In 2017, a slim man took the stage at the British Science Festival, one of the oldest science festivals in the world. Gazing out on a sea of leading researchers from around the globe, Sir Anthony Seldon, a renowned educator and historian, stated that by 2027 teachers will be AI rather than humans. The coming technology, he said, will force teachers to take a classroom assistant role while technology will be the conveyor of knowledge. Soon, he said, everyone was going to have the very best teacher and a completely personalized educational experience. The software was going to be with you throughout your education journey and was going to move at the speed of every individual learner.
“This is beyond anything that we’ve seen in the Industrial Revolution, or since, with any other new technology,” he said to the audience (Sky News, 2017)
What Sheldon predicted in 2017 has arrived in the form of large language models. And I agree with Seldon that AI will, and should, drastically change the role of a teacher. I have mentioned in previous blogs that teachers should fully integrate AI into class assignments, and raise their expectations for student work. Students should be taught to use generative AI to review and critique their work with actionable feedback. I encourage my students to do a pre-mortem with their work before they turn it in for their grade. Projects succeed better when you imagine how they might fail first, allowing students to work backward and solve these problems long before I see their work. In fact, I encourage my students to use AI at almost every opportunity. However, I completely disagree with Seldon’s prediction that this technology will somehow minimise the importance of the human teacher, and here is why.
Teaching is an art form. And I am starting to learn that it is something that takes years of practice and dedication to master.
Learning is hard work. And sometimes, it is really boring. Whether it is practising piano, learning a new language, or being introduced to calculus, there will be times when we have to sit in the difficulty and boredom in order to improve. However, the moment we experience something hard or boring, we want to quit immediately. It’s built right into us. And thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, our ability to endure boredom and difficulty is only decreasing, especially for young children.
And that is the role of a great teacher: someone who can help children push through the difficulty of learning. We help students develop a growth mindset by offering encouragement and meaningful praise, while reframing setbacks as stepping stones towards improvement. We instil good habits and discipline. We remind them that effort matters more than outcome, and that everyone, including us, has faced failure and setbacks and is better for it. We break down challenging concepts into manageable chunks. And most importantly, we speak so passionately about what we teach that it inspires a deep interest in the child to learn more.
Motivating, inspiring, rewarding, disciplining, and encouraging, this is how teachers help children move through the difficulty of learning. Horace Mann, often referred to as the “father of the public school system,” said, “A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron” (Khan, 2024). And although AI is becoming pretty good at the explaining part, it is still a long way from doing everything else a great teacher is capable of doing.
Bibliography
Khan, S. (2024) Brave New Words: How AI Will Revolutionize Education (and Why That’s a Good Thing). London: John Murray.
Sky News (2017) ‘Education revolution: ‘AI machines will replace teachers’, claims academic, 11 September