Mechanical Teachers VS Human Tea

According to BBC report, 52 percent of the Fortune 500 companies have disappeared from the planet. In their place are new types of companies, such as Uber and Airbnb. These companies exist for the sake of artificial intelligence and big fatal. Confronted with such a situation, an increasing number of people predict that mechanical teachers and human teachers could be incompatible in the near future. In terms of this hot issue, the thesis is meant to overturn this prediction and illustrate that the ‘power’ of human beings could overcome that of machines.

Naturally, the advanced technology provides us with unmeasurable values. To begin with, facts nowadays are on the cloud, and students regard the cloud as endless repositories of skill and knowledge, from which they may partake at will whenever and wherever. After all, for machines, the ability of storing information is overwhelming. A computer wins at the game of Go illustrate this. In addition, as Isaac Asimov mentioned in the article The Fun They Had, mechanical teachers could give students test after test inexhaustibly and calculate the mark in no time. Isaac Asimov(1951:22) Under such circumstances, compared with human teachers, mechanical ones can save much energy and improve efficiency greatly. As such, people speculate that human teachers would be replaced by mechanical teacher soon after. 

Undoubtedly, mechanical teachers allow us to have access to facts. But, it is difficult for them to make connections among those facts and tell a story; and this narrative in the story and making connections is what we can call high-order thinking skills. Meanwhile, this is the ability that any mechanical teachers fail to possess. We should know, in the future, it’s not about the competition of knowledge. It’s the competition of imagination, creativity, the ability of learning and independent thinking. Just like Donna Farhi Schuster once said that“Learning is not so much the acquisition of information as it is an investigation- a questioning, a turning over of the object of study to see all sides and facts.” Donna Farhi Schuster(1987 :194) Human teachers could allow students to learn independently and gradually form their own comprehensive knowledge system whereas the mechanical ones are just accustomed to expect students to be spoon-fed from the huge database.

In the meantime, for students, educators advocate that to prefer learning is better than only to know it; to delight in it is better than merely to prefer it. Cold mechanical teachers merely instruct knowledge rigidly and fail to make full use of the sense of humor which only belongs to human to convert the boring knowledge into interesting knowledge chain. Consequently, students are apt to reluctantly get along well with mechanical ones. Step by step, they would think of the process of studying as a rigid task spontaneously, and then they lose initiative in learning.

Moreover, human beings are a combination of sensibility and reason. Whatever they do, they are supposed to undertake intangible responsibility. The unselfish dedication from human teachers is immeasurable and unrivalled. They need to pay attention to student’s psychological changes and mental problems. It is necessary for them to understand students’ feelings and help them get rid of the troubles. The relationship between them is more like the friendship. They can share both happiness and bitterness with each other and have emotional communication. Such a harmony relationship is healthy and reasonable. While for mechanical teachers, they couldn’t take these factors into consideration. They don’t have emotions, so it is impossible for them to maintain a stable and harmony teaching-and-learning relationship.

Actually, whether teachers would be replaced doesn’t depend on the technology itself, but the essence of education, and the needs of students. In essence, education in the largest sense is any art or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual. “It is plain that one may gain no inconsiderable body of learning in some special field of knowledge without at the same time acquiring those habits and traits which are the marks of an educated gentleman.” Nicholas Murray Butler (280) So, it is said that moral intelligence education for students is extremely vital. Enhancing our children’s moral intelligence is our best hope for getting our kids on the right course so that they do act as well as think right. It is no wonder that educators often regard the idiom ‘knowledge and action are the one’ as their guiding principle of their life. According to Michele Borba(2001:234), the moral decline of American children has raised public concern. There are some disturbing indicators, including substance abuse among younger kids; the growing disrespect for parents, teachers and other legitimate authority figures; the rise of incivility; the increase of vulgarity; the widespread cheating and commonplace dishonesty. How did this happen? Obviously, the technology in the United States is fairly well. Hence, the point lies in the education itself. Even if the human teachers find it difficult to overcome such problems and educate students well, let alone mechanical ones.

Additionally, what students most need to absorb from education is the wisdom. Wisdom is central to what it means to be human. Everything that our civilization has achieved, is a product of human intelligence, from learning to master fire, to learning to grow food, to understanding the cosmos. As Bertrand Russell said “Most people agree that, although our age far surpasses all previous ages in knowledge, there has been no corrective increase in wisdom.” Bertrand Russell( 1956 :136）Wisdom is characterized by a comprehensive attitude, a correct sense of history, and a liberal mind, which finally lead to impartially. In practice, it is extremely hard to achieve wisdom. Meanwhile, wisdom is usually not achieved by teaching, but people can achieve growing wisdom combining self-cultivation and instructor’s guidance. People who can achieve high marks doesn’t represent that they possess wisdom. As Robert Oliphant said that“Academic work is a narrow, neatly defined highway compared to the unmapped rolling country you will encounter after you leave school” Robert Oliphant (1986: 124) For academic work,  mechanical teachers indeed can help students make some achievements. But academic work is not the most important in our future life. On our unique journey, we need human teachers’ guidance. They teach us how to take our own initiative and how to be enthusiastic about new knowledge. It is human teachers that let us learn to innovate and lead us to be imaginative and creative about the future life. There is a saying goes that give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

To sum up, we have to admit that the rapid growth of advanced technology indeed makes human teachers encounter huge challenges AI education saves much time and energy and provides more precise and enormous resource database. But we should keep in mind that technology is not an end but a means. Provided that we balance the teachings from the real world and the teachings from the virtual world, the educational enterprise would have progress in leaps and bounds.