'Why nothing could replace a dedicated teacher"

Wednesday, 01 June 2016

On 27 June Chief Scientist Dr Finkel wrote an article for Education HQ.

Here Dr Finkel writes about the future of education in Australia.

“No matter how technologically sophisticated our world, children work harder, see further and achieve more when there is an inspiring human being to spur them on”

Read the article below, or on the Education HQ website.

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Chief Scientist Alan Finkel: –Why nothing could replace a dedicated teacher”

Worried robots will replace teachers one day? Australia’s Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel AO isn’t. In this month’s Hard Word, he lays out why an “inspiring human being” will always help children achieve more.

Since the demise of The Bulletin in 2008, The Economist is my news source of choice. When they publish their annual list of the world’s most liveable cities, I take notice. And when that list includes Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney and Perth in the top 10, as it did in 2015, I take pride as an Australian. When the international scores for maths and science literacy are published and I see Australian students slip from being firmly in the top 10 to barely in the top 20, I am appalled. Readers who do not agree that a country as privileged as ours should be educating our students to top 10 levels should turn the page now to advance to the next article. What’s gone wrong? No one seems to know the answer for sure, but I’ve got a few ideas. First, we have made it too easy for capable students to navigate an easy route through their education. Some subjects are offered because they are more suitable for less-capable students but there is no mechanism to discourage the more-capable students from choosing those subjects in pursuit of easy credits. I take heart from the commitment of Western Australia’s universities to offer bonus ATAR points for intermediate and advanced mathematics, and I welcome the bipartisan support for compulsory mathematics to Year 12. How did we set the bar so low for our students that it became so easy to clear? Second, we have not done enough to ensure our teachers can continue to advance their subject discipline skills on an ongoing basis. In any other profession, we would require commitment to continuous learning. It is possible in other countries – so why not our own? Third, we need to abandon the notion that modern technology is a substitute for human teaching. I’ve heard many variants of this theory over the years. We’ll have robots in the classroom. Or we’ll get rid of the classrooms, and deliver the lectures to students’ homes online. Better yet, we’ll upload the content straight into their brains. Or we’ll have robots to do all the jobs – and we won’t need an education at all. Yes, I’ve heard it all, and I might even be persuaded … if I could forget everything I know about the human child. No matter how technologically sophisticated our world, children work harder, see further and achieve more when there is an inspiring human being to spur them on. We know it, because the same craving for human contact is hardwired into the adult mainframe. Just look at the premium we pay for access to a gym and a personal trainer, when we could find all the workout videos we’d ever need online. Without the human presence, the motivation simply falls away. The same is true of music: we may have progressed from gramophones to iPhones, but the moments that live in our memories are the live performances. The more jobs that our technologies can do, the greater the premium we seem to place on the expert human provider. If it is true of our habits as adults, how much more do our children need that encouragement, discipline and sense of purpose that a great teacher provides? High standards, an emphasis on great teaching and a proper respect for the place of technologies: it can be done, and Australian education excels when we enable it. This isn’t just my experience as a parent, but the insight of my winding career. As an entrepreneur in San Francisco, I read the CVs of countless young students and graduates. I thought about education, because I relied on its outputs. As president of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), I developed a hands-on science learning program called STELR, which this year signed up its 500th secondary school. Now, as Chief Scientist, I visit schools and speak to teachers integrating new technologies into their practice. The benefits of a dedicated teacher and a classroom of peers is tangible. My vision is of a country that values education as much as it values its children. My commitment is to keep school education at the forefront of my agenda.

Last updated: Tuesday, 22 October 2019