Quote Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff View Post
Lemur, I am dead serious. Public pay is going to be slashed. First support, then teachers, then Police, then the Military - in that order. Every agency can do more with less. Technology should be making the same crap levels of education cheaper per child, not more expensive. We are being hosed in every direction and Americans are starting to realize it. Khan Academy has helped me learn and retain more mathematical knowledge than any and all of my math teachers combined; all for the high price of a computer and the internet. 1 man, 2000 videos, public domain content and a great interface vs the insane cost of employing crap teachers around the country. The need for their jobs is coming to an end and they are screaming over a 4% pay cut. IMO, this reaction is sharpening the swords of the masses.

The future of the United States is deflation of income and inflation in technology. I believe that we are going to come to a point where peoples salaries stagnate or even go down year after year with exponential growth in technology being responsible for an overall increase in the standard of living. Get on board. If you realise that traditional growth was mostly illusory on the domestic level; salary increases being outpaced by inflation and based more on our increased in lving standards in relation to the rest of the world; then you can see how a growing and driven international standard of living will reduce or value in relation to it. I'm ok with it. One day, none of us will have anything to do because robots will be doing all of it for us. We will be volunteering for all of the jobs that we do now for crazy fees. SINGULARITY IS THE CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE END OF TIMES AND HEAVEN ON EARTH BRINGING THE DEAD BACK TO LIFE... did I lose you? Stay with me.
I would just like to correct you on one thing.

Teaching can not be completely transferred over to technology. I get to listen in on a few committees as a student representative at my uni and all the professors in the committee I attend agreed that technology can only go so far to replace the human interaction that some people need. Kahn Academy is just absolutely fantastic, no doubt about that. But Kahn Academy is inherently restricted to what you can get out of a video (it doesn't change the explanation to a more simplistic view every time you watch the video as a teacher would if you were still confused about some concepts). MITOpenSource and Kahn Academy I think will allow those that are already motivated and/or interested and/or smart enough to go be able to gain this information on their own and further their education through technology. However, the demand for physical teacher-student interactions will never be replaced because the average student needs to ask questions, needs things clarified once if not multiple times. Technology should not be treated with the same philosophy that created No Child Left Behind. NCLB is a complete failure because it treats all students on an equal level, which even if you disregard the socioeconomic factors, anyone can tell you that not all brains are created equal. Just a fact of life. To treat technology as the same singular solution that will wash over all of education and make everything better is false as well.

That being said, the concept that in the future people will be volunteering to do things because things that "need" to be done will be done by robots is still applicable here. In this singularity future you have brought up, those that still require human interaction with teachers will be able to find those who have a passion for teaching, which is why many teachers are in it to begin with.