Virtual Schooling

I often tell my students, “Those who do not understand the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.” I say this when we are reading historical fiction. My kids don’t get history class.

Once invested in that end, it was a challenge to give them a similarly profound reason to read science fiction. “It’s about the future!” they would argue. “It hasn’t even happened yet. We can’t learn from this!”

“You can learn tons!” I would say. “Imagery and plot and conflict and… Goodness I’ve just lost them.”

Middle schoolers need more – or at least mine do. So, when it came to science fiction, I explained: “This writer has imagined the future! It’s our duty to decide if we want that future or not! If we don’t do something, it’s coming!”

At the time, this seemed a clever ploy to get 6^th grade quiet, focused, and ready to read. But in reviewing education articles for this post, I found it is a disconcertingly true possibility.

Isaac Asimov, in 1951, wrote a short story called, “The Fun They Had.” In case you haven’t read it, you can find it here.

In this story, Asimov writes of a future where two kids find a real book… and they’re THRILLED about it! They’re thrilled because they hate school. Counter-intuitive, I know.

In fact, they hate the “mechanical teacher” (robot) that is meant to educate them from their home. Margie particularly hates it because the robot keeps giving her tests! She becomes so inundated with assessments that a County Inspector must be brought in to fix the system.

Regardless, the book they find is a story about education in our recent past. With such revelations as teachers “having a special building” to teach kids and kids being taught by a human, Margie can only daydream about, “the fun they had.”

Now, consider our present! According to the Washington Post, “Virtual schools are multiplying, but some question their educational value.”

Just as Asimov showed us in his short story, it would be a great detriment to our kids if virtual schooling became the norm. Consider how much would be lost, especially in terms of social interaction!

My challenge to you, then, is just what I posed to my students: Is Asimov’s suggested future what we want? Will we guide it to fruition? Or will we do our part to maintain that indispensible human quality in education?