Do you want a robot to teach your kids?

I had an immediate and strong reaction to the headline from this one minute video from the World Economic Forum: By 2030 students will be learning from robot teachers 10 times faster than today.   

One of the many comments on this video touched on the obvious: Dealing with learners needs emotions, love, care, sympathy and true feelings from the core of the heart.  It does seem very unlikely that robots will be able to connect with students, develop social understanding, kindness, empathy and so on – but while this objection is (to my mind) a powerful one, there’s a lot more to say here.

I want to make three further points; two specific things about the video; and one broader paradigmatic point, which should concern all parents.

The first point concerns the very model of what education is in the first place.  It is actually very easy to teach much faster.  I could cease all personal conversation, speak more quickly, cut down collaboration, drill, drill, drill.  This would be very poor teaching of course – because speed is not the point!  The whole premise of the video seems to be a factory model of education, where filling the student’s mind with facts is to be optimised and done as quickly as possible.  Of course, this is deeply flawed, because we are increasingly seeing factual knowledge as the start of deeper conceptual understanding, not the end or sole purpose of education.

The second thing that is glossed over here is the nature of students.  I am always full of admiration for the flexibility and ingenuity of our kids, but do we really think that students can learn 10 times faster?  This would mean that a full 6-hour school day, usually intense and mentally tiring for students, could be completed just as effectively in just over half an hour.  This is palpable nonsense.

But the third thing, and the thing that I have been thinking about most was this rather chilling comment from Kenyan educator Allan Okoth: Yep, kids will be learning from robots… rich people’s kids will be learning from people though.  It has stuck with me, pointing as it does to broader socio-economic issues, and it caused me to see the video in a new way.

We know that there are vast inequalities in access to technology — in school, at home — and in how these technologies get used.   Commentator Audrey Watters writes that affluent students get to use digital tools for creative exploration, poor students get to use theirs for test prep.  This is well-established and, I think, unarguable.  If some are taught basic facts by robots online, while others are taught critical thinking face-to-face by humans, this would be a further step down this lamentable path.  So why then does the World Economic Forum present this prediction in such a rosy way?

My worry here is that such predictions almost create a self-fulfilling future.  Rather like the we-are-preparing-kids-for-jobs-that-don’t-exist predictions, the hype hides so many critical structural questions.   It’s not so much that it’s false; after all, predictions are notoriously difficult; what worries me is the questions that don’t get asked in these shiny and seductive films.  In the case of we-are-preparing-kids-for-jobs-that-don’t-exist, we should ask who has access to these jobs?  How many are at or below minimum wage?  How many are zero-hour contracts?  How many include decent benefits?  How many involve working conditions that you or I would want for our children?

In the case of by 2030 students will be learning from robot teachers 10 times faster than today we should ask which students will be taught by robots?  Will there be social-economic or racial disparities?  How will the robot education differ from human education?  What opportunities will be opened up and closed in each case?  Will the robot-education industry be profit driven?  How will public funds be directed, and by whom?  What steps will there be to ensure that the focus is on children, not profits?  Would we want our children taught like this?

I have generally been impressed by what I know about the source of this video, the World Economic Forum. So I looked up it’s Mission: The World Economic Forum provides a platform for the world’s 1,000 leading companies to shape a better future. As a membership organization, the Forum engages businesses in projects and initiatives – online and offline – to address industry, regional and systemic issues.

Nothing wrong with that; though we might ask ‘better future’ for who?  And measured how, and by whom?  The progressive in me wants to join in the exploration of exciting IT educational opportunities; the cynic in me, the one that receives dozens of sales-pitches on an ongoing basis says beware!  What are they selling?

The WEF Mission goes on to state: Members and Partners benefit from tailored engagement based on their company strategy. The deeper a company’s engagement, the greater is its ability to shape the Forum agenda.   Ah!  So there it is then; WEF will push the agendas of the companies who pay the most.  You have to give them full marks for transparency. Trading on the popular glamour of the like of Apple, Google and Facebook, the video also adds the teaser ‘the biggest internet company in 2030 will be an education business that does not exist today’.  It almost sounds like a warm up for a sales pitch.  Perhaps it is.