Monday, May 30, 2011
Talk to teachers, Chapter 9, part 2
What is it you want the student to discover for himself? Are these vain questions? If you consider them seriously what would be your reaction? Machines are going to take over. The perfect teacher, who is really excellent in his subject, can teach a class and his instructions can be recorded through tapes and distributed throughout the world and the ordinary teacher can utilize them and instruct the student. So, the responsibility for good teaching may be taken out of individual hands, though you may need a teacher. You may say that what happens in fifty years is not your immediate problem. But a really good educator must be concerned not only with the immediate but be prepared for the future - future not in the sense of the day after, or a thousand days after tomorrow, but the tendency of this extraordinary development of the mind.
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Is he implying something like the human consciousness is a "river", not something static, but moving, and to have a sense of where it is moving to?
ReplyDeleteSomething like education has to be a movement which is part of that movement (and contributing to)?
Yes, I think this shows that awareness of what is happening in one's life and in the world must also include an ability to anticipate the future. (One of his powerful statements is that "the future is now".)
ReplyDeleteAnd K. often spoke about the outward, technological developments as an important fact. For example, when speaking about computers, he tired to anticipate their effect on our life.
And the question he is raising here is quite significant. Will the use of technology in teaching actually lead to far less contact between the teacher and the student? This phenomenon can already be seen in the case of university students, many of whom simply read PowerPoint slides online without attending the actual lectures.