This is me, writing two years ago, when the iPad was first announced:
The implication of a computer that can train its end-users how to use it is that teaching as a profession is dead. All teaching, at all levels.
Since then, I’ve been watching the disintermediation of education taking its course. In real life, nothing happens as quickly as we expect it to, looking forward, and everything seems to have happened with a blinding rapidity, when we look backward. We are in the midst of a mass exodus of the smartest children and adults away from traditional, political, dumbed-down, one-size-fits-all educationism.
With every passing day, there is new news of this revolution, which pretty much nobody but me sees in all its glory. The real news will come when all those unionized nincompoops in the National Education Association wake up and realize what is going on. By the time they commence to rioting in the streets, we may hear the last of the absurd claims about their hearts being in the right place, even though their minds quite clearly are not. Meanwhile, you and I can watch the drama play itself out while we await the fireworks:
- The big news, of course, is Apple’s announcements about the iBooks textbook editing application and the expansion of the free iTunes University.
- Not to be outdone, MIT is also offering a free on-line education.
- Sebastian Thrun at Stanford is giving up his tenured job to start a free on-line university.
- CodeAcademy wants to teach you to write software for free.
- And American Thinker postulates a world without teachers.