Mr. Smith is forty-eight years old. He began to teach in a middle school twenty-four years ago. He works hard and always comes to his office on time. He expects his students to be honest and is strict with them. Some of his students become famous people, but they still remember him and often write to him. Of course the old man is proud of it.

This term he began to teach Grade One. Some of the new students were told about him, but the others didn’t know him well. He told them how to be an honest person. He gave them several examples and said, “I hate telling a lie most.”   

Before class was over, he told all his students to finish Exercise 7 in Unit 1. The next morning, as soon as he came into the classroom, he asked, “Who’s finished Exercise 7?” A few students put up their hands. He shook his head and said, “Open your workbooks and see whether there’s Exercise 7 in Unit 1 or not.”

The students had a look at their workbooks and their faces turned red at once.

If you think of the jobs robots could never do, you would probably put doctors and teachers at the top of the list. It’s easy to imagine robot cleaners and factory workers, but some jobs need human connection and creativity. But are we underestimating what robots can do? In some cases, they already perform better than doctors at diagnosing illness. Also, some patients might feel more comfortable sharing personal information with a machine than a person. Could there be a place for robots in education after all?

British education expert Anthony Seldon thinks so. And he even has a date for the robot to take over the classroom: 2027. He predicts robots will do the main job of transferring the information and teachers will be like assistants. Intelligent robots will read students’ faces, movements and maybe even brain signals. Then they will adapt the information to each student. It’s not a popular opinion and it’s unlikely that robots will have the ability to really connect with humans like another human.

One thing is certain, though. A robot teacher is better than no teachers at all. In some parts of the world, there aren’t enough teachers and 9~16 percent of children under the age of 14 don’t go to school. That problem could be partly solved by robots because they can teach anywhere and won’t get stressed, or tired, or move somewhere for an easier, higher-paid job.

Those negative aspects of teaching are something everyone agrees on. Some teachers all over the world are leaving because it is a difficult job and they feel overworked. Perhaps the question is not “Will robots replace teachers?” but “How can robots help teachers?” Office workers can use software to do things like organizing and answering emails, arranging meetings and updating calendars. Teachers waste a lot of time doing non-teaching work, including more than 11 hours a week marking homework. If robots could help teachers with the time teachers spend marking homework and writing reports, teachers would have more time and energy for the parts of the job humans do best.