A brilliant insight from my students

So I was showing Chris' class a TED Talk by Sugata Mitra titled "The child-driven education." When we got to the quote by Arther C. Clark "Any Teacher that can be replaced by a machine should be." I asked them if they agreed. At first they said "no no!" Then some started saying "well maybe yes." They concluded that if the machine is as good or better then the teacher then yes maybe the teacher should be replaced. 

Later in the video Mitra shows that groups of children left alone will teach themselves things that interest them. At that point I asked them if I should be replaced? Since children that are left alone will teach themselves should I be replaced? They are very sweet and many of them tried desperately to reassured me that they did not want a machine for a science teacher. My response was that I didn't want them to have a machine for a science teacher either but I wanted to know why it was that the children that Mitra studied were teaching themselves when there was no adult present.  

I have thought about this for some time. They said that it was fear of embarrassment.  I was immediately struck because that is exactly what, the founder of Khan Academy, Sal Khan's younger cousins told him. They liked him better on video because they could replay anything that they did not understand.  I concluded that if they are to embarrassed to learn from me than I should be replaced by a machine that does not embarrass them.  Sweet as they are they didn't like that idea at all.  So we started a discussion about being embarrassed. They like the idea that I have been embarrassed. So I mustered up my courage and told them an embarrassing story about myself.

At the end of the video and discussion I asked them if they thought that they could do what the students in Mitra's studies had done and they eagerly accepted the challenge. I got them into groups around computers and showed they the site goorulearing.org. There is a good introduction here.  With goorulearning.org and all the other resources on the internet I asked them if they could answer the following question.  "What is the science of cheese making?"  We will continue to work on this next week.