance at the end of which, if the dance steps are followed, mastery is supposedly achieved. Those who can be engaged by this kind of thing and dance along with the class do well. Those who don't care to dance are unteachable - labeled dumb.
When first introduced, compulsory education was compulsory because the compulsion was necessary to force parents to give up the labor of their children so they could be educated. Education was an opportunity, and there were few who would not compel their children to take part if they could afford it.
Today child labor laws and the general way society is configured make children worthless as labor. Time in school is if anything is the financial equivalent of 'free babysitting'.
After a certain age it's impossible to keep someone in school and learning if they don't want to be there and the level of compulsory education should therefore be low anyway. K-6 makes more sense to be compulsory than beyond.
The idea that there should be a diploma at the end of it all and that that diploma should 'mean something' undermines the value of that diploma. By insisting that it certify a minimum standard, we guarantee that the standard is very low. If graduation rate is a priority than that priority is at odds with not only the level of the standard, but the possible level anyone can achieve. Catering to students who don't want to learn deprives everyone else. Dragging people kicking and bucking into education sets people against anything to do with it. The process of having education shoved down one's throat even turns people who would otherwise be receptive to education off to it.
What would be better would be for a certain number of years of education be paid for, and students can go as far as they want. They don't get a diploma, they get a transcript. They learn basic skills, not because they must, but because they are prerequisites to a class they are interested in taking. They want to pass for lots of reasons, such as peer pressure not to be the oldest kid taking the class, but also because they want to take some other class. If someone is behind in some area they can concentrate their efforts there.
Grades aren't important. Make classes pass/fail but keep the standard for passing high enough that students who pass have demonstrated enough understanding to succeed at the next level. Students who excel would have a broader transcript, or complete the courses offered early. But there is no need to penalize someone who struggles in a certain area if they have demonstrated mastery eventually. If they have truly mastered whatever it is, then they should be as able as anyone else who has mastered it to apply it in the future.
Can older, engaged kids benefit from well produced virtual classes? Sure. Will fourth graders watch the screen intently enough to learn Long Division? Will a 'tech' necessarily be able to answer a frustrated student's questions in a helpful way? If they can, then they aren't too bad at teaching... Couldn't they conceivably do as well as the video teacher? Yep, better probably. And does the video get paused every time one of the kidnergarteners has a question? Does it then become impossible to engage with?
That's one of the problems with the ritual dance method of teaching. Everyone brings certain things to the table before the class. It's hard not to fall asleep and miss the stuff you need to hear, or waste your energy doing useless ( for you ) dance steps and be too tired from that to learn anything difficult. It's better to be engaged in learning and spend your time on the stuff you don't know. When people do this they apply the sharpest edge to their problems and tend to cut through difficulty like a laser.
School should make that possible.
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