A Response to "The Deconstruction of the K-12 Teacher"

I selected this article, “The Deconstruction of the K-12Teacher”, because it ran in The Atlantic, which is a favorite publication of mine. Despite this, I have to say this article clearly falls into the trap of alarmism. The main idea of the author, veteran English teacher Michael Godsey, is that in less than 20 years—perhaps as little as 5 to 10—traditionally trained teachers will be completely replaced by online and screen-based instruction. Further, Godsey theorizes that the adults in the room supervising this instruction won’t even be “teachers,” but instead “techs,” paid $15 an hour to provide classroom management in classes of as many as 50 students.

            If you think this sounds ridiculous, believe me, I agree. However, Godsey attempts to make a convincing case for this future. Throughout this article he provides quotes from seasoned educators who bolster his ideas, including superintendents: "I ask teachers all the time, if you can Google it, why teach it?" principals: "We’re at the point where the Internet pretty much supplies everything we need. We don’t really need teachers in the same way anymore," to high school teachers like himself: "I don’t ever write my own lesson plans anymore. I just give credit to the person who did." While I’m sure these educators are telling the truth as they see it, I believe that Godsey’s imaginings of the future of education are far-fetched at the very least, and that if they came to pass it would be to the absolute detriment of our students, our culture, and our society.

            Let’s begin with the basis of Godsey’s tech-centered classroom. To support his idea that students will just be herded into a room and deposited in front of screens pre-loaded with professionally-developed videos, worksheets, games, and assessments, Godsey points toward the booming industry for lesson-sharing websites (Teachers Pay Teachers, Kahn Academy, Edmoto…), as well as the rise of teaching trends such as student-centered learning, flipped learning, and problem-based learning. What all of these trendy new learning techniques have in common is that they rely on technology as a replacement for the instructor rather than an enhancement of instruction. However, a brief examination of John Hattie’s 2016 meta-analyses of factors that relate to student achievement reveals that problem-based learning methods have an achievement effect size of .26 and student-control over learning only has an achievement effect size of .02. For reference, an effect size of .40 is the average of all 196 interventions Hattie’s meta-analyses looked at, and is thus Hattie’s “hinge point” of positive effect. If, as Hattie’s research suggests, these technology-as-replacement techniques really are not any more beneficial than positive student-teacher relationships (achievement effect size of .52), explicit teaching procedures (achievement effect size of .57), or—most ironically—direct instruction (achievement effect size of .60), why would an expert educator even consider implementing them on a broad scale?

            Hattie’s findings on positive student-teacher relationships do not show an extraordinarily high achievement effect size, but a rate of .52—again, above the hinge point—does beg the question: if all teaching will eventually come from a computer, where will these relationships come from? As instructors it is not just our job to know content, but to know out students. Even when only using outside resources occasionally, it is the instructor’s job to be especially cognizant of their individual students’ backgrounds when selecting a resource. For instance, are my students at Lincoln Northeast High School going to enjoy a video featuring John Green as much as my friend’s students at Lincoln East would? My majority Hispanic/Latino and Middle Eastern students may not even know who John Green is, much less trust him to teach them about Romeo and Juliet. And why should they trust this random YA novelist to decode Shakespeare for them? He hasn’t been in the classroom with them all semester debating Rinaldo vs. Messi vs. Neymar or helping them understand the scary voicemail LPS left on their parent’s phones warning about “hurt a Muslim day.” The danger of handing over our classrooms to mass-produced pre-curated content is that we lose respect for the individuality of our learners, and in turn they lose respect for learning itself.

            Now, in the end, this vision of the computer-run classroom is not a happy picture for Godsey. In fact, he notes that his one “firm line” is that there is “a profound difference between a local expert teacher using the Internet and all its resources to supplement and improve his or her lessons, and a teacher facilitating the educational plans of massive organizations.” This line, Godsey posits, is what must be protected and defended at all costs; I agree with Godsey here. Where I disagree is in the idea that in just five to ten years teachers and public school districts will have unknowingly abdicated their role as instructors to the extent that this “firm line” no longer exists. If that were to happen, then maybe Godsey’s hellish dreamscape would become a reality. Technology is reshaping learning—of course it is—but so long as educators and administrators rely on data-collection and research-based learning methods when designing instruction they will never conclude that herding children into a room and letting a computer run the show is the best way, or even the right way, to run a school.