If you think kids will respect a robot teacher, you have never met a kid | Dave Schilling

A New York school district has paused plans to bring an android into the classroom. Is this our educational future? What’s more harrowing than sending your child to school? Maybe getting stuck on a city bus that can’t drop below 50 miles per hour or it will explode, but that’s about it. Once your kid hits school age, you have to decide (if you’re lucky) between public and private education, vet the teachers, and neurotically worry about whether they’re learning enough and are socializing effectively. For seven hours a day, someone who’s practically a stranger is responsible for the wellbeing of one of the most important people in your life. It’s a stressful situation, but maybe it would be less so if your kid’s teacher was a humanoid robot. Or not. Upstate New York’s Salamanca city central school district recently paused a $60,000 program to install an android teacher’s aide from the company Realbotix, named Sally, to assist their actual instructors. Sally was to have specifically been deployed into high school classrooms for students studying technology and robotics. As the superintendent of Salamanca school district said: “The robot also provides opportunities for students to lea