Toward a Technology of Teaching

Factory workers who cringe under the Damocles’ sword of automation might take heart by considering the college professor. This hardy laborer in the mills of knowledge has survived no less than four technological inventions, each of which should have rendered his primary work obsolescent. I mean the professor in his most familiar role, lecturing to a group of 25 to 30, or, as happens at institutions as disparate as Harvard and Hofstra, 250 to 300 students. The first technological innovat...