American teachers were experimenting in 2000 with the use of information technology in teaching; I watched their experiments with great interest, and had dreams of my own, laid out in this Business Standard column of 5 September 2000.
EDUCATION AND THE IT REVOLUTION
Last weekend I was talking to an American schoolteacher.
He teaches mathematics (math to Americans), owns three generations of
mathematical hand calculators, has studied their manuals, and can do all sorts
of magic things with them. The children in his class use calculators, and he
has accepted the innovation. Although he still regrets that they do not have to
learn tables of 12 by heart as he had to, he sees that the poorest American
child can buy a calculator and does not need to know the tables as long as it
knows how to consult a calculator.
But – he does not have a computer, and he deeply distrusts
the internet. He suspects that children are unloading and copying all sorts of
material from the internet, and that a teacher has no way of knowing whether
what they have written is their own or copied. The internet has turned the old
order upside down. It involved a text book; a teacher who explained what the
text book meant. Then the student wrote essays that told the teacher whether
the student had learnt the teaching. Now, the 12 million pages estimated to be
accessible on the internet are all available to the student; what he can access
goes far beyond the reaches of any library. The teacher no longer funnels
knowledge into the student’s supposedly empty head; it may come from anywhere.
So the teacher has lost control of knowledge acquisition.
He does not realize it, but the situation of his
schoolchildren is no different from the one that I encountered when I first
went to Cambridge. The libraries there were the biggest I had ever seen. I
could have copied answers to questions set in supervisions from any of
thousands of books. But my teachers did not worry; nor did they try to limit my
access to the books. Instead, they set me questions that books did not answer –
questions that made me use my judgment. It was the quality of that judgment that
decided how good an economist I was. Every week they told me how good my
judgment had been in the essay; each week I knew whether I had improved my
judgment. That is why three years of undergraduate education in Cambridge could
produce a self-standing economist, whereas a Ph D done with five years’ hard
labour in Bombay could not.
But computers can take that process a step further.
Jodi Wilgoren reported in The New York Times on Oberlin College in Wake Forest, Ohio,
which gave laptops to every freshman this year. Till now, Rick Matthews, the
professor of physics, used to correct circuits drawn by his students and give marks. Now
he gives them a programme; it tells them whether the circuit they have drawn is
right or wrong, and gives them 100 or zero. They know instantly and reliably,
they can draw any number of circuits and change them in any way they like, and
they can learn circuits at their own pace – much faster than if the professor taught
them.
Here in Stanford, I was quite at sea when I arrived.
The Green library had no card catalogue. It had only a bank of computers. That
did not intimidate me; I have had a succession of laptops since my first one in
1987. But whenever I wanted to ask the computer a question, it would ask for my
SUN ID. Now, I would readily admit that I have an ego, but I was most reluctant
to admit this computer into my id. Anyway, by painful process I worked out that
somewhere in the bowels of Bing Wing or wherever, the university had a computer
called SUN. I talked to it, and it asked me to choose an e-mail address – for
every student and teacher gets an e-mail address – a term to identify myself,
and a password. Every student undergoes this ritual as soon as he arrives.
After this, he can not only refer to the library catalogue; he gets free memory
on the SUN in which he can keep his notes, write his test answers and e-mail
them to his teacher – and chat with his school friends across the continent.
Stanford does not give every student a laptop; it
does not find it necessary. Apparently, 80 per cent of college students bring a
computer with them, so it is not really necessary to give them laptops. But
some colleges do. By giving them laptops, colleges ensure that they can be used
for teaching without inconvenience to anyone, that they can be financed out of
aid, and that they have the same software. Thus Gordon McCray, who teaches
business studies in Oberlin, has filmed all his lectures and put them on a
video CD-ROM. So he no longer has to lecture now. Instead, he uses his classes
as tutorials – to initiate discussions, answer questions or set on-the-spot
tests. And while he is doing this in class, the brighter students do not have
to sit idle; they can surf the internet and watch nudes if they like. The
result is that no one skips his class.
But they may; and they would have if he had given
out his CD-ROM and left it there. That is precisely what used to happen in
Cambridge forty years ago. Lectures were optional. As a result, when F R Leavis
lectured, students sat on the steps and at his feet, whereas a certain lecturer
from Girton drew 25 students in her first lecture, five in her second and none
in her third.
The point is that old-style teaching can now be
automated, and old-style teachers have become redundant. This is precisely why
the IT revolution will have the least impact on India, which could benefit the
most from it. It is no longer necessary to have millions of schoolteachers. But
they are solid supporters of the BJP, and it will protect their livelihood. The
successive BJP ministers of information and broadcasting have steadfastly
deprived Indian viewers of DTH television. But they could easily make a bargain
with Star TV or Zee TV: they should be allowed to start a DTH service in India
on the condition that half of their channels are given to education. These 100
or 200 channels could be used to get the very best teachers and to transmit
their lectures; all the school, college and university education could be
imparted on television. The lectures could be recorded on CD-ROMs, and a CD-ROM
library could be donated to every village. One server with any number of connected
PCs could be used to let children educate themselves in their own time, at
their own pace. And not only with publicly organized lectures, but with all the
material available on the internet.
That is when teachers would attain their real
vocation, namely to help students go beyond textbooks and lectures and actually
to advance knowledge. The aim of education should not be to produce millions of
carbon copies of mediocre teachers, but to improve on them in every generation,
every year, every minute.
