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UNTIL SOMETHING better comes along, a Calculus II pill or some electromagnetic impulse “teaching,” learners will be learning online. From the moment they leave school, they will be learning online.
Forget for the purposes of this discussion the self-evident brick and mortar considerations of learning. Obviously there are needs to address legitimate group activity and hands on learning. The open and honest public discussion needs to be about how we deliver the rest.
The only place where students won’t be learning online, and more importantly, the only place where they won’t learning “how to learn online” is in public schools. And, in other schools with a great deal of investment in capital spending and personnel; the spending of vast amounts of public resources and power.
The number one goal of education is to facilitate the development of independent lifelong learners; students who have no need for brick and mortar schools, nor for teachers, nor for administrators, nor for school boards.
There are those who future lies in hiding the dead horse.
Online learning threatens them because they have no control over it, nor any legitimate excuse to insinuate themselves in the spending of vast power and resources.
A high school diploma must certify competency. It must certify real readiness for meaningful employment or further education.
It needn’t certify how the student came to that readiness, because it doesn’t make any difference.
For the rest of their lives, learners will have a choice between an expensive brick and mortar experience or an online equivalent; far more convenient and far less expensive.
Online learning is an idea whose time has come.
Deal with it.
CHED MACQUIGG
Albuquerque
