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I forwarded his recent TED Talk to several of my teacher friends, and many immediately thought this was supposed to be their replacement. So, I'm assuming the

I forwarded his recent TED Talk to several of my teacher friends, and many immediately thought this was supposed to be their replacement. So, I'm assuming the first (mis)conception is valid at the very least.

VladRussian 16y ago
>my teacher friends, and many immediately thought this was supposed to be their replacement. what a poor state of the profession if practicing professionals can be scared that easy into thinking that they are that easily replaceable. That is especially interesting considering the anecdotal evidence i see how private tutoring market is growing. People more and more feel the need to have their children provided with additional instruction at least in the areas they feel most important for the children to not fail at, usually math/science subjects.
- SoftwareMaven 16y ago
  Unfortunately, the state of our educational system encourages this. Our whole school system has evolved to optimizing test taking, much of which can easily be replaced by videos.
- ZachPruckowski 16y ago
  "what a poor state of the profession if practicing professionals can be scared that easy into thinking that they are that easily replaceable." After watching everyone from factory workers to call centers to programmers get their jobs replaced by machines and/or third-worlders, I wouldn't blame any profession for worrying about being made obsolete.
  - VladRussian 16y ago
    well, i don't see any scared lawyers or doctors though we can come up with a lot of ways to outsource and automate [significant part of] their jobs. Actually the outsourcing and the automation have been successfully happening there (an actual example, the detailed hi-res microscope pictures are sent to India, analyzed there and results here are signed off by US licensed professional - everybody is happy, software provider, India employees and the US professional) and so far these industries have mostly embraced it.
    - kenjackson 16y ago
      There's also not a wholesale attack by an entire political party and news network against either of those professions.
    - ZachPruckowski 16y ago
      Lawyers get outsourced. Usually just the routine paperwork stuff that the associates would otherwise handle, but they don't get off scot-free.
- jleader 16y ago
  It's not that they think they're that easily replaceable, it's that they fear that the decision-makers see them as that easily replaceable. In other words, they're not that foolish, but they fear that their bosses (administrators, politicians, the general public) might be that foolish.
yummyfajitas 16y ago
It would certainly be beneficial if we could reduce our needs for human teachers by means of a tool like Khan Academy. As a nation, we spend more one education than the military ($972B as of 2007 according to wikipedia, vs about $725B for the military including wars). A 1% increase in efficiency would save a little less than $10 billion, and a 16% increase in efficiency (using 2007 numbers) would be sufficient to balance the federal budget deficit [1]. If the Khan Academy is not striving to reduce our need for human teachers, we should create an organization that will. [1] Edit: I should note that education is paid for primarily by the state and local governments, so it wouldn't be directly possible to reduce the federal budget by such savings. I was solely trying to make an order of magnitude comparison.
- joebadmo 16y ago
  "As a nation, we spend more one education than the military..." You say that as if it's a bad thing. I spent four years in the military and can tell you that there's a lot of waste there. Your last sentence could very easily be applied to the military, or at least to military personnel. I think a better way to think about teachers might be as force multipliers. There are parts of teaching that can be relegated to technology, but there are other (arguably more important) parts that probably can't or won't be for a long time, and KA seems like a great way to free up those resources for uses that are most effective.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    I didn't mean to suggest it's bad that education is bigger than the military, I was merely trying to describe the scale of our spending. The military is a popular example of a a big wasteful government agency, so I thought a comparison was illustrative. I spent four years in the military and can tell you that there's a lot of waste there. Your last sentence could very easily be applied to the military, or at least to military personnel. I'd love to reduce spending in the military as well. If a manufacturer of military robots said "we aren't trying to replace soldiers", my first question would be "why not?"
    - 16y ago
Duff 16y ago
For many students -- perhaps as high as 80% IMO, something like the Khan Academy, combined with a supervising adult to coach you could easily replace teachers, and should. Why? Schools work the way that they do because it is convenient. They ignore the needs of the bright (most of whom are bored out of their minds) and those who need some more help. We push kids through school, use outdated, repressive discipline to keep them in control, and spend alot of money in the process. Education hasn't always been this way -- in rural areas as late as the 1950's 1 room schools taught K-12 successfully -- with one or two adults. How? The kids taught each other. I could think of nothing more rewarding (for teachers and students) than designing schools to be institutions where kids actually enjoy learning. I don't think staffing needs would be reduced as much as one may think. It will by necessity shrink somewhat, total teacher compensation is growing beyond the ability of many communities ability to pay.
bane 16y ago
A paraphrase of something my father used to say (a former teacher and worked in factories for a bit) "at first, the workers were scared their job were being replaced with automation, then they realized somebody had to run and fix the automatons" (There's a cartoon to the same point someplace, but I couldn't find it.) Is it any wonder that the modern educational system, modeled on mass manufacturing techniques, is about to undergo the same kind of "manufacturing" revolution? The problem in the original model, of children as machined goods, is that children are participants in their own learning/building. With a car, you just weld here, screw here, paint this, hammer that. With a child, you show, you tell, you hand hold, you do all that, but in the end it's millions of years of evolution driving a self-organizing pattern recognition cognitive system that needs to do what it does best. You can't shape a mind like you shape a door frame.

VladRussian 16y ago

>my teacher friends, and many immediately thought this was supposed to be their replacement. what a poor state of the profession if practicing professionals can be scared that easy into thinking that they are that easily replaceable. That is especially interesting considering the anecdotal evidence i see how private tutoring market is growing. People more and more feel the need to have their children provided with additional instruction at least in the areas they feel most important for the children to not fail at, usually math/science subjects.

SoftwareMaven 16y ago
Unfortunately, the state of our educational system encourages this. Our whole school system has evolved to optimizing test taking, much of which can easily be replaced by videos.
ZachPruckowski 16y ago
"what a poor state of the profession if practicing professionals can be scared that easy into thinking that they are that easily replaceable." After watching everyone from factory workers to call centers to programmers get their jobs replaced by machines and/or third-worlders, I wouldn't blame any profession for worrying about being made obsolete.
- VladRussian 16y ago
  well, i don't see any scared lawyers or doctors though we can come up with a lot of ways to outsource and automate [significant part of] their jobs. Actually the outsourcing and the automation have been successfully happening there (an actual example, the detailed hi-res microscope pictures are sent to India, analyzed there and results here are signed off by US licensed professional - everybody is happy, software provider, India employees and the US professional) and so far these industries have mostly embraced it.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    There's also not a wholesale attack by an entire political party and news network against either of those professions.
  - ZachPruckowski 16y ago
    Lawyers get outsourced. Usually just the routine paperwork stuff that the associates would otherwise handle, but they don't get off scot-free.
jleader 16y ago
It's not that they think they're that easily replaceable, it's that they fear that the decision-makers see them as that easily replaceable. In other words, they're not that foolish, but they fear that their bosses (administrators, politicians, the general public) might be that foolish.

yummyfajitas 16y ago

It would certainly be beneficial if we could reduce our needs for human teachers by means of a tool like Khan Academy. As a nation, we spend more one education than the military ($972B as of 2007 according to wikipedia, vs about $725B for the military including wars). A 1% increase in efficiency would save a little less than $10 billion, and a 16% increase in efficiency (using 2007 numbers) would be sufficient to balance the federal budget deficit [1]. If the Khan Academy is not striving to reduce our need for human teachers, we should create an organization that will. [1] Edit: I should note that education is paid for primarily by the state and local governments, so it wouldn't be directly possible to reduce the federal budget by such savings. I was solely trying to make an order of magnitude comparison.

joebadmo 16y ago
"As a nation, we spend more one education than the military..." You say that as if it's a bad thing. I spent four years in the military and can tell you that there's a lot of waste there. Your last sentence could very easily be applied to the military, or at least to military personnel. I think a better way to think about teachers might be as force multipliers. There are parts of teaching that can be relegated to technology, but there are other (arguably more important) parts that probably can't or won't be for a long time, and KA seems like a great way to free up those resources for uses that are most effective.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  I didn't mean to suggest it's bad that education is bigger than the military, I was merely trying to describe the scale of our spending. The military is a popular example of a a big wasteful government agency, so I thought a comparison was illustrative. I spent four years in the military and can tell you that there's a lot of waste there. Your last sentence could very easily be applied to the military, or at least to military personnel. I'd love to reduce spending in the military as well. If a manufacturer of military robots said "we aren't trying to replace soldiers", my first question would be "why not?"
  - 16y ago

Duff 16y ago

For many students -- perhaps as high as 80% IMO, something like the Khan Academy, combined with a supervising adult to coach you could easily replace teachers, and should. Why? Schools work the way that they do because it is convenient. They ignore the needs of the bright (most of whom are bored out of their minds) and those who need some more help. We push kids through school, use outdated, repressive discipline to keep them in control, and spend alot of money in the process. Education hasn't always been this way -- in rural areas as late as the 1950's 1 room schools taught K-12 successfully -- with one or two adults. How? The kids taught each other. I could think of nothing more rewarding (for teachers and students) than designing schools to be institutions where kids actually enjoy learning. I don't think staffing needs would be reduced as much as one may think. It will by necessity shrink somewhat, total teacher compensation is growing beyond the ability of many communities ability to pay.

bane 16y ago

A paraphrase of something my father used to say (a former teacher and worked in factories for a bit) "at first, the workers were scared their job were being replaced with automation, then they realized somebody had to run and fix the automatons" (There's a cartoon to the same point someplace, but I couldn't find it.) Is it any wonder that the modern educational system, modeled on mass manufacturing techniques, is about to undergo the same kind of "manufacturing" revolution? The problem in the original model, of children as machined goods, is that children are participants in their own learning/building. With a car, you just weld here, screw here, paint this, hammer that. With a child, you show, you tell, you hand hold, you do all that, but in the end it's millions of years of evolution driving a self-organizing pattern recognition cognitive system that needs to do what it does best. You can't shape a mind like you shape a door frame.