Robotic teaching

In the words of George Bernard Shaw, “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” However, with the way that the economy is going, those who can’t, will be unemployed.  I may not agree completely with George Shaw, but in today’s economy, teaching is no longer a career you can take for granted. As many people may already know, the Des Moines schools, like schools all over the country, are being forced to cut jobs. These jobs are teachers, aids, administrators, and librarians.

If the government continues to cut the education budget, the administration will have to find alternative ways to cut money, and this is when teachers should start to worry. As money disappears, so do jobs. One of the alternative forms of education is distance education, which will help educate the masses with less expense. Through distance education, a teacher can be connected to several classrooms through video, audio, and the internet.
This would allow one teacher to teach several classrooms at the same time, unfortunately it takes away several very important aspects students usually find in a normal classroom. Some students would be able to function better through a distance learning situation, while other students would fail in this kind of environment. For a student to flourish in the distance learning environment, the student would have to be more independent and self motivated. However, many students are not self motivated, and need the extra contact with their teacher in order to be successful.

Teachers who are in the classroom may provide students with several life skills. They provide their students with motivation, individual attention and instruction, societal rules and regulations along with classroom rules and regulations. Teachers help keep students on track in school and in life, in a sense they may even help the students figure out who they are while they are learning in the classroom.

Children today are already having a hard time connecting to real people because they are using the internet too much. If we take away their only form of socialization we may as well begin trying to figure out a way to connect our computers to our bodies so that life will be more convenient for everyone.

If we were connected to our computers we would never have to use our social skills again, we could simply Facebook stalk them or friend them.

Shaw was wrong, those who can’t teach, do other things. Good teachers are irreplaceable and should be respected rather than merely thought of as a source of extra funds when it comes time for budget planning.

I think that in some cases it is good to use distance learning in the classrooms because some students would be able to learn more diverse information if we taught our schools this way. However, if we try to implement this as a standard form of education, I think that the students are going to miss out on a lot of different real world connections.