Teachers Must Be More Interesting Than Artificial Intelligence, Deputy Minister Says

Can artificial intelligence and other technological tools replace the teaching profession? What is the main challenge for mentoring in the next five to ten years? Are there former teachers? Deputy Education Minister of Belarus Alexander Kadlubai spoke about this and more in an interview with the First Information channel.

The transformation of the teacher’s role as a source of knowledge, with the introduction of various technologies, has been much discussed of late, he said. There is a view that the teacher’s role is changing. “And today we can say that this is indeed happening.”

It is not quite right, he argued, to say the teacher was exclusively a transmitter of fundamental or applied knowledge: by example the teacher also raised pupils, showed an attitude to events and formed a personality before. “Today, in a world of developing artificial intelligence and technologies, one can say unequivocally that what comes to the fore for the teacher is the role of navigator of the educational process — a person who builds and helps pupils not only to acquire knowledge but to orient themselves in it, to build an understanding of processes and their regularities, to evaluate them, to think critically and to form themselves as individuals.”

“Upbringing is the key in the paradigm of education, which includes both instruction and upbringing,” he stressed.

Progress does not stand still; today’s school is different from what it was 20 years ago. If one looks ahead, Kadlubai said, the key challenge for teachers over the next five years will be the development of technology. “Teachers must keep up with this development. They must be more interesting than artificial intelligence, than a smartphone.”

At the same time, given constant intensity and self-development, teachers must be able to recover and resist professional burnout. “And the key challenge for the five-year period is to preserve, to the maximum in the educational process, the human — which must stand ahead of any technology, ahead of any artificial intelligence.”