The School Newspaper of Cherry Hill High School East

Eastside

The School Newspaper of Cherry Hill High School East

Eastside

The School Newspaper of Cherry Hill High School East

Eastside

Online courses fail to approach teachers

Online courses serve several functions for many students; one is to offer them a course in a relatively stress-free environment, while another is to open up a place in their schedules for a more typically preferred class. Meanwhile, other students attempt to skirt notoriously difficult in-school courses that our school provides by instead taking the online equivalent.

Online classes are offered for a multitude of on-site courses, ranging from Biology to History AP classes. Each course has its own length and price.  I for one have sampled the platter that East caters to its students, deciding to take biology online rather than here at East. This decision allowed me to choose a one-year history elective that I likely would not have been able to take otherwise.

However, many students choose to take courses online specifically to avoid the grueling task of taking them in school. This decision alleviates the overwhelming stress of numerous homework assignments, tests and essays that an AP course or another equally difficult course might entail. In addition to a significant reduction to the effort in completing the course, the result also unfairly favors the student taking the online course.  While a student taking the class in school might receive a hit to his or her GPA, an online student’s GPA would be unaffected, either for better or for worse.

We, as in society, watch enough law-related television shows to understand the phrase “breaking the spirit of the law,” which is wholly applicable to this particular situation. A person cannot be properly educated by a lifeless machine, much less via the cheap, knock-off textbooks that are normally packaged with these aforementioned online courses.

Story continues below advertisement

I was forced to use the textbook American Pageant by Thomas Bailey, which can also be found as referred to in the book Lies that My Teachers Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen. To put it somewhat lightly, Loewen views American Pageant neither as a historically accurate nor academically vital textbook for high schools or, for that matter, any other conceivable purpose.

The fact is that online courses do not provide the level of education that East aspires to present to its students. When we walk into school each and every day, we are bombarded by declarations of East’s academic achievements, the most major of which is the blue ribbon. Not one of those judges could justifiably pin that same ribbon upon the screen of a computer running an online course. Any student, when taking a step back from his or her own particular set of circumstances, would agree with those statements.

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary Online, the definition of education is “to develop mentally, morally or aesthetically, especially by instruction.” Not a single person can provide ample examples of online courses developing any of the things with which education is defined. Computers do not act as a substitute for face-to-face interaction that presents at least the possibility of both mental and moral development.

As Jim Rhodes, played by Terrence Howard, claimed in Iron Man, machines can never truly overtake a human pilot in the skies because of the unique human instinct. By that same logic, a computer can never replace a human teacher in the classroom due to the knowledge, instinct and interaction the latter exclusively brings to the table.

Online courses simply will never provide the education that a classroom does on a regular basis.

View Comments (3)

Comments (3)

All Eastside Picks Reader Picks Sort: Newest

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • A

    AnonymousJan 12, 2009 at 8:50 pm

    I agree with the article for the most part. I took AP US History and the workload was overwhelming. Although the true meaning of education is to learn something, it sometimes works out better to take the easy way out and focus on subjects more interesting to the student. if i need a certain amount of credits to graduate, but at the same time want to learn everything i can about business, there isn’t much alternative to online classes without killing yourself with homework. essays and tests and projects are good, but for an honors student at east, the workload can be too intense and impossible. health first, family second, eduation third. If education interferes with your health or your family, than a change has to be made. it enfuriated me when i worked myself to death in history while some friends of mine took the course online. but these friends had no reason. they were just lazy. therefore, i think there should be some eligibillity requirement for someone to take an online course. you stated that face-to-face interaction cannot be substituted and i agree that there is no more influential form of education than face-to-face and “the easy way out” should be avoided at all costs, but not outlawed altogether.

  • S

    Scott Kessler (‘09)/Eastside Opinions EditorOct 29, 2008 at 8:20 pm

    Thanks for commenting, Ross.

    I’d just like to respond by stating that I believe you missed the intent of the story. I was focusing on academic classes, ones in which human interaction is inherently needed and ones in which human interaction induces intellectual advancement. Human interaction will always outdistance technology in the quest for knowledge and the use of said knowledge.

  • R

    Ross Presser '84Oct 28, 2008 at 5:12 pm

    I think you overstate the case somewhat. While online education is likely not appropriate for the bulk of the high school curriculum, including just about everything taught at East, there are subjects and topics that are uniquely suited to online education. One easy target is what was called “Personal Typing” when I was a sophomore in ’82, and “keyboarding” in ’85 just after I graduated. Do you really need a full time teacher watching you grind over the exercises as cram the QWERTY layout into your muscle memory? Do you want to be tied to the speed of the slowest student in such an endeavor? Or would such a task be just as well if not far better accomplished by letting the student work through a series of typing exercises at his own pace, delivered, assessed and graded by the computer?

    Some things don’t NEED interaction. I’ve learned far more in the past five years about American and world history from personal reading, both online and online, than my lousy History teachers ever managed to even approach in the 24 minute periods that I snoozed through while at East.