However, despite the above benefits, an advanced humanoid robot taking up the role of a teacher in entirety seems not only a distant goal but not so desirable too. The role of a teacher is likely to remain irreplaceable by a machine for a long time to come for reasons like:

High dependence on social interaction and emotional intelligence skills: Teaching role is heavily dependent on active human interaction be it verbal or nonverbal communication. Humanoid robots may be efficient in sharing the relevant content and theories, but the way a teacher facilitates the class keeping in mind the nature of the subject, differing student abilities and create engagement is heavily dependent on human interaction and social intelligence skills. For instance, when it comes to teaching subjects like psychology, philosophy, literature and management, student learning is not confined to a textbook, course material and lectures. The free discussions, deliberations, debates, reflective exercises, carefully planned and executed group activities stimulating active participation from students, facilitated by a teacher all play a significant role in knowledge acquisition and skill-building. Such a participative experiential learning environment in higher education or adult learning leads to personal growth and learning of not only the students but the teacher also. However, it calls upon optimizing multiple skills beyond lecturing like empathy, patience, enthusiasm, self-management and playing a mediating role as a facilitator. Also, an able teacher modifies his teaching approach and methodology, observing the response and progress of pupils to achieve learning outcomes. So, the same teacher may adopt a different pace and teaching style for different students going by observational cues and learner’s preferences in the classroom. Considering these subtle aspects, behavioural skills, and high dependence on emotional intelligence, the success of robots taking up the role of a teacher in entirety is still a matter of doubt.

Vicarious learning: As per the social learning theory proposed by Albert Bandura (1965), much of learning takes place through observation. Observational learning can take place any time through environmental, social and cognitive interactions and influences. Students are more likely to imitate or learn behaviors from a teacher they perceive as a role model and who is a human like them rather than from a machine with differing constitution and abilities. For example, one extremely sincere university professor was left deeply displeased when someone entered late in class though he made it apparent only through facial expression. The environment of the university was relatively relaxed, and the professor could have adopted a similar attitude, but he was always on time for class. The teacher was greatly admired and loved by students for his excellent teaching style, disciplined attitude and earnest efforts he made for each session. Observing the example and standard set by the teacher for two consecutive semesters influenced the student’s attitude and behaviour for the better. Years later, the teacher is fondly remembered with gratitude by students not only for his teaching but for his integrity and for instilling the virtue of discipline in life.  Vicarious learning is even more applicable in case of younger children who are keenly observing the actions of those around them, be it caregivers, teachers, siblings or friends. As technology continues to surface every sphere of our life, it will be worth reflecting in near future what kind of ‘models’ we want for our children- humans or humanoid robots and its implications too.

Inspire and motivate for high performance by communicating expectations: The Pygmalion effect, or Rosenthal effect, is a psychological phenomenon wherein high expectations lead to improved performance in a given area. Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson’s (1968) study showed that, if teachers were led to expect enhanced performance from children, then the children’s performance was enhanced. Lady Bird Johnson once said, “Children are apt to live up to what you believe of them’. Great teachers are able to appreciate students individuality, their performance in the development graph and encourage them by communicating realistic expectations.

If humanoid robots are well programmed to teach and grade student performance, they can as well be used to communicate expectations to the students. However, instilling faith in the student to strive for success in a given sphere in life requires an ability to see the student beyond his grades. Each student has unique aptitude, competencies, motivation, limitations and ambitions. The way a human teacher can understand, connect and motivate him to pursue in a given field communicating inside and outside the classroom engaging in formal and informal communication, can a humanoid robot replicate it with success?

Student engagement: Student engagement manifests in the classroom by the degree of attention, interest, participation, curiosity and involvement shown by students in the classroom.  Meece et al. (1988) set a model for cognitive engagement seen in the learner’s participation, and interaction with the learning material, learning activities and learning community. In a world where information is available at a click of a button, teachers strive for developing and sustaining student engagement in multiple ways. They provide authentic and specific feedback, remove any barriers to learning, use creative methods to deliver content, clarify concerns, provide reinforcements, discuss real-life examples etc. Understanding the association between student engagement and performance, great teachers listen, tell stories, communicate to the best of their ability to stimulate student’s creativity. Enhancing student engagement requires the teacher to not only optimize on the knowledge of the subject but how that knowledge is transferred. Tony et al. (2018) in their article on social robots for education write that to build a fluent and contingent interaction between social robots and learners requires the seamless integration of a range of processes in artificial intelligence and robotics. Starting with the input to the system, the robot needs a sufficiently correct interpretation of the social environment for it to respond appropriately. This requires heavy reliance and development in speech recognition, visual social signal processing so that a  robot can access the social environment. Speech recognition is still not so effective when it comes to understanding spoken utterances from young children and using touch screen to overcome this shortcoming can disturb the natural flow of the interaction. For robots to be autonomous, they must make decisions, take actions in a pedagogical environment with an understanding of the learner’s ability and progress. Building artificial social interaction like that between two humans is an essential prerequisite for enhancing student engagement that involves a wide range of cognitive and affective components, which is still a challenge in artificial intelligence and robotics.

AI is enabling machines to do tasks requiring human intelligence, machine learning is providing systems the ability to learn and improve automatically and researches in deep learning inspired by the structure, function and interconnections between billions of neurons is likely to lead to automation of many traditional roles and routine tasks. AI may bring newer opportunities and increased efficiency, but emotional intelligence is one area that machines find hard to emulate.  According to a recent report published by Capgemini Research Institute (2019), Emotional Intelligence will be a must-have skill in the future, with its demand likely to rise six-fold within the next five years. The role of a teacher is not merely confined to sharing knowledge; but requires one to don multiple hats depending on the situation-be it a mentor, counselor, motivator, guide and ally drawing heavily on emotional intelligence skills adapting one’s approach as per the unique needs of different students. To conclude, artificial intelligence can be a very helpful assistant in making academic functions more robust, freeing up precious time for teachers and also complement the teacher in the classroom but taking up the role of the teacher completely seems inexpedient. In fact, seeing how the millennial and generation Z are absorbed in their electronic devices, the role of a human teacher will become all the more critical and ingenious.