Are online schools a good idea?

In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about whether or not online schools could replace more traditional schools. This was amplified when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Many conventional schools moved rapidly to deeply flawed remote learning programs.

I have long insisted that our attempts at education reform have been repeating the same mistakes. Instead of looking for the best way to educate, we instead look for insignificant modifications to the existing system. A vast majority of attempts at online schooling are nothing more than attempts at digitizing the system that we already have. If we want online learning to become successful, we need to look further. We need to look at the best way to implement online learning rather than the best way to digitize what doesn't work. We need to be bolder and look to utilize the internet to completely reinvent our educational system.

Does all of this mean that I expect online learning to displace facility-based learning? The short answer is no. With how resistant we have become to change, I don't expect to see the changes that we need. Even if we did, online learning would only be one piece of our broader educational puzzle.

The lone positive that I have openly associated with our schools has been their inclusion of educational resources that exceed just about what anyone had available at their homes. Some resources are obvious, such as the books selections they have in libraries. Others are a little easier to overlook. While books could be provided over the internet, you are not going to see the same thing with lab equipment.

How is this for a resource, community. I am not a fan of the rigid exclusionary community typical in conventional schooling, but you can't learn to be a part of a community without access to a community. If you want to be even more specific, you can't learn to be a part of a sports team or an orchestra by going online at home.

Swimming would be another good example of where a physical facility can help. Most families don't have swimming pools. Even if they do, nobody is going to learn to swim online. You have to actually get in the water.

The internet is a valuable tool. Depending on the student and the subject, online learning can be the best approach available. Ideally, this would be a new system from the ground up rather than an adaptation of an already bad idea. Even today, there are some students who seem to do better through online programs than facility-based. Unfortunately, there will always be limitations to this model. Online can be part of a student's learning, but it should never be the entirety.

Despite the problems with online learning, it is possible for an online-only model to exceed the conventional model. This isn't because online-only is ideal, but because the conventional model is a disaster. Again, we need to move away from a digital adaptation of the conventional model and towards something built completely around online learning. Maybe this will lead us to the point where we finally tear down the conventional model in favor of something that actually works.