No, technology can never replace the teacher in class

Natasha Wakesho 9, a standard three pupil at Upweoni Primary School in Malindi at her dad's mini laptop in this file photo. There is a worrying trend in public conversations about technology: The argument that teachers know nothing but students know everything. PHOTO | FILE

What you need to know:

  • Another incongruity in the article was its celebration of multi-tasking. According to Dr Njoroge, our kids are so good at multi-tasking that they can do their homework while watching TV and listening to music on their phone. 
  • Dr Njoroge also says that computers found my generation, but the students found computers. This historical perspective is inaccurate. A quick glance at Wikipedia tells us that computers have been in the world for over a century.
  • The fact that we may not have had contact with a computer in our childhood does not mean that computers did not impact my generation. Computers were already being used in war, colonialism and manufacturing. 

There is a worrying trend in public conversations about technology: The argument that teachers know nothing but students know everything about technology, and so if teachers are asking questions about ed-technology purchases, they are doing so because they are afraid of losing their position in a “brave new world.”

This myth was repeated by Wanjiku wa Njoroge’s piece consoling teachers that they need not panic even though their role as teachers will be taken over by students once the laptops reach all Standard One pupils.

From my experience, not all young people are as tech savvy as Dr Njoroge seems to think. I’ve found out that I actually know more about technology than some of my students. I have taught how to schedule posts, how to use HTML to construct websites, how to design blogs, how to download articles and books from academic databases, and how to create folders on their e-mails to classify the research material. 

So the fact that students may be comfortable with technology doesn’t mean that they know how to use it beneficially. Many of our youth, left to their own devices, use technology for accessing games, gossip, chat with their friends, and even, unfortunately, plagiarism, porn and cyber bullying. Technology has not changed the role of the teacher at all, because the teacher’s job remains to guide (not dictate to) students in navigating the world, even if that world is in cyber space.

Another incongruity in the article was its celebration of multi-tasking. According to Dr Njoroge, our kids are so good at multi-tasking that they can do their homework while watching TV and listening to music on their phone. 

I don’t believe that any parent would accept that their children, whom they find watching TV and playing video games, are also doing their homework.

BEFORE OUR TIME

But more than that, if it is true that kids can multi-task that well, why then do schools ban students bringing mobile phones? Why have we not opposed laws against drivers using mobile phone at the wheel, arguing that our young drivers are so tech savvy that they can chat and drive at the same time? Why do several offices have notices asking customers not to answer calls at the counter? 

Dr Njoroge also says that computers found my generation, but the students found computers. This historical perspective is inaccurate. A quick glance at Wikipedia tells us that computers have been in the world for over a century. The fact that we may not have had contact with a computer in our childhood does not mean that computers did not impact my generation. Computers were already being used in war, colonialism and manufacturing. 

One does not need to have had access to a computer to have been impacted by them. Even now, until the laptop project, many Kenyan children still do not have access to computers.

For a continent that is yet to overcome the damaging effects of that Hegelian concept of Africa being outside history, equating our presence in this world to our access to a man-made object in painful to accept.

Finally, I don’t believe that an editor of a publishing house is an objective observer in this conversation. Many of the publishing houses that make a kill from publishing textbooks are now the ones engaged in content development because they stand to benefit from selling e-content. But that also goes to show that ed-technology is the digital equivalent of the textbook, not of the teacher. If textbooks can’t teach children, neither can laptops.

Ed-tech is not a panacea to all problems pertaining to education. If anything, technology actually doubles, rather than reduces, the time we teachers spend preparing for class and teaching, and we won’t get salary raise for the extra work. 

And nobody, not even children, turns into an expert just because they have a tablet in their hand.

That romanticism is for advertising; it does not belong to sober discussions on the future of our children and on the responsibility of adults in preparing them for it.