Do I Really Believe All This Whacky Stuff?

I have gone on some whacky rants in this blog which may leave the critical reader wondering - "Does he really believe all that whacky stuff?" After all, getting rid of teachers to improve education? Come on, now. And claiming that belief in global warming is grounded in apocalyptic thinking? That is just plain weird.

 But the question is not whether or not I believe all this whacky stuff. The question is - Am I willing to explore unconventional ideas to see where they go? The answer to that is - Yes! And here are two reasons why that is important.

First, most of us walk around believing a lot of things that are simply not true. There are so many examples of this that it is hard to pick any for fear of not being representative. But, for the sake of argument, people believe general things like: their spouse is loyal, if you work hard you will reap rewards, and people are basically honest. Specific things include: sure I'll be able to pay off all those students loans, I can rely on social security for my retirement, and this new military action will be of short duration.

 Like good conspiracy theorists we tend to accept, uncritically, confirmatory evidence while ignoring evidence that challenges our views. Sometime we are just naive. Sometimes we are in complete denial. But, what ever the reason we are vulnerable. And the longer we believe a thing that is not true the more vulnerable we become and the higher the cost when we cannot deny the truth any longer.

The only way to avoid this is to allow the unallowable and consider the validity of ideas that we would prefer to reject.  The more naive one is about some things the more likely they are to be naive about other things. Similarly, the more critical they are about some things, the more likely they are to be critical about other things.

The second reason is that the solutions to our biggest problems often lie outside of the range of possibilities that we currently understand. If we knew how to solve them we would have. The problem is that we don't know how to solve them. And we don't know how to solve them because the solution lies outside of our current understanding.

So, allowing a whacky idea and seeing where it goes reduces our vulnerability from beleiving things that are not true and allows us to solve problems that might otherwise be unsolvable. Those sound like pretty good reasons to me.

How Will This Play Out?

I thought I would wrap up this rant on teachers and distance education by laying out what I see as happening over the next few decades. First, I should mention that there is a fair amount of history behind this effort and I am only picking it up in the middle of its evolution. Back before computers we had a concept called Programmed Instruction which I felt had a great deal of merit. That gave way to Computer Aided Instruction which, in turn, gave way to Distance Education.

Currently, most distance education uses a web based delivery system such a Moodle or Blackboard which allows an instructor to put things online for students to access via the Web. This is a big improvement because it removes the co-location requirement from education. That is, you don't need to have the teacher and the student in he same room in order to provide education. At the same time, these tools can only be described as inadequate and barbaric. As a matter of perspective, I would compare this to the early days of the Web when web pages were created by entering HTML tags into a text editor. 

Following this analogy further, we can see the next generation of tools as analogous to the web page editors that came out in the late 1990's. Tools like Frontpage and Macromedia made the authoring of web pages easier and allowed page designers to focus on the creative aspects of the things they were trying to create rather than the tedious technical aspects. I think we will see similar advances in authoring tools for course ware. Currently, there is a hodge podge of tools such as Camtasia, Audacity, and Powerpoint that allow a course designer to think a little more creatively about course design. Nonetheless, there is a long way to go and I see the next generation of educational software as focusing on support for course authors. I should mention that I also believe that delivery mechanisms will improve. But it is the authoring support that will require a bit of a leap.

Once, authoring tools have been advanced I see yet another major advance in support of the manufacturing of education and that is the exploitation of video game technology.  We have a lot to learn from video games and education can be made much more effective and much more enjoyable.

I am usually much better at predicting what will happen than I am at predicting when it will happen.  This is because predicting what will happen only requires finding a pattern in the trajectory from the past to the present to the future. But when things will happen is trickier because that often relies on the convergence of unpredictable events. Nonetheless, if I had to place a time frame on this I would say that the advances in authoring tools will happen over the next decade while the exploitation of video game technology will occur in the following decade. Once we have these technologies in the mainstream, I doubt that it will take more than one additional decade to completely convert the educational systems from a teacher based system to a system that manufactures education.

Coaching, Interpreting and Motivating

In this post, I want to give some examples of jobs that teachers of the future might do in place of what we see as their primary role today. Looking into the future is like trying to look around a corner. So, I am not completely sure how this will turn out. But, I think I can give some examples of kind.

For the sake of simplicity, I am going to divide educational activities into two categories: there are things you just have to learn and things that change who you are as a person.  The things you just have to learn are things like grammar, math, science, foreign languages, interpreting essays, computer programming, vocations and the like. These are usually the things that are tested on objective tests and these are the things that should be automated.

There are also a lot of personal habits that you need to develop including figuring out how to get things done, figuring out how to make sense out of things, and figuring out how to get yourself going. These requirements give rise to new roles for teachers and mentors: Coaching, Interpreting, and Motivating.

Coaching: Do you need to get organized? Do you need to manage your time better? Do you need to figure out how to approach problems and tasks so that they do not seem overwhelming? Do you need to prioritize or just not forget important things in the chaos of daily life? Well, if the answer to any of these things is yes, you need a coach. A coach will help you develop a disciplined way to achieve your goals.

Interpreting: Are you wondering what it is all about? Is life not as satisfying as it should be? Do you wonder why good things that happen to you are not as good as things that happen to other people while the bad things that happen to you are worse? If so, you need someone to help give you perspective. You need an interpreter.   An interpreter will help you find ways to look at the events of your life so that they not only make sense but can be understood in the most positive way possible.

Motivating: Do you have trouble achieving your goals. Are you slow to get started in the morning due to lack of interest? Do you lack the discipline to do things that you feel are important to do? Do you need someone to light a fire under you or better yet ignite your inner fire? If so, you need a motivator. A motivator will help get you energized so that life is not a constant uphill battle and so that you can achieve things the make your life more satisfying.

These three examples are roles that cannot easily be done by automated educational software. They are roles that really do require a person. Teachers, generally, enjoy these aspects of teaching the most and most people, when looking nostalgically back on their favorite teacher are remembering him or her in one of these roles.

So, automating the less exciting aspects of education will free up teachers to address these more interesting and in many ways more important roles.

Manufacturing Education

Few people would argue with the claim that our educational systems are not producing the quality product that they should be producing. Few would argue with the claim that education is far too expensive, far too uneven in quality; far too unreliable, and far too ineffective. What they would argue about  is how to fix it. My suggestion from the past  few posts would be to automate the process of teaching and to manufacture education.

Using the manufacturing model we can produce higher quality education that is much more reliable, consistent in quality, and affordable. But, in order to do this we have to move education from the classroom and into cyberspace. But, this is a big step and many people have reservations about it. They are concerned with loosing the personal contact they had with both teachers and students. They are concerned with the behavioral and social aspects of education. These are certainly valid concerns, and I would address these concerns in two ways.

First I would put these concerns into perspective. That is to say, people tend to exaggerate the interpersonal aspects of education. While you may fondly remember a teacher you had some where along the line, overwhelmingly most of the teachers you have had are forgotten or, if remembered, you cannot remember much good about them. Further, the bonding with classmates is also way overstated. How many of the hundreds of classmates you have had over the years do you still keep in touch with. For most people the answer is - precious few.This is not to say that there were not important things going on in the classroom beyond the basic education. There was socializing, maturing and a host of other less tangible areas of growth occurring. What happens to them?   Well, that brings me to my second point.

By getting teachers out of the educational process, you free them up to do things that are more rewarding, more interesting and more productive.  I would use, as an analogy, the introduction of computers into organizations in the 1960's. Most jobs that existed in the 1950's were gone by the 1970's. Instead of having people do monotonous clerical work, they began doing jobs that required intellectual skills and decision making. While there was great fear that computers would create massive unemployment, they, instead, just made most jobs more interesting. That is, they freed people up from boring work and allowed them to do more satisfying work. Automating education will do the same for teachers. In the next post, I will speculate on what some of those jobs might look like.

But, What Will the Teachers Do?

When a craft becomes abstracted, formalized, refined and embedded in a technology, the practitioners of that craft typically go in one of three directions. The more adept craftsmen start designing and developing formalizations. The most adept begin developing processes for producing the formalized products. And the least adept simply become users of the formalizations.

This all sounds very abstract so let me provide a more concrete explanation in the case of craftsmen. As manufacturing processes began to replace craftsmen, the more adept craftsmen became engineers and started designing products. These products would not be hand made as in the hey day of the craftsmen. They would be produced by a manufacturing process. The most adept of the craftsmen would develop the manufacturing processes. The least adept of the craftsmen would become repairmen for the products. It is interesting to note that as the products and the processes that produced them improved in quality, the demand for repairmen would decline.

Now let's apply this to teachers. The more adept teachers will begin designing online courses. The most adept teachers will begin developing methodologies, processes and software packages for the creation of online courses. And the least adept will be users of these online courses, a job that we currently refer to as facilitators. Note, by analogy, that as the quality of the courses improves the need for facilitators will decline as the need for repairmen has declined. 

This, of course, implies a massive dislocation in the work force of educators as well as massive resistance on the part of those who wish to protect the status quo. How will that all play out? Well, I'd have to think about that before offering any answers.

Sacking the Teachers

Not unlike our romantic fascination with the bards and the craftsmen, we have a similar fascination with the noble teachers. But, realistically we know that the quality of teachers is very uneven as well. There are a few really good ones; a lot of average ones; and far to many really poor ones. In fact, I wrote earlier in this blog that the reason that we do remember that special teacher is that there were so precious few of them.

But, my goal here is not to beat up on teachers. Rather it is to argue that our present approach to education with a teacher in the class room in front of a crowd of students is simply not the best way to achieve results in education.

It isn't that bards and craftsmen were a bad way to do things. They were the best we could do at the time. However, until we abstracted and formalize their art, externalized it and refined it over time did we achieve any remarkable results. The same is true for teachers. Until we formalize and externalize their art through technology and refine it over time we are not going to achieve the gains that we are looking for in education. Further, until this education is mass produced it is going to continue to be far too expensive for most people to take advantage of.

 If we want high quality, reliable, and affordable education, we are going to have to sack the teachers like we sacked the bards and the craftsmen. Given the pressures on the educational systems to produce a better product, I am fairly sure this is going to happen. The question is should you embrace it or remain in denial about it?

Sacking the Craftsmen

In the early years of the 20th century, Frederick Taylor studied the efforts of craftsmen and developed the concept of scientific management. The premise behind scientific management is that craftsmen and the professions in which they are embedded are a hindrance to productivity. Not unlike our romantic fascination with the bards, we have a similar fascination with the noble craftsman. But, realistically. it is likely that you would find that the quality of the craftsmen was very uneven as well. There were a few really good ones; a lot of average ones; and far to many really poor ones.

Further, our progress in manufacturing, at the time of Frederick Taylor, was not at all unlike our progress in literacy. The approaches are un-leveraged, unreliable, uneven in quality, and not affordable by all. If Henry Ford had his cars made by craftsmen, most of us would still be driving horse and buggy rigs. Until we employed technologies that improved reliability, increased quality, and made products affordable to all, we did not solve the manufacturing problem. In fact, very little of what we have today would be available if we had not sacked the craftsmen. No computers. No Internet. No High Definition TV. No cell phones, not to mention iPads, iPhones and video games. In fact, no cars or kitchen appliances. The list goes on and on.

Sacking the Epic Poets

If you ask someone to name an epic poet, it is very unlikely that they will be able to name anyone other than Homer, the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Certainly, Homer was a good one and the quality of his work forces us to look back romantically on the profession of the epic poet.

But consider a couple things that we tend to forget. First of all, as great as Homer may have been, it is very unlikely that he was representative of the rank and file poet of the day. Chances are that the average poet of the day, who's stock in trade was the recitation of epic poems, did a fairly mediocre job. They probably forgot lines. More than likely they missed the point of the stories they told. And, they probably injected a lot of their own opinion into their stories. So, if you were a resident of 8th century BCE Greece, it is likely that you would find that the quality of the epic poets was very uneven. There were a few really good ones; a lot of average ones; and far to many really poor ones.

The second thing that we tend to forget is that you would have never even heard of Homer if it were not for the two technologies that put the epic poets out of business - writing and printing. Further, we can thank both of these technologies for our modern levels of literacy. Writing allow us to provide a literary product of consistently high quality and printing allowed us to provide it in an affordable fashion. So, if someone in the 8th century BCE were to ask how to improve literacy, the answer would be to get rid of the epic poets and embrace new technologies.

We have a similar situation with teachers today.  There were a few really good ones; a lot of average ones; and far to many really poor ones. Further, our progress in education is not unlike our progress in literacy. Our approaches are un-leveraged, unreliable, uneven in quality, and not affordable by all. Until we employ technologies that will improve reliability, increase quality, and make it affordable to all, we are not going to solve the education problem.So, just like progress in literacy required getting rid of the epic poets, progress in education relies on getting rid of teachers.

Granted, it took almost three millennium for literacy to improve dramatically. But things happen much faster these days as we will see in the next example.

Getting the Instructor Out of the Loop

I was talking with a colleague, a few weeks age, about distance education and I said something along the lines of "education will not improve until we get the instructor out of the loop." I said it because I like to make bold and challenging statements. I like to make bold and challenging statements because, more often than not, they provide useful insights. Even if they are wrong, they give me something to think about. Some times they even resonate. Some times they turn out to be subtle truths.

When I made this statement, I had no idea how much it would resonate. Nor did I have any idea how I would come around to seeing it as a subtle truth.

I actually started this post a couple weeks ago because I had to think about it. I know how offensive it will be to many. I know how it will turn off a lot of people. But, after thinking about it very seriously I have decided that it needs to be said. In fact, I will clarify it just a bit and say that education will not improve until we get rid of teachers. Stay tuned. I think I can back up this outrageous claim.