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."

Comments

sage

[One With Whisp]

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?

Re:sage

[msauve]

"And who answers questions about the lectures?"

Yep. And if most students can learn simply by watching videos and then taking tests, why have school at all? They can do that at home.

Good teachers are much more than subject matter experts - they're sociologists and mentors. Those roles can't be done by some national "super teacher."

Re:sage

[pepty]

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,

"will contain whatever buzzword content sounds good regardless of its impact on understanding of geometry, grammar, US history, chemistry, foreign languages, or coding" more like.

Re:sage

[nbauman]

It's not, but as someone who went to both public and private schools K-12, I wouldn't say my education was ever individualized. Sure, I could ask questions to an extent (up to when a teacher became annoyed), but the lesson was never for me, but rather the group.

I went to public school. When they saw that I was a good science student, they gave me a lab class with 4 other students, where we grew bacteria and bred fruit flies. That actually turned out to be useful in my future career.

Most of my teachers were dedicated and knew what they were doing. A lot of them stayed after work to help kids with projects and tutorials. They treated their students like their own kids.

The people who put down public schools and experienced union teachers are "visionaries" but they don't have facts to back them up. If you want the facts, do a Google search for "Diane Ravitch."

Re:sage

[ShanghaiBill]

What? How is that individualized in any way? Is this not the very inverse of individualized?

HIs "vision" of education is silly. If the kids are watching a recorded lecture, there is no reason for them to be assembled in one place, and there is no reason that they should all be watching the same lecture. It will be individualized by letting each student progress at their own pace. Except we already have that. It is called Khan Academy, and while it works well for bright, motivated students, it leaves the dumb, unmotivated students even further behind.

Re:sage

[Wycliffe]

and the quality of the teacher has no impact on the compensation that the teacher receives.

I think this is the real problem and unfortunately it doesn't get much better in college. In college you could have a professor
that was terrible and EVERYONE told the dean he was terrible but even then they didn't do anything about it. And it
wasn't just tenured professors. Even TAs got this insane treatment. After complaining about a TA that couldn't
teach and could barely even speak english, the dean actually told me that many foreign TAs were hired before they
ever set foot on campus and that once they got hear it was too late to do anything about it. What??? You can't fire
someone that can't do their job? Name one other non-government, non-union job where someone can't be fired for
sucking at their job.

I think probably the only way out of this mess in elementary school is with school vouchers and private schools.
At least then the schools would have to compete and hopefully the bad schools that let bad teachers stay would
run out of business when they ran out of students. That being said, you have a choice in college and there still
tended to be some politics that let some bad teachers keep their jobs.

Re:sage

[nbauman]

The people who put down public schools and experienced union teachers are "visionaries" but they don't have facts to back them up. If you want the facts, do a Google search for "Diane Ravitch."

Ah yes, a single data point proves everything. Sorry. No.

I have had exceptional public school teachers that cared about the students, knew their material, and provided a rich, learning environment. I have had hideous public school teachers that made it obvious that they hated the students, wished they were elsewhere, and only because thy had been on the job so long and were tenured that it was too late to change careers at that point. I have had public school teachers at almost every point in between.

I'm extremely glad that you had only exceptional experiences with public school teachers. But please, don't start pretending that you're representative of all public school students' experience or that your teachers were representative of all public school teachers.

Do your homework. I said do a Google search for "Diane Ravitch." Do I have to do everything for you?

http://dianeravitch.net/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Ravitch was assistant secretary of education under GWHB and Bill Clinton. She believed in testing and charter schools and getting rid of unions. The Wall Street Journal gave her a column. But she knew how to understand data. And the data said that charter schools were failing and the testing was unscientific gobbledygook. So -- unlike some people -- when the evidence went against her, she admitted she was wrong. She has more data than you knew existed. For example, she knows about the NAEP http://nces.ed.gov/nationsrepo... which actually did a good, scientific study of charter schools and found that they were on average worse than public schools. And I'm not going to find it for you, you can look it up yourself, although you're probably too lazy for that.

There's plenty of data. And it doesn't do what the "visionaries" say. Most of this stuff has been tried before, and didn't work.

I didn't say that I had only exceptional experiences with public school teachers. I had good teachers and bad teachers, like every institution. but most of them -- enough of them -- were good. I found more dedicated people in the public schools than I found in private businesses.

Re:sage

[serviscope_minor]

Do your homework. I said do a Google search for "Diane Ravitch." Do I have to do everything for you?

This seems to have come up several times recently from different people. If you're trying to make an argument, then yes, it IS you who has to do "everything". Merely exhorting the person you're arguing with to go out and do enough research that they convince themselves that you're correct generally makes the other person not bother, because why would someone who already disagrees with you set out to prove themselves wrong?

Anyway now you've posted enough information to convince me. So, it works!

So, one size fits all?

[DanDD]

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.

This plan has holes

[jedidiah]

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.

Re:This plan has holes

[ckatko]

In otherwords, morons are leading morons in the great education debate. Classrooms are failing to teach huge amounts of children because we've decided "one learning method is better than all, and any kids who don't succeed must be broken." and now we're going to take that to the point that it's literally impossible to do anything but put the big glowing screen on and let the last of our kids brains melt away.

Between the stupidity of "leaders" in teaching, and zero tolerance insanity, homeschooling or private schooling my children looks better and better every day.

Re:This plan has holes

[cas2000]

not necesarily morons, just slaves to fashionable management ideology.

what's pushing this is the management class's absolute loathing of skilled individuals. they demand that every worker be a replacable component and they simply don't care that that means loss of productivity through loss of experience, skill, and talent.

they have this attitude towards workers in education and every other industry - whether for-profit or not-for-profit. it's what they're taught, and it's what they believe.

Here is what I don't get...

[toonces33]

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.

Re:Here is what I don't get...

[YrWrstNtmr]

What if the kid can't read? Is disabled ot live in some backwater like Appalachia were ignorance is a virtue.

Or NYC, or LA, or Chicago. Willful ignorance is not limited to the backwaters of 'Appalachia '.

Wow total distopia

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Wow total distopia

[geekmux]

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.

Pay more?

Tell that to the taxpayer , and maybe you'll remember why we're having this discussion.

Re:Wow total distopia

[AK Marc]

Last I looked, the taxpayer paid about $3 for every $1 spent on education. Unfunded mandates like NCLB and such take most of the money. The rest of the non-classroom money goes mainly to facilities.

The problem isn't price, it's value. Public education is cheaper than most private education. All the conservative studies that show it expensive look at education-only schools (the ones that have the facilities provided out of a separate budget, and no government oversight, so almost no compliance costs). When you look at it with those constraints, private should be about 1/3 the cost of public. But it fails even then. Public is more effective and cheaper, in most cases.the government is always cheaper and more effective (like the IRS and Social Security), but the complaints are with the conservative legislators who saddle the department with stupid rules, not their ability to execute them.

Re:edu-babble

[Skewray]

Sounds like dystopia to me. Something about a bunch of kindergarteners staring at a giant screen seems very 1984.

The exact opposite of what we need

[Skarjak]

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.

And Drum Machines

[dcollins]

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.

better education

[harvey the nerd]

I got such a "super teacher" module for one of my high school kids (Kentucky Educational TV) with some great demos too. AP Physics B all in one year without the usual introductory Physics course. It was great. The kid worked hard, and switched from music and languages in high school to physics in college.

However she also had a great physics teacher to help her during lunch. I think it might reduce the local teachers time requirement per student 1/2-2/3, but not the skills. Ultimately the kids may have more equal opportunity to determine their level of education by their own interest, ability and effort in such a system.

Re:better education

[GargamelSpaceman]

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.

Re:edu-babble

[ckatko]

We interrupt this class room broadcast to bring you "Waffles, Tastey Waffles," from Delicious Corp! If your mom doesn't buy you some, she's cheating on your father!

relevant excerpts from powerful TedTalks

[EthanBernard]

"...relevant excerpts from powerful TedTalks..."

I threw up a bit in my mouth when I read that.

Re:edu-babble

[plopez]

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.

As a K12 teacher, I have to say . . .

[Toddlerbob]

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.

Re:As a K12 teacher, I have to say . . .

[Overzeetop]

When 1/4 of the class flunks a college intro to bio class, they pay the university another $15,000 and they take it again - or they look for a major which doesn't require bio. When a 1/4 of a 5th grade class flunks a standardized test, the teacher can get fired.

See the difference?

Re:As a K12 teacher, I have to say . . .

[Overzeetop]

Unfortunately, that is the crux of the problem. The cost of any service or product that requires real human interaction is skyrocketing when compared to other fields. Every technology sector job is based on one human producing a product which will be used by thousands to millions of people with almost no incremental cost. Electronics are assembled more and more by machine. Mineral exploration and energy production is becoming automated. Factory farming and staple goods production is the culmination of 200 years of industrial revolution efficiency.

Look at anything where costs are increasing fast and you'll find people - one on one interaction - is at the root. Unfortunately, public education is under the thumb of reduced municipal revenues at a time when more and more is expected. We can't go back to a one room school house and school finishing up at a 3rd grade level for 90% of the population, which is where much of the current "overtaxed" public seems to feel we should go.

I don't see this ending well.

Sounds like Hugo Gernsback's "teleducation"

[stevebyan]

Hugo Gernsback wrote an editorial advocating a similar idea in the May 1956 issue of his "Radio-Electronics" magazine as a solution to the educational needs of the USA to produce enough technicians and engineers to defeat the Soviets in the technological arms race. See page 33 in the PDF scan of that issue at AmericanRadioHistory.com.
"THE ELEMENTS OF TELEDUCATION"
"... The threat to our future can be met ..."
(snip)

"In short, without going into details, this is the way the proposed system, outlined by the writer in 1945, works:

"From a central point or points the best technical and science teachers in the land instruct via large wall projection color television AA the classes in the land. If the instructor of the moment is at Yale, the rest of the country is connected to that point. The next lecture may come from MIT in Massachusetts, from Caltech in California or from any other point because all institutions of learning are tied in to the national teleducation closed-circuit hookup. Such lectures will not be merely talk. The teacher - be he a physics, chemical, electrical or electronics professor - will instruct directly from the laboratory all important experiments and make clear any technical point by actual physical demonstration."

Recipe for failure

[ortholattice]

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.

Welcome to the future

[Overzeetop]

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.)

Every tech revolution...

[jim_deane]

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.

I think the difference

[rsilvergun]

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.

Re:edu-babble

[catchblue22]

Sounds like dystopia to me. Something about a bunch of kindergarteners staring at a giant screen seems very 1984.

I think the truly intractable problem is that such a system would centralize control of the educational system. Centralize it right down to every single word that is presented. The true power of the public education system is that it gives teachers a great deal of independence in what they say in the classroom. Imagine a situation when something terrible happens in our democracy. Someone seizes control. The system gets even more perverted than it already is. Then imagine an educational system where children only received "approved" resources. No independent human teacher. Just video and text. If the children don't get information from the media, then they will effectively be blind to reality.

I know this is hypothetical, but I think it demonstrates my point, that independent teachers are an essential buffer against tyranny emerging in our democracy.

Re:edu-babble

[thrich81]

From personal experience, I don't know where this educational reform is you are talking about. I went through a good set of public schools in the 70's in a good middle class school system. The Friday night football game was the highlight of the week at high school. Classes were pretty good, the kids that wanted to, got into good colleges. Now, 40 years later, my kids are going through a good set of public schools in a good middle class school system. The Friday night football game is the highlight of the week at high school. The kids that want to are getting into good colleges. Two main differences from my experiences -- my kids seem to be learning more advanced concepts in math and science sooner than I did and the school district doesn't offer Driver's Ed as an elective. I wish that Driver's Ed was an elective, other than that the K-12 education experience seems as good or better than what I got.