With enough effort and discipline lots can be learned online. And yes, if I lived in some remote village with no school but access to the internet (interesting proposition) and a power supply, I might be interested in online learning.
But to think of learning as the relationship between a learner and some given subject matter is profoundly distorting. Learning is first and foremost a relationship between two people. In the context of history, education is the relationship between one generation and the next. It is the generation of the parents telling the generation of the children what matters and why. They do this not only by defining curriculum, but by illustrating via their own commitment to the subject matter, why it matters, how it matters, when it matters....etc. Although teaching institutions are often built around hierarchies, dominance, and obedience, there is still in the experience of the classroom the reality as experienced by the students vs the reality of the teacher. And though it might not be expressed openly, and though it might not change teaching practice, there is an infinitely higher chance that it will change reality with face-to-face learning than with distance learning. At the very least, the political aspect of education is much more visible with the traditional model than with the online model. Much more can be said, but I'll only add that with the move to online learning, another massive expropriation of social space will have succeeded. And let's not kid ourselves; this will not happen because online learning is better. It will happen because it is yet another way to guarantee profits and to fragment and isolate the working class. There is both an economic and a political dimension to this move, and they are both horrendous. Online learning makes the structure of domination absolute, the prospect of appeal, unrealistic, and the likelihood of universal surveillance, a sure bet. Joanna
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