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NancyLebovitz comments on Stupid Questions January 2015 - Less Wrong
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I have a developing opinion that I'm not quite sure how to word.
It seems that schools all over the world are teaching the same lessons, but are all trying to recreate the wheel. I sense that it'd be more efficient if a bunch of effort and resources went in to each lesson, and that lesson was made available for everyone.
Elon Musk gave a good analogy (paraphrasing)
I sense that there is some sort of economic logic/terminology that applies here and that better articulates what I'm trying to say.
My attempt at explaining it a bit more formally. Consider a lesson on mitosis. Say you have 100 classrooms you need to teach this lesson to. And say you have 100 employees. I think it'd be more efficient for those 100 employees to work at creating an optimal lesson, and then providing that lesson (via a website or something) to students. Given that the lesson can (largely) be delivered via software, it's non-rivalrous (my consumption doesn't take anything away from your consumption), and thus can be distributed to everyone at no marginal cost.
Anyway, I hope I did a good enough job explaining such that someone can recognize what I'm trying to say. I'd be really happy if anyone was able to help me further my understanding.
Could that kind of thing be a loss in the long haul? You're able to create the superb lecture (assuming it's actually superb) because there are a large number of teachers whose knowledge about lecturing you can draw on.
Use those superior lectures enough, and you have many fewer experienced teachers as new subject matter gets added.
Interesting point. I don't know. Some thoughts:
I still think that there's a place for teachers. I agree with richard_reitz that individual attention is overrated. That if lessons were good enough there'd be much less of a need for teachers to diagnose holes in students understanding and tutor them. And that there isn't really too much individual attention in todays system anyway.
However, I think that even with these great lectures, there will still be holes in students' understanding, and that using a human is the best way to diagnose and address them. Like Sal Khan has talked about, I think that if these lectures were available, it'd actually free up teachers to spend more time providing personalized attention. I suspect that there's enough of a need for this such that teachers will still be employed.