Education: The Vanishing Teacher

Will flesh-and-blood teachers eventually be replaced by audio-visual gadgets? At the convention in Cincinnati last week of the National Education Association's Department of Audio-Visual Education some 2,000 people ohed and ahed over electronic marvels designed for the classroom. Proclaimed outgoing DAVI President Walter S. Bell, director of audio-visual education in Atlanta: "The familiar concept of a teacher in a classroom with only some books has completely broken down. The 'old methods simply cannot meet the challenge of the next decade, if education is to serve the humanities."

After studying the eye-boggling machines that flashed answers across screens, taught foreign languages in deep, resonant voice, lit up with a cheerful "very good" when fed a correct answer, the audile educators were quick to prophesy a revolution in the art of teaching. "It is now possible," declared James D. Finn, professor of education at the University of Southern California and incoming DAVI president, "not only to eliminate the teacher but the school system." Marshall Mc-Luhan, English professor at St. Michael's College, the University of Toronto, in a splendid flight of pedagogical rhetoric, added: "The dialogue [between man and machine] will replace the guided tours of data provided by the book. For in the dialogue, there is no maintaining a point of view but only the common participation in creating perpetually new insight and understanding in a total field of unified awareness."

DAVI President Finn offered one caveat: this awesome equipment must not fall into the hands of any one private institution, e.g., the Ford Foundation. Said he: "The American people don't elect representatives to the Ford Foundation."