Teaching and Purpose: A Response to Bill Gates and his Purpose Problem
I recently ran across Bill Gates’s blog. He was reviewing Yuval Noah Harari’s book Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. The title of his post was, “The Purpose Problem: What if People Run Out of Things to Do?”
Gates ironically reflects on what it means to have purpose in one’s life.
I say ironically, because many blame Bill Gates for the current push to replace teachers in our public schools with technology—calling it personalized or competency-based learning.
Not only will teachers lose their profession and their purpose, a whole segment of society will be displaced—careers shattered.
This will drastically affect how and what students learn. Even our youngest children will obtain their knowledge on machines.
Brick and mortar schools will be a thing of the past. Children will learn on devices anyplace and anytime. Or they will attend online charter schools with baby-sitter-like facilitators instead of teachers. Connections to humans for learning will be distant.
School Privatization?
Gates ruminates on Harari’s argument that progress towards “bliss, immortality, and Teaching and Purpose: A Response to Bill Gates and his Purpose Problem:
