I recently ran across Bill Gates’s blog. He was reviewing Yuval Noah Harari’s book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. The title of his post was, “The Purpose Problem: What if People Run Out of Things to Do?”
Gates ironically reflects on what it means to have purpose in one’s life.
I say ironically, because many blame Bill Gates for the current push to replace teachers in our public schools with technology—calling it personalized or competency-based learning.
Not only will teachers lose their profession and their purpose, a whole segment of society will be displaced—careers shattered.
This will drastically affect how and what students learn. Even our youngest children will obtain their knowledge on machines.
Brick and mortar schools will be a thing of the past. Children will learn on devices anyplace and anytime. Or they will attend online charter schools with baby-sitter-like facilitators instead of teachers. Connections to humans for learning will be distant.
School Privatization?
Gates ruminates on Harari’s argument that progress towards “bliss, immortality, and divinity” will be unequal and some people will move forward and others will be left behind. He says,
I agree that, as innovation accelerates, it doesn’t automatically benefit everyone. The private market in particular serves the needs of people with money and, left to its own devices, often misses the needs of the poor. But we can work to close that gap and reduce the time it takes for innovation to spread.
He goes on to apply this thinking to closing the gaps when it comes to vaccinations of sick children.
He doesn’t ponder what troubling results can occur when “disruption” through technology happens in our public schools, or what it will mean when there is no more public school system in America.
Tech is a Tool, Not a Replacement
Bill Gates goes on in his blog book review,
It is true that as artificial intelligence gets more powerful, we need to ensure that it serves humanity and not the other way around. But this is an engineering problem—what you could call the control problem. And there is not a lot to say about it, since the technology in question doesn’t exist yet.
While schools aren’t turning to robots yet, thank goodness, the reliance on technology to teach students should also be questioned.
The threat of virtual schooling is very real. Betsy DeVos recently said virtual schools are what students need. Yet, there’s little evidence virtual learning is best. And there’s been little community debate.
What physical and mental repercussions will students display in the future due to an all-tech school setting? What purpose will students strive for in the land of machines?
Much harm could be caused by such transformation. The human connection is still and always will be critical.
The Gates Foundation’s Dislike of Teachers
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation invest in too many pro-tech corporate school initiatives to mention, including charter schools like Summit which emphasize technology.
They have also invested in many anti-teacher nonprofits and experiments like their project Measures of Effective Teaching (MET). And they influenced the creation and adoption of Common Core State Standards.
Bill Gates has come out in the past against lowering class sizes and teachers getting master’s degrees. It really is no secret that Bill Gates is not a friend to qualified teachers. He supports Teach for America and the Relay Graduate School of Education.
Finding Purpose
Bill Gates ends his book review pondering how a wealth of information will not be enough for people who will always have social needs.
I think he outlines some serious threats and he succeeds at convincing me this would be an interesting book to read. But I don’t think he had schools in mind when he wrote this review.
Even in a world without war or hunger or disease, we would still value helping, interacting with, and caring for each other.
Aside from family, most people find purpose in their work. The lack of employment and the inability to find work and meaning, or purpose, creates hostility and chaos around the world. And revolutionizing schools by machine does not seem like it will lead to warm and fuzzy results.
Teaching is a social profession by its very nature. More than ever, compassionate teachers are needed in our world today. Real teachers with purpose interact with and teach children where and how they can find purpose.
This bond should not be broken. Tech can never replace this human connection.
“Teaching is a social profession by its very nature. More than ever, compassionate teachers are needed in our world today. Real teachers with purpose interact with and teach children where and how they can find purpose.
“This bond should not be broken. Tech will never replace this human connection.”
I agree wholeheartedly, Nancy. Here is a blog post I wrote last year on this topic. Disclaimer–I majored in anthropology as an undergraduate.
https://resseger.wordpress.com/2016/05/27/story-telling-species/
There’s a wealth of information here that everyone should read to be informed about this serious situation.
Thank you for sharing, Shelia.
There cannot be life without purpose. I would offer several purposes:
To leave your community either better or at least no worse than it was when you came to it.
To serve the principles you hold dear, even if it hurts you
To attempt to make sure that disagreements between you and an adversary be concluded so that you receive any negative consequences of your Mia-judgement of a situation rather than your adversary.
To create something beautiful
To serve an entity bigger than yourself
Thanks, Roy.
The billionaire amateur show has failed, over and over again, to deliver in the world of education. Lots of bluster and bluff – and financial investment – with nothing to show. They sit in their board rooms believing, like the ancient Greeks, that truth in education can be deduced through logical, adult thinking alone. Ha! That’s what they get for ignoring their real “customers”. Not teachers, administrators, or school board members – and not even the child they know from parenting or casual, one-on-one experience. What they all failed to grasp is that the psychology of young children and adolescents in particular, in large group settings, at a scale that encompasses 100,000 schools, 50 million children, and 3 million teachers, is not an arena where adult logic can be applied successfully.
The boxer Mike Tyson famously stated:
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
The corollary in education reads,
“Every teacher has a plan until their 7th period class comes in from recess on a 90 degree day.”
Failing to understand this is the very root of their failure. And I guarantee that if Bill Gates or Mike Petrelli or Mark Zuckerberg or Campbell Brown were to read this (fat chance) their initial reactions would all be the same: “Huh?”
Well, their adult logic hasn’t worked well. That’s for sure! Thank you.
That last comment really resonated with me. How true it is that immediate circumstance often dictates the success or failure of an intellectual approach. It is now the end of summer, and I will be seeing children next week. I am furiously laying down plans for the assault. These plans will go out the window when I realize the human dimension of them.. Those ninth graders will be coming in with their reality very soon. It has happened around 35 times before.
Roy
Give yourself the credit you’re due.. Not 35 times but 35 x 5 (periods) x 180 (days).
That’s 31,500 class periods. Now multiply by 20 (students) and you have had 630,000 chances to interact with young learners. This is another reality overlooked by the reform crowd: teaching is a . . . grind. Magical lessons and teachable moments are actually few and far between. Everyone seems to think that they could teach a lesson. Ha! Try 30+ thousand lessons. And they should all be brilliant? So tired of amateurs interfering in a world they have never visited.
The reality is indeed in the math. Thanks for the attempted boost to my morale. I love the Elliot Wiggington title “Sometimes a Shining Moment”. That really describes education. Last night I had one of those moments. In 2003 I had a kid give me a poem at the end of school about how important I was to her. Last night she brought her daughter to be in my class. It was good to hear from her. This is the true experience of education, not all the metrics and lexile ratings and such.
Please post a link where teachers can tell Bill Gates there stories of how human interaction with students and their parents made all the difference in connecting instruction to purpose.
Nancy, if I had such a link I’d send him this post! Maybe there is a contact page on their website. If I hear of something I will let you know.
Bill Gates already understands this. Why else would he spend $33,280 a year sending his kids to Lakeside School.. Here is their mission statement:
“The mission of Lakeside School is to develop in intellectually capable young people the creative minds, healthy bodies, and ethical spirits needed to contribute wisdom, compassion, and leadership to a global society.
We provide a rigorous and dynamic academic program through which effective educators lead students to take responsibility for learning.
We are committed to sustaining a school in which individuals representing diverse cultures and experiences instruct one another in the meaning and value of community and in the joy and importance of lifelong learning.”
No CBE. No CCSS. No PARCC. No SBAC. Not for his kids.
And No VAM or SLOs for his kids teachers.
“Do as we say, not as we do” is the hallmark of the reform crowd.
I have just read your blog and I would like to make a comment. I am an EFL teacher in Greece and part of my job is to prepare Computer Science students for postgraduate studies. They are a brand new breed; from the way they socialize to the way they learn. They make it clear they learn by themselves and indeed the teacher becomes a coach (explain some “why ?” questions). I do not believe I have taught them anything. I,on the other hand, learnt a lot. I have been trying to gasp the dimensions of the web and AI. The best metaphor my mind can conjure up is that AI is like poison ivy growing around the bark of the tree becoming more intelligent second after second. My conclusion is this: in modern, digitized (maybe westernized) societies the citizens and their roles are changing. Those who can follow will survive those who cannot will not. The divide between the poor countries and the rich will grow and lead to almost medieval inequalities. I see it in my everyday teaching routine. Yet, my greatest worry remains the same: How can we face that? What can we teachers do so as to keep education a right not a privilege? And most of all, how can we save human interaction?
Thnak you for the space
What an interesting observation, Argyro. Thank you for your comment.
There are many fine things about technology, but in moderation. Its overuse will leave us with less real human interaction. The effects of this especially on developing children are unknown. Your last question is what we all want answered.
Please stay in touch. It is always interesting to hear about the education work of those in other countries.