Today, I told my students that my teaching days were finite, which doesn’t really mean anything, since everything is finite. But they knew what I meant–when the opportunity arises that benefits me not being in a classroom, I will be gone. Who knows when that will be?
But, I kidded that, once I’m gone it won’t be a big deal. I will be forgotten quickly and replaced by an automated kiosk like McDonald’s is implementing to offset $15/hr workers. This kiosk will be user-friendly (unlike me sometimes–HA!), with colorful touchpad buttons, and it will kick out articles that students can annotate. It will offer a myriad of essential question topics that fit the articles. Students will pick a question, use their notes and annotations, and produce papers of merit that are approved by some form of authority. It’s collaboration at its finest, with students getting exposed to articles carefully selected by a larger form of authority. State standards and learning targets will be omnipresent.
Sadly, students kind of nodded and agreed. One even went so far to add that they would rather place an order for food on a touchpad because that device does not judge. The touchpad doesn’t look down and avoid eye contact when you order that 40-nugget box AND two double cheeseburgers. It just takes the order, someone makes the “food,” and some form of authority hands it to you. The touchpad users would probably prefer it traveling down some chute into a waiting area where they would pick it up, kind of like luggage in an airport.
Don’t think it can happen? Oh, we will always have to have teachers, you say. Dunno about that. You want curriculum and common core and standards and learning targets? Anyone can generate those to the masses. It’s just that person of authority in the room and whoever gets to grade it. I’ll move away from this for now, but Stoverbot3000 (which will be way more effective than ED209 from Robocop) is not an impossibility.
But who is going to teach people to think? Who is going to expose them to something that actually matters in their lives? Or do we care if they have lives?
Last year, one of the higher-ups, when I brought up the “real world” and the fact that kids might someday enter it, scoffed and said, “The real world? This is public education.”
Yep. It is.
But, today I was playing Cloud Nothings on my stereo, and students didn’t complain. And, on certain days, students will come closer to my speakers and the Shazam app will tell them what song I’m playing. And there are movies they should see, for the more they know of everything, the more they are exposed to any circle of thought and knowledge, the fewer chances we will have of Stoverbot3000 coming to a classroom near you.
The real world? This is public education. I kid you not.