Faith in the Machines

CONTEXT: Growing inclusion of technology into day to day activities has led to an increase in reliance over such technology and loss of faith in human value overall.

Ethics of Education: 

• Education of the young is believed to be a relevant sphere for the growth of moral awareness.

• Institutional ethos and considerate pedagogic practices are known to nurture the kind of temperament and values that civic life demands. 

• Significance in checking plagiarism:

• In higher education, an important value everyone is supposed to learn is that the knowledge one has derived from the writings of someone else needs to be acknowledged. 
• This value is cultivated by the student-teacher interaction, which improved the quality of the research.

Issues with the over-dependence on technology:

• In Education: 

• Marginalisation of university professors: Sudden rise in plagiarised dissertation forced the University Grants Commission to institute the plagiary check based on software:

• The plagiarism checking software created its own need in the market, but the consequences of using such a tool were never contemplated.
• Prevailing stereotypes of teachers who prefer to work less helped in switching over to the use of the software.  
• Raised trust deficit between University and Teachers. The trust was cultivated and exercised by the teacher under whose guidance the thesis was written to check plagiarism.
• Mis-utilisation of educational resources: Educational institutions invest considerable effort and resources to ensure that their websites have a competitive market appeal.

• While technology ensures transparency, it does not lead to efficiency always: Use of CCTV cameras to monitor the attendance of teachers have been justified in the name of pedagogic quality. 

• Easy demonisation of teacher: paved the way for surveillance and providing parents with the happening of regular class activities, restricting the autonomy of teachers. 

• Reduction in Human interface: Regulation and accreditation has turned into a dictation of policy of facelessness. 

• New Education Policy states the use of technology to reduce human interface to ensure efficiency and transparency.

• Abdication of governance functions by the Government: The Government expects that a social media company will help societies to deal with the public expression of hate, implications being - 

• Leads to abduction of role of social institutions, including some run by the State such as legislative and judiciary.
• Increases the Power of Social Media companies by expanding their jurisdiction and letting them monitor and analyses the emotions and values of citizens.

Conclusion: We have entered an era where it is no longer necessary to understand why we choose to attain some value over the other. Technology should only act an enabler and should be regulated by the Government.