Dissing Online Education

By Steve Buckstein

One can imagine that blacksmiths and buggy whip makers didn’t take kindly to the automobile revolution that started in the late 19^th century. Those at risk of losing their horse-related jobs likely made the case for resisting the new, glitchy, and dangerous metal machines. We all know how that rivalry turned out.

Today, another revolution is beginning. Just as thousands of years of horse travel were largely replaced within a few decades, one wonders what the future of physical classroom education might be in the face of the online education revolution.

A Portland State University professor of educational leadership recently authored an op-ed making the case that “effective teaching practices such as class discussion, relational learning and other activities of the traditional classroom are hard to offer on a computer screen.” That might be true; face-to-face educational interactions may never go away, but soon they could be greatly supplemented or even overshadowed by online innovation.

The future is always daunting to those at risk of being displaced, but the future is coming and we will find ways to adapt to it and even improve upon it. Buggy whips may be a thing of the past, but there are still plenty of jobs for people who know how to make and care for our modern horseless carriages.

Steve Buckstein is founder and Senior Policy Analyst at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.