Not how I mean it. I do cancer research, but it's not fundamentally because I want to cure cancer. It's fundamentally because I have a passion for science and scientific investigation. I almost ended up in physics, and astronomy, and neuroscience, but my path took me to cancer research, and yes, I want to find a cure for brain tumors. Teachers and students are partaking in an activity that they value. If that activity is stripped of value, they are no longer teachers and students. I strongly believe that if we let things cease to matter, then we have surrendered to another master. We are here to live and die, not to get degrees and jobs. I think most things, are. However, sometimes people force or cajole others into doing things that denies their humanity.Overgeneralizing perhaps?
Isn't everything?
I'm having a little trouble following you. Let me see if I can paraphrase. It sounds like you're saying teachers and students are not so much there to follow passions, live lives, and do things that express the human condition and their humanity. They have forgotten about their humanity and they are there to follow rules, fill in the blanks, get degrees, and eventually jobs. That is, while pursuing degrees that lead to jobs that help us survive, we sometimes lose the very passion that makes us human. Pursuing degrees and jobs become a "master" to which we've surrendered. We become automatons performing functions rather than living, feeling, thinking, growing, and expressing.... is that it? If I've got your point so far, then I'd say it might matter to me whether a computer or a human mark my essay. If I wrote the essay as an automaton following instructions because it was assigned, but I got nothing out of writing the essay, then a computer may as well mark it. On the other hand, if I am as passionate about my essay topic as you are about cancer research and I'm writing it to communicate my thoughts on a topic I care about, then it would be kinda nice if a human read my thoughts and responded to them. (Are we there yet?)
Yes. But, I'd add that this isn't what they should do, it is what they do. I'd also say that it doesn't have to go so far as passion. The act is what makes them what they are. Having the computer grade the paper, makes the student a tree that falls out of earshot. I have this saying: "What you do is what you want." I believe it. Perhaps because I believe it, I find this so absurd. I think to do otherwise would be to confuse the means and the ends. -I think we are there.It sounds like you're saying teachers and students are not so much there to teach and learn as they are to follow passions, live lives, and do things that express the human condition and their humanity.
On the other hand, if I am as passionate about my essay topic as you are about cancer research and I'm writing it to communicate my thoughts on a topic I care about, then it would be kinda nice if a human read my thoughts and responded to them.