Why We Do What We Do
Most of the time, we do what we do because it's easier than doing something else -- easier than stopping to think through the why and just do the same damn thing. Our parents did it; maybe our grandparents, too. Must be good enough for me.
To take a not-so-random example, why does the classroom look like it does, with the teacher in front and students lined up in rows, like an audience? Well, because that's the way we do it. Somewhere along the way, it made some kind of logical sense to do things that way, so we did. And now that's just what we think when we picture a classroom.
Back before the internet -- which wasn't all that f*cking long ago! -- it was important to focus the classroom on the teacher. He or she had the information that the students wanted, or the students parents wanted for them, and it was important to sit still and get that information from the source.
Now, I suppose that once the public library came along, the teacher was already at least theoretically obsolete. All that information could be found in books. But Adam Smith was smart, and division of labor is a boon -- so pay some schmuck in a bow tie to look it up and give you the short version already.
But the barrier kept dropping further. Now we've reached a point where Google can tell you, Siri can tell you, and some dude has a video on YouTube to tell you what you want to know, and he doesn't even want to be paid, really. He'll take the monetization, sure, but he was doing this before that was even a thing. People like to share knowledge. In some ways, information is like a virus: it gets you to go out and sneeze it all over other people.
So what role does a teacher still play? And is it enough of a role to still have all the desks face front? A part of me wants to run to the negative side, to declare the teacher useless now and forevermore. Wouldn't a team of coaches and mentors and peer learning groups be just as effective? In many cases, yes. But there are still some benefits to having a teacher, even if the situations in which that is true are becoming more scarce. I think a teacher is a boon when the doctrine is subtle or particularly difficult. I can learn basic physics from a Khan Academy video, but I think I'd like a live teacher for the more esoteric bits, like string theory or quantum entanglement.
But even then, wouldn't a MOOC from an amazing teacher be better than a live class with a mediocre teacher? I've met some pretty mediocre teachers in my time, and they are thick on the ground at public schools. I'm pretty sure we can get 9/10 of the way there without teachers. And that last 1/10 might keep shrinking as we get closer toward needing it.
To take a not-so-random example, why does the classroom look like it does, with the teacher in front and students lined up in rows, like an audience? Well, because that's the way we do it. Somewhere along the way, it made some kind of logical sense to do things that way, so we did. And now that's just what we think when we picture a classroom.
Back before the internet -- which wasn't all that f*cking long ago! -- it was important to focus the classroom on the teacher. He or she had the information that the students wanted, or the students parents wanted for them, and it was important to sit still and get that information from the source.
Now, I suppose that once the public library came along, the teacher was already at least theoretically obsolete. All that information could be found in books. But Adam Smith was smart, and division of labor is a boon -- so pay some schmuck in a bow tie to look it up and give you the short version already.
But the barrier kept dropping further. Now we've reached a point where Google can tell you, Siri can tell you, and some dude has a video on YouTube to tell you what you want to know, and he doesn't even want to be paid, really. He'll take the monetization, sure, but he was doing this before that was even a thing. People like to share knowledge. In some ways, information is like a virus: it gets you to go out and sneeze it all over other people.
So what role does a teacher still play? And is it enough of a role to still have all the desks face front? A part of me wants to run to the negative side, to declare the teacher useless now and forevermore. Wouldn't a team of coaches and mentors and peer learning groups be just as effective? In many cases, yes. But there are still some benefits to having a teacher, even if the situations in which that is true are becoming more scarce. I think a teacher is a boon when the doctrine is subtle or particularly difficult. I can learn basic physics from a Khan Academy video, but I think I'd like a live teacher for the more esoteric bits, like string theory or quantum entanglement.
But even then, wouldn't a MOOC from an amazing teacher be better than a live class with a mediocre teacher? I've met some pretty mediocre teachers in my time, and they are thick on the ground at public schools. I'm pretty sure we can get 9/10 of the way there without teachers. And that last 1/10 might keep shrinking as we get closer toward needing it.
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