Robotic Technology: Good Idea but Not for Classrooms

By Benson Kamary

A recent suggestion that English-speaking robots would soon replace English native teachers calls for a deeper reflection beyond technological ambitions.

While robots and related technology may facilitate teaching and boost efficiency to some extent, they must not replace human teachers since there is more to education than giving instructions. Robots cannot exhibit the human relational ability needed in the teaching process.

As opposed to robots, human beings are fundamentally relational. We understand ourselves and the world around us in the milieu of critical interactions with other human beings. A relational pedagogy is constitutive in nature where people are a nexus of a whole range of relations.

As relational beings, character building is not generated merely by seeing and listening but also understanding the instructor: his human strengths or weaknesses his bliss or discontent; his experiences and aspirations. It zeroes down to the understanding of the fundamental make-up of social humans.

Teaching and learning is a relational social activity even when an individual learns by himself from the nature or abstract reality because the application of knowledge involves human interactions.

Interactive educational approaches, which the robots fall short of, focuses on the meaning and significance of the human experience of connection, rather than solely on an abstract understanding of a set of elements whether facts, technology, people or buildings.

Korea's education stakeholders may need to view teaching as a human to human activity that provides elementally and dynamically effective means transforming the learner.

For instance, teachers, and not robots, have the capability to exercise care or remorse where participation, growth, transformation and insights take place.

In addition, the teacher and students require a platform for sharing their experiences with critical reflection equipping them for effective engagement of cultural-economic-environmental-political characteristics from a human perspective.

Such teaching comes from practical imagination and dialogical engagement which robots can only aid the process but not offer in creativity. Native English speakers expose young minds to global realities and engagement in contemporary issues.

Most importantly, teaching activities are not neutral as many people misguidedly believe. Education is not only an informing process but also forming.

Robots may inform but may not necessarily form students with human and societal values to capture the aspiration of a nation. When teaching is seen as resulting from philosophical assumptions that deeply embed a certain worldview, Korean education policymakers will rethink the robot option.

The teaching process disseminates cultural values, builds bonds with the teacher, small groups and entire classes and thus increasing the opportunity for interpersonal and corporate communication.

The glamour of integration within the framework of human psychology and social values is what entices a student into the learning process.

Only a thinking human being with emotional responses can detect the needs of a child in class and respond to it with love, care, encouragement and hope. Any attempt by robots to imitate human feelings remain just that; an imitation!

Others have argued that by kicking out native English teachers, Korea will suffer a reasonable economic consequence. While this may be true given that most of these foreign instructors spend their income within Korea, teaching English offers more than instructive or economic gain.

I have met Korean parents who believe that by learning how to speak in English, their children are able to interact effectively with the broader world and open more doors for their future aspirations.

Confucian philosophy has informed Korean culture for centuries. Though its aim of education leaves a lot of room for critique, Confucius offered decent advice; the mind is like a parachute, it works much better when it's open.

Replacing native teachers is in fact denying Korean children the initial experience to exposure and interaction with other cultures through foreigners.

Lest we forget, robots do not enhance group dynamics and interactions that may provide a mechanism for learning to reinforce information processing.

The way in which a class is conducted and guided functions as an interesting and convivial activity in which talents, skills and abilities of an individual are noted and developed in the realm of reality. It also provides a fresh way of looking at how attitudes as well as concepts are communicated as the core elements of relational education in teacher-student relationships.

A relational process mode of teaching provides a caring context where participation, growth, transformation, and insight occur for teacher and learner when they risk sharing their critical reflections on issues.

It would be better to invest on home-grown Korean English teachers than bringing a robot into the classroom; a lifeless machine whose capabilities are neither relational, caring, dialogical, critical, reflective nor liberating.

Benson Kamary is a Kenyan graduate school student at the department of education at Kosin University. He is currently undertaking research on ``transformative capacity of educational function of mass media." He is also a trained journalist in print and broadcast fields. He can be reached at bkamary@yahoo.com.