George Bernard Shaw wrote in Man and Superman (1903), “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.” And since that time, an errant yet common belief is that teaching is for those who lack the capacity to succeed at more substantial work. Shaw did it consider teaching to be an esteemed profession.
We need to dig deeper into Shaw to understand his quote. Shaw attended four Dublin schools before dropping out in his early teens and engaging is self-education. Interestingly, one of the world’s great authors hated school. He learned instead from broad reading and constant visits to Dublin museums where he studied the art collection. Shaw learned from literary and artistic exemplars, often declaring that he was the greatest English writer since Shakespeare. He considered himself self-taught by his study of the best examples of what he wanted to learn.
There is such fallacy in Shaw’s statement. A stronger argument for teaching lies in “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Educating children grows people and teaching changes the world.
What do we know?
When Shaw was school-age and until the early 2000s, classroom teachers were the primary source of information for learning children. A teacher not only managed classrooms, but a teacher also constructed curriculum, determined the content and skills children learn, and designed the pedagogy of teaching. The teacher, school texts, and the school library were the sources of student information. To use a common analogy, teachers were perceived as the expert in the front of the classroom.
We live in a new age. The teaching Shaw experienced ended in the last century. The Internet provides instant access to worlds of information, and tools of technology put that information at every student’s fingertips. Further, AI gives learners a tool for displaying information, if not answers, to any question a learner thinks to ask. Teachers no longer are, or are considered to be, the information expert in a classroom.
The role of teacher has changed, if not improved, and has become more important than ever. Today’s teachers are not the source of classroom information; teachers are navigators, curators, and elucidators helping children find, understand, and learn from the information they read, hear, watch, and experience. Each of these functions – navigation, curation, and elucidation – is essential for learning children in the digital Information Age.
With ubiquitous AI, children need teachers to help them navigate the world of information. Navigation has been an essential skill in Googling Internet information for decades. Left on their own, children are adrift in an ocean of information, especially information spread in social media. Navigator-teachers help children shape what they want to find out into questions. Questions are structurally worded into prompts. Prompts help AI focus its search so that the information displayed meets the student’s inquiry.
Navigation is an increasingly sophisticated skill set that children in their grade levels and various courses. Inquiries in science use the lens of a student-biologist, chemist, physicist, and earth scientist. The lens is different in the social studies where lenses taken on the inquiries of economists, geographers, historians, political scientists, and behavioral scientists. Each academic discipline presents a lens for how to navigate in the world’s information systems. Successful navigation is knowing and being faithful to your lens.
Teachers help children curate the information they obtain. Curation starts with helping children understand that AI searches are fallible and 15-20% of the information provided by a search is wrong, incorrect, or unsubstantiated. One of the great eye-openers is when children learn that AI hallucinates and often just makes up information. The deeper and more complicated the search, the greater the need for curation.
Curator-teachers work beside and behind children in their information searches. A curator is not like a parent on Halloween unwrapping every piece of candy a child brings home for hidden threats. Curators are information-whisperers helping children create their own filters for deciding the reliability and validity of information. Curation is not just a school skill set, but a function children need to exercise 24/7 in the real world.
Finally, teachers are elucidators. Information derived from an Internet search opens many opportunities for “teachable moments.” Teachers start by asking children, “What does this mean?” And “How does this connect to what you already know?” And “What new questions do you have now?” Elucidators also ask children “So, what?” Elucidation helps children find meaning and teaches them be independent finders of informational meaning.
The Big Duh!
This is my “so, what” moment. I modify Shaw’s quote to “teachers teach doers.” Every great invention and break-through event in our history stands on the shoulders of someone who taught an inventor or exploring person foundational knowledge and skills, who posed a “so, what” challenge, and stood aside to help the doing.
Shakespeare did not learn to write in school. He learned Latin and classical literature at King’s New School in Stratford. More to the point, he learned to write poetry and plays in the reality of his day – on-the-job writing and editing and performance. People in the theaters and local printers critiqued and commented on Shakespeare’s work and he refined his writing into the work we know today. The greatest English writer pre-Shaw used navigators, curators, and elucidators of his day, albeit they were not classroom teachers, to learn and perfect his craft. He could do and learned to become a doer. Shaw was a Shakespeare – he learned from others who indirectly helped him navigate, curate, and elucidate what he learned.
Teachers teach AND create doers.