The last job that is still required despite the advancement of technology is education or teachers. Although technology, such as artificial intelligence, provides innovative learning programs, it can be chaotic due to corruption or scarcity of student data.
AI programs cannot adjust the learning context that students want, such as dealing with students who have never had a positive learning experience (Kolchenko, 2018). “There is a lot of transmission of values, students learning from each other, from tutors, lecturers, mentors, working in teams’, affirms Ong Ye Kung, Minister of Education in Singapore, ‘all this cannot be replaced” (cited in Seow, 2018).
While technology can take over the field of education, the teacher’s role will always be important in the learning process. Students need figures that can motivate, train, assess, and evaluate them. The teaching profession is attached to integrity and personality; the teacher is not only tasked with transferring knowledge to students.
The Ministry of Education and Culture reports that: In March 2019, there were 3, 017, 296 teachers in Indonesia, with the number of students in 2018/2019 cohort from primary to high school level reaching 45, 047, 428 people.
For the same school year, the number of students from the Ministry of Religion reached 8, 004, 640 people, with a total of 680, 515 educators. In other words, 3.7 million teachers are responsible for overseeing the development of the competence of 53 million future generations of the nation (cited in Prodjo, 2019).
Therefore, the existence of technology does not simultaneously replace the role of teachers. Technology becomes a medium that will help teachers face the challenges of the modern era.
