AI won’t replace teachers – and our pupils just proved it!

On Tuesday 14 October, the School Debating team embarked upon their first fixture of the academic year – against the staff!

Alanood A. (MSH, U6), Matthew W. (School House, U6), Bea C. (Grove, U6), and Lulu G. (Queen’s, L6) took to the stage in the Barnes Theatre to challenge Miss von Kuk, Mr Smiter, Mr Cooley, and Mr Brogan in one of the most competitive events the School has ever seen!

The staff team were proposing the motion, ‘This House believes that AI will render teachers obsolete’, with our student team in opposition, ardently defending the very teaching staff themselves. The students were well placed to embark upon this venture, having all represented the School at the national level last year (at the Oxford and Cambridge Schools’ Debating Competition finals days) but they met stern competition with the teacher team, who were surprisingly ready to argue the inevitability of their own redundancy – as Mr Cooley put it, ‘we the Turkey’s propose the inevitability of Christmas’!

Arguments, rebuttal, points of information, and amusing commentary flew back and forth. The teachers put forward a theoretical future in which the instruction component of teaching was delivered entirely by machines whilst ‘pastoral facilitators’ operated schools and oversaw the welfare of students who undertook all learning upon devices. The students responded with the argument that one simply could not extract the pastoral elements from the role of a ‘teacher’; they went on to identify those life-changing adults in their lives and how teachers had shaped so much of their experience in a way that no Artificial Intelligence could replicate. The staff responded by noting difficulties in teacher recruitment and alluding to Moore’s Law in explaining the certainty of exponentially developing technology.

The event was very well attended, with the continually thriving culture of debating at Shrewsbury evidenced by an extensive and rapt audience of staff and students alike. Unlike our House Debating Competition, though, the event was not judged by a single chair (indeed, if judged by a member of staff, there may have been allegations of bias!); instead, we opted for the traditional university union method of voting with one’s feet. With a counter at each door, the departing audience travelled through either a Proposition or Opposition door to indicate their vote. In the end, the result was too close to call through observation alone, but the numerical scores did give us a winner:

Proposition (staff, arguing the inevitability of teacher obsolescence): 57

Opposition (students, arguing the irreplaceability of human teachers): 64

As such, victory lands with the student team! This was a well-deserved victory, following extensive preparation and development over the years, but I am sure that all participants will be champing at the bit for a rematch in due course. Floreat Salopian Debating!

Mr Bandy