With the increased use of the internet in all aspects of our lives, are schools really necessary anymore? Would remote classroom environments work just as well?
Remote classrooms would be a huge cost savings to taxpayers and reduce the burden on the environment and rush hour traffic as children no longer have to commute to attend class.
View B
Schools allow for educational as well as social growth. In a classroom environment, teachers can better interact with and provide better individual attention to students who may need it.
28 comment(s) so far
MDTthinks: Although having schools is an added cost to taxpayers, it's crucial to give young people the opportunity to develop social lives. As young people, it's important to have relationships with peers to develop socially and learn how to interact with different types of people. I would think this aspect is possibly more important at an early age than even the educational aspects of schooling.
Simplerthinks: Tools to enable remote learning can only be a supplement to real interaction, I think. Kids need the full bandwidth of real human interaction to understand all the social rules and unwritten codecs necessary to do well. They could not pick this up, if they were only accessing the school via a device at home.
As other discussions in this forum show, kids already have problems with getting away from their PCs and gaming devices. This would mean that they would stay in front of it all day.
It is a different story when used as a supplement to normal schools, e.g. when doing homework. Can also be used for kids that for some reason are unable to attend a normal, physical school.
rmill9681thinks: I think school is very important to the social development of children. Also, if they were not at school, parents would need to be home to watch them and to make sure they were actually attending virtual class. Parents barely have enough time to drop off/pick up their kids now.
ryanthinks: It does not have to be an all or nothing approach. long distance learning is already growing in acceptance. It allows for many people to access "experts" and allow for the hands on teachers to be generalists ensuring that the children are getting it.
JBonninthinks: Social interaction is absolutely necessary in early stages of life. No question of suppressing it! It´s at school, among real people, that an individual learns to face the world.
zenthinks: I am a teacher so this might came a bit by surprise but I don't think a kid needs to be in a schoolbuilding to develop social skills. If only dad and mom and the rest of the family were more at home, these sociall skills can be learned in and arround the house.
What is tought in school is highly overrated and so is it effectiveness. Also
The whole eductional programm should became a big online game where you learn all kind of skills on your own pace from you own surrounding.
Nothing wrong with kids spending hourse behind a computer, it all depends on what they are doing there. of course they will go out and play, that is something natural. The bad thing of school is that we take that out of their system.
hermanthinks: Books will disappear from their shoulders. Knowledge will be given much much more easy to comprehend. Knowledge by gaming, statistics, physics, biology, etc. etc.
Put a group of creative individuals together on a topic and some game-developers.... Mostly one will need hardly any words.
Learning by gaming is the future.
On schools they may work together to get some results. Or just playing chess etc. Sports...
JBonninthinks: Socialization at school is not about playing games or obtaining results only. It´s about overcoming self induldgence and bad habits often transmitted by parents themselves.
The daily contact with other children who are not necessarily friendly is fondamental to make the child become able to question and decide independently from parents and willing to overcome obstacles. It is the only way to form independent responsible adults.
