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Elon Musk Thinks AI Can Replace Teachers. He's Wrong. · Strictly Education

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: They're saying that this can only be done by tech.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's wrong.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: It has to be done by teachers.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_02: The teacher is the one driving the movement and the accountability.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_02: The teacher is the one being clear and then responding to what the kids do.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_02: We don't need better tech, we need better teachers.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_02: Hello everyone, and welcome to Strictly Education.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Catherine Bribble Singh, Britain's strictest headmistress.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: And today I'm talking about why clever people really aren't that clever when it comes to tech and education.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: So when someone says, here's a great idea for transforming schools, and then you hear in the next sentence, it involves this great new piece of technology.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: Major alert, be very, very suspicious.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna hear things that are very seductive, but are likely to lead to total disaster.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Here's exhibit number one.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Elon Musk gives us his bright ideas on teaching and tech.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_07: Generally, you want education to be like as close to a video game as possible, like a good video game.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_07: Like you do not need to tell your kid to play video games.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_07: They will play video games on autopilot all day.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_07: So if you can make it interactive and engaging, uh then you can make education uh far more compelling and far easier to do.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, like there's always a grain of truth in everything that's wrong.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Kids do need to feel like learning is hyper-responsive.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: When kids do something in the game, there's a response in real time which keeps them engaged.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: They press a button and something happens in the game.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_02: Then they have to move in response.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's like movement, reaction.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_02: Movement, reaction.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: It makes them competitive.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: It makes them engaged, it makes them want to win.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: This is what Elon means when he says education can't just be a boring lecture.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he's right.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Education can't be static, it should be responsive.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: If a kid gets something right, the adult should react positively.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: If the kid gets something wrong, the adult needs to correct him.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: This is a fair principle with children in general.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: If you want to see a kid do something better, you have to celebrate when they do it.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: You have to lock in that sort of behavior.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, like think of a mom at home with her toddler.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: The mom shows the child, here's how you use your knife and fork, darling.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the moment the child gets it right, mom has to celebrate as if she's just won the lottery.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Woo! Well done, darling.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's just amazing.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Mom needs to make a really big deal out of it.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: Dad, get in here.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Look at Johnny using his knife and fork.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: No one's ever been this good at using cutlery.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: And the child can feel that response.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_02: He's thinking, I want more of this.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: There's a response from mom.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: She likes this, and I'm I'm getting a good reaction.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's the sort of thing Elon means.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: Kids like to know when they're getting things right.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's the same when a kid does something wrong.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: An older brother, let's say, he hits his sister.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: A parent can't leave it 20 seconds to respond.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_02: They have to react in the moment.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: No! We don't do that.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_02: They move, we move.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: Kid does something, the adult reacts.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_02: So 1 0 to Elon.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_02: He's right here.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: But lots of what he's saying, wow, I'm afraid it's just nonsense.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I think like most teaching today is a lot like vaudeville.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_07: Where, um, and and it's and as a result, it's just not not that compelling.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_07: It's like somebody standing up there and lecturing to you, and they've done the same lecture several years in a row, they're not necessarily all that engaged or or in in doing it.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: Vaudeville was 1930s American entertainment on stage, basically old-fashioned, and the same show every night.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: Boring, repetitive, you get the picture.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: Vaudeville got replaced once technology got better.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Technology means we now have the best of the best on TV or in video game design.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_02: Elon's saying ed tech can replace the dull old teacher droning on from the front with a textbook who is just boring all of the kids.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_02: Let's see what Elon has to say next.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_07: So it really depends on what somebody's goal is.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_07: If the goal is to start a company, I would say no point in finishing uh college.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_07: Um I think that's how it should be.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_07: And it shouldn't be that you've got like these grades where people move in log steps.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_07: Um and so everyone goes through you know, goes like normally, yeah, we'll go through English, math, uh science and so forth, from like fifth grade to sixth grade to seventh grade, like it's an assembly line.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_07: Uh but but people are not objects on an assembly line.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so here, Elon's saying that everyone's different.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: Everyone has different abilities.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: So it means in this new and better way of educating, you need every child moving at their own speed so that they're never slowed down.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's what used to be called personalized learning.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: What's wrong with kids working at a speed that matches their abilities?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it makes sense intuitively.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: If a kid's good at maths, why not let them go on to a harder problem?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_02: And if another kid is struggling, we need to give them more time to figure it out, really.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: This is how we end up thinking making it more personalized means making it better.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's too expensive to have a one-to-one tutor for every kid, but, and here's where the genius seems to come in, you can have a personalized tech tutor.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: Technology to the rescue, sort of thing.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: So here's Sal Khan, who is the founder of the Khan Academy.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: Same thing, same optimism, and let's look.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_03: But I think we're at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest trans positive transformation that education has ever seen.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_03: And the way we're going to do that is by giving every student on the planet an artificially intelligent but amazing personal tutor.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: And we're going to give every teacher on the planet an amazing, artificially intelligent teaching assistant.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: So that was Sal Khan.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_02: And now we have Sam Altman, who is the CEO of OpenAI, who has the same vibe, the same feeling of techno-utopia on the horizon, the same logic.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_04: So someone in this room hopefully will figure out what the AI tutor of the future looks like.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_04: And, you know, that'll be a population skill thing, and it'll think what that would do if every kid on Earth, you know, this year got an AI tutor that was provided like a better education or helped to provide a better education than anybody could get last year.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_02: So here's the problem.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: We've been here before.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_02: EdTech always promises this and has pretty much always failed to deliver.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: I know, I know.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: People will say this time is different.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just flagging.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: So the headlines from around 10 years ago were quite similar.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: Norway announced in 2016 an iPad for every single child in school.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: It allows for personalized, high-tech, modernized, one-to-one learning support.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: Deja vu, ladies and gents! The promise was exactly as is currently being made.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: It would revolutionize education.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_02: But here's what happened.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so you see this graph?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: You have Norway as this high performer, way above the UK.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: And this revolutionary ed tech just there in 2016, you see?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: Then look what happens to reading scores in Norway.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: Boom! It starts tanking.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: The exact opposite of what was promised.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's like a plane that's been shot out of the sky.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: Sweden did the same thing at the same time.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: They wanted personalized high-tech learning.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, computers for every kid's sort of thing.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: We're now 10 years later.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: Let's watch.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_08: The first class of the day is math.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_08: And today the teacher has a surprise.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_09: Today, you're getting your first real math book.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_09: Cool, no?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_09: Yeah, thank goodness.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_09: I wanted to give it to you now so you can take your time looking at it.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_09: Go ahead and browse through.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_09: It's brand new.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so for a start, I don't know why that boy is sitting on the desk.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, the government is now spending millions reintroducing children to textbooks.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: Here's what the kids think of them.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_08: These are the first printed books that children have been given after nearly four years in this class.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_08: Until now, they have worked almost entirely with laptops and math.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_08: It doesn't take long before they begin noticing differences.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_09: There's more descriptions than on the laptop.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_09: What might be harder is that now we have to read ourselves.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_02: So what might be harder is that we now have to read ourselves.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: Who would have thought it?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Having a device that doesn't require children to read as much might have a negative impact on their reading.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: This is the thing about screens.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: The screen does the engagement for you.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't require the child to learn to concentrate and work through lots of text for themselves.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so here's another example.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And here another visible change has taken place after a decade of all digital learning.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Physical textbooks are making a comeback.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_06: I think uh the biggest issue has been that because we kind of got rid of the books and started using screens instead, that we've noticed that a lot of the kids have trouble concentrating.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_06: So it's pretty easy to swipe with free fingers over to a different screen and have a video game going, for example, during class.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so let's go back to that line.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: Since we had the screens, we noticed that the kids had trouble concentrating.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's almost as if concentrating on things that don't lure you in with high stimulation is quite a hard skill.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't practice it, you don't have it.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_02: Let's look at another country.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Finland! You guessed it! So, same promise, same picture, same rollback.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_02: Here's one news story.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Then we say, hold on, there's this new technology, and this time it'll be different.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: Remember when we were told that smartphones would help people remember things?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_02: Do you remember?
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: This is the Scientific American in 2013.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: Smartphones mean you will no longer have to memorize facts.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so how's that prediction working out?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_02: We're in the midst of a cognitive and mental health crisis for kids.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Find me the teacher who says smartphones are going to help their kids get smarter.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: As a rule, if someone builds you a house saying that it'll be a good place for you to live, and then the house falls down, you should probably ask the builder what happened before asking the same guy to build you a new house.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly how we should be thinking when it comes to ed tech.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, there's quite a lot of evidence that the promised personalized ed tech stuff has actually been seriously harmful to our kids in a lot of ways.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: So here is neuroscientist Dr.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: Jared Horvath, great guy, testifying to Congress.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_05: A sad fact our generation has to face is this.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_05: Since we've been standardizing and measuring cognitive development since the late 1800s, every generation has outperformed their parents.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_05: And that's exactly what we want.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_05: We want sharper kids.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_05: And the reason for this largely has been school.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_05: Each generation spends more time in school.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_05: We use school to develop our cognition.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_05: Congratulations, you see your correlation.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_05: Until Gen Z, Gen Z is the first generation of modern history to underperform us on basically every cognitive measure we have, from basic attention to memory, to literacy, to numeracy, to executive functioning to even general IQ, even though they go to more school than we did.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_02: So Dr.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: Horvath is describing something which anecdotally we all know to be true.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Kids are on their phones all the time.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: They can't concentrate, they don't read books, and he's saying that something has happened in our schools.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: Let's watch some more.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_05: So why?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_05: What happened?
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_05: What happened around 2010 that decoupled schooling from cognitive development?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_05: It can't be school.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_05: Schools basically look the same.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_05: It can't be biology.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_05: This hasn't enough time to change.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_05: The answer appears to be the tools we are using within schools to drive that learning.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_05: Across 80 countries, as Jean was just saying, if you look at the data, once countries adopt digital technology widely in schools, performance goes down significantly, to the point where kids who use computers about five hours per day in school for learning purposes will score over two-thirds of a standard deviation less than kids who rarely or never touch tech at school.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so what he's saying here is that it isn't just Norway.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_02: The kids who do worst in schools internationally are the kids on screens.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: The kids who do best are the kids who basically never use screens in their schools.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: And that seems to be a pattern across the world.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I think there's a reason that ed tech has often failed with children.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_02: It relates to us not understanding how children think.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_02: We're assuming that if a child doesn't learn, it's because we haven't pitched our question at the right level.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's what Musk means when he talks about the assembly line.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_02: He's saying that children are being held back because they want to go to a higher speed or a higher level, but they can't move on with that higher stuff.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_02: Notice how he doesn't have a central diagnosis for why children don't like learning things.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: He just says that it isn't compelling.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: He just makes the lazy jump from thinking if kids like video games, then all we need to do is make education like video games.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: But as I said, learning is hard.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: And doing hard stuff takes self-discipline.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: And you'll hear me say this time and time again.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: Children are naughty.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_02: We're left thinking, hmm, children don't like working hard on complex problems, but they like entertainment.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: How could that be?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: To get children, or in fact any of us, to work hard on complex problems, and to get us to eventually enjoy it, we have to hold the children and ourselves accountable.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: This is because children and all of us really, well, we don't like to work, right?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: So earlier we looked at Sal Khan in 2023, talking about his AI tutor that every child would get.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_02: In 2026, he said that for many students it was a non-evend.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, in their pilot program, it turns out 85% of students never used it.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: Look, I'm not super clever like Sal Khan, but I could have told him that.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's because I know kids, right?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: So the reason kids don't work is because for most of them, they don't want to work.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: 99% of the time, when kids don't do stuff, is because they don't like doing hard things.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like most of us.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: They like doing easy and fun things.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's why they prefer video games or YouTube.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: So look, think of it this way when you give your child a tour to do in the house, and then they do a shoddy job of it, I don't know, they don't do the washing up properly, for instance, or they leave lots of things lying around, they rush it.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: You could assume that the problem is you didn't give them instructions that were tailored to their personality or to their level.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: But you don't do that, do you?
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: Because you know they're just being naughty, right?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: And you also know that kids need to learn to do stuff that they don't initially want to do.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's just part of growing up.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_02: Weirdly, we seem incapable of understanding that education is fundamentally about the character formation of children.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: That means we need to judge the development of their character and where it's at.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know that thing when a child says to you that they're doing their maths homework and then you watch over their shoulder and they're actually on YouTube, right?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: The problem is not that the maths homework is pitched at the wrong level.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: The problem is that your child prefers YouTube to their maths homework.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I have news.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: They will always prefer YouTube.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Think of work colleagues that you know.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: And when you catch them browsing something that's totally irrelevant to their job, it's because they prefer YouTube.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: Kids are kids.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna get distracted, they're gonna lack motivation.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: It just means you're gonna have to wrestle with their character.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: This is what we do with kids.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: We don't try and make everything like YouTube, as dear Elon was suggesting.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_02: We always talk as if children have no agency, and we can't change their agency to make them into better people.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: But that's what growing up is.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_02: What kids need is knowledge in combination with accountability.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_02: And all of that needs to happen within the context of a relationship.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: That relationship is used to address how their character needs to change, how their motivation needs to change, how their work ethic needs to change, how their respect for the adults in their life needs to change.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: Now, for a long time, we had a name for that role.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, an adult who gives kids knowledge, who holds kids accountable, who knows the kid.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: They know when the child is being lazy or when they're stuck.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I think the name for that person is a teacher.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_02: Ed tech misses moral formation.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's why it ends up messing up academic formation, too.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: You need both.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_02: You learn to be decent and work hard.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's part of how you end up bettering yourself intellectually and academically.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: Now, what you'll notice is that this is not on the radar for these tech people telling us that they get education and that we should just trust them.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: Here's what Elon thinks education is.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_07: You're basically downloading data and algorithms into your brain.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_07: And it's it's it's actually amazingly bad in conventional education.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: Teaching is downloading of algorithms?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_02: Now, look, look, you see, I I I would never say that.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: Downloading of algorithms?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's like saying parenting is feeding your children according to a schedule.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: Look, that isn't what it's about.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh it's part of it.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, you are getting some knowledge into your brain, but that really isn't what education is.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's one part knowledge.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: You have to be an expert, it's true, and you have to be able to judge the content that you're giving to the child, you have to ask good questions, and you have to plan engaging lessons.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: So Elon's sort of right there.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_02: But it's one part, big part.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_02: Personal trainer.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Why do people pay huge amounts of money to have a personal trainer?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: When they could just download the algorithms, they could download the information for the exercises that they want to do online.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_02: Teaching is one part being like a parent.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_02: You discipline, you praise, you have an emotional connection, you learn to read from a child's facial expression where they're at.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: This is the point.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's about knowing the child and knowing how to morally move them to be better and more decent people.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Great teachers know what kids are like.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: They know that kids cut corners wherever they can.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: They know how to talk to kids when they're in a sulk.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: A personal trainer notices you're doing an exercise wrong and corrects you.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: And they also shout encouragement to inspire you to keep going.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's what all of us need to do for the children in our lives.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_02: Guys who work in tech imagine it's just a question of downloading information and knowledge.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: So they misread the culture that almost all people need to be driven to push themselves.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_02: That is what teachers do.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_02: Kids need to want to work for you.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: Ultimately, that's why they choose to work.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: They're working for you.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Kids love to make other people proud.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's the teacher who drives that with their pupils.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: So, what should we be doing instead of what these guys are suggesting?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: Number one, be clear on what you want the kids to do.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's part of the grain of truth in the ed tech crowd.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: They spotted that children like knowing how to succeed.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: They want to know what are the rules of the game?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: How do I do this well?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: So, if you're teaching, tell them what you want to see and what you don't want to see.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: If you're a parent, you tell your kids, here's what we're gonna do, and here's what we're not gonna do.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: Be clear with them.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_02: Number two, be responsive to what a child is doing.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's the second grain of truth to what Musk is saying.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: You have to respond to your child's behavior.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_02: Children need to feel like knowing what they do matters and that there is a reaction.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_02: They move, we move.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_02: They do the right thing, boom, we celebrate.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: They do the wrong thing, bam, we call it out.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: And number three, children don't need better tech.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: They need better teachers.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: They're saying, the ed tech crowd, I mean, that this can only be done by tech.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's wrong.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: It has to be done by teachers.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: The teacher is the one driving the movement and the accountability.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_02: The teacher is the one being clear and then responding to what the kids do.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: We don't need better tech.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_02: We need better teachers.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: We don't have an education crisis in the sense of needing some radical tech silver bullet.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: We have a teacher and adult authority crisis.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: We need to fix that, not make it worse.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: By replacing the adult authority with screens.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: So, number four, understand that the relationship is everything.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: The single biggest factor in a child's education is the relationship that they have with their elders, I mean their parents and their teachers.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: If the passing on of knowledge comes from someone they respect who calls out the worst in them and praises the best in them, a child can be transformed.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: If there's no figure in their life doing that, children hate school and end up miserable.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: We need to realize our role as adults is to do precisely this.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: We need to reject the idea that we can help kids by replacing that role with an AI bot.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're insane.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: Why does the relationship matter so much?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Kids work for you.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Kids work because they're scared of letting you down.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_02: Kids work because they want you to be proud of them.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_02: If you leave it to the screen, you remove the very thing that kids need most, and that's you.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: I always say this to parents and teachers.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Why is it that people like to put mother or father on their gravestone?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: Why is it that being a teacher is an identity?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's because you know that your relationship with someone else is what you use to change the world.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: If you assume that your relationship is not harmed by replacing parts of it with an interactive screen, you're missing that the teaching of children is part of what makes the relationship real.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's not an add-on.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: So, like I say, it isn't new technology the kids need.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: It isn't about downloading algorithms.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: What they need is for us to be better.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: That's what adults do for kids.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: That's what parents do for their children.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's what a great teacher does for the kids in her class.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that's exactly what strictly education is all about.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, great.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, some of you written in, really pleased to see that.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna answer a few questions.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_02: And if you have a question that you want answered, just put it in the comments below.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: I'll do my best to get to it next time.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you can also subscribe to the channel while you're there.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: You can also find me on X at Miss Snuffy.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: All right, here we go.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_02: Question number one: Debbie Van Norman wants to know how I interview my teachers to find individuals committed to discipline and learning, and not just putting the class in front of a computer screen and not turning learning over to the latest seminar gimmick.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: Well, when I'm interviewing, I'm always looking for people who are enthusiastic.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I interview caretakers, uh, kitchen staff, office staff, and teachers.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm always looking for their enthusiasm about the thing that they do.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: So when it comes to teachers, they need to be enthusiastic about kids, right?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: And if their enthusiasm is around computer screens, then I would be highly suspicious.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: If on the other hand, they're telling me stories about how they connect with kids and so on, then that's what's important.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_02: I would also just ask them directly, you know, what do you think about computer screens?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, my reputation kind of follows me, so it tends to be the case that no one who really wants to teach kids with computer screens is going to apply for a job with me.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: But for those of you out there, I would suggest just asking people, but just be straight up.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: I'm always very honest with people when I'm interviewing.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: I tell them exactly what the school's about, and I say, is that right for you?
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: Because they may not want the job, and that's okay.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, second question.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: Smiley Patty asks, um, as a fellow teacher, what do you make of that story in Scotland where students asked a history teacher who lived in the USA about her pro-life opinions, and she was fired by the school and allegedly threatened with blacklisting, even though she merely confirmed and didn't preach.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I think that's a bit mad, obviously.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_02: But I also think, as a general rule, those kinds of opinions, I don't think it's the place of the classroom to be talking about those things.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: I always find it really weird.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're you're an expert on history, you're an expert on math or English or whatever.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then weirdly, you're talking about politics.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_02: I don't really get it.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: It could be any kind of political opinion.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: I just don't think it's right in the classroom.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: So I would suggest all teachers out there just say, well, you know, I have my own personal opinions.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: We're not going to talk about that.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: We've got stuff to learn, and then you teach them that.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: But obviously, uh, if someone did do that, I think the idea of firing her for that is just crazy.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: So David Terror asks, um, at what age should adults introduce ability to disagree agreeably to children?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: So uh favorite aphorism of his is we never argue, we're not that close.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: That seems a foundation for democracy.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: What are the best ways to teach democratic ideals to children?
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: So that's a really interesting question.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: And it's an interesting phrase.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: We never argue, we're not that close.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: I don't like that phrase, David.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: I don't like it.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I know it's your favorite phrase, but um I'll tell you why I don't like it.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: It makes it sound like as long as you're not very close to people, that means we can get on.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then that's weird, because then how do you get on with people who you're close to, right?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's just a bit weird.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure that's how democracy works or how families work or how anything works, really.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: The main reason why you can get on with people, whether you're close to them or not, is because you have a certain set of foundational values in you, which means that you show them respect when you're speaking, you actually listen to what you're saying, and then you disagree with them politely, and you're interested in finding out what they think so you can actually understand what they're saying.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: That that that is what I would want all the children in my care to do.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I wouldn't want to kind of tell kids, just don't ever get to know anyone, and that way you can get on with them.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's just a that's just a bit weird.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: So that that's my feeling on that one.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that's all we've got time for, I'm afraid.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm signing off as Britain's strictest headmistress.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: I have a school to run, you have your things to do.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hold the line, strength and honor.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_02: See you next time.