This past February, as one of the keynote speakers invited to contribute to a lively forum sponsored by the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT), I presented a bold challenge to my fellow professors that has since been quoted many times: “If we can be replaced by a computer screen, we should be.” Some were very alarmed at this statement, assuming I meant that all future learning should be online. But that wasn’t my meaning at all.
For those that believe in education as the practice of freedom there are two challenges: to develop a societal discourse around the purpose of education and secondly to develop transformative practice, as teacher students and student teachers.