SCIENCE LEARN TYPING (GR LATIN) BY MACHINE!

Macuines have lately been doing many of the things which for centuries were declared to be exclusive to living organisms. One was recently demonstrated which showed a ‘conditioned reflex’, which is actually quite simple to produce.

Another machine teaches the reflex, but can just as well teach touch-typing. and in the very near future similar principles will be applied to many kinds of operation.

The ‘teacher’ tells the pupil what exercise to perform, and checks whether he carries it out correctly. The commonest type will be a simple electronic computer. as this can ‘remember’ perfectly all the pupil’s mistakes, and drills him with particular care on the points he most often gets wrong.

_ From time to time the machine recapitulates the earlier and simpler exercises. to make sure the pupil has not forgotten them, Repetitive or complex jobs Teaching machines are most easily applied to the most boring and repetitive jobs. such as typing. driving, many machining operations, learning Latin, marking homework, etc, They can be applied, with more ingenuity. even to complex skills. such as radio designing. usually by breaking down the course into simple parts.

‘Programming’ will allow one machine to teach many diverse tasks, selected at the turn of a switch. No new ‘teacher’ will be needed just because the task has been modified in some way.

In many cases the automatic teachers can in due course be replaced by automatic machines such as a fully automatic Jathe. but they will be especially valuable for many years in teaching very complex tasks with simple parts. such as working the controls of a car.

Never tired or forgetful Our social system ensured that the first task was teaching to fly jet planes, which is now obsolescent anyway.

Automatic teachers are never tired or forgetful, can show any required ‘irritation’ or ‘pleasure’ at their pupil's performance, and give the most detailed personal supervision!

Teaching machines are unlikely to be more expensive, in terms of capital invested, than a human being who represents up to £10.000 of human work, depending on his training.

Their maintenance is probably considerably cheaper. and a rational society will use machines to release human beings for tasks which require full human capacities. as well as to offset to some extent the present acute shortage of science teachers.

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