Opinion — Schools are no longer necessary because of the Internet

With free lessons on almost any topic now online, it has been suggested that children could simply learn at home and that schools have outlived their usefulness. I strongly disagree. The Internet has ended the school's monopoly on information, but information was never the main thing schools provided.

It must be conceded that online resources are extraordinary. A fourteen-year-old struggling with algebra can watch a Khan Academy video as many times as necessary and move on only when ready, which no teacher with forty pupils can offer. Motivated teenagers can go far beyond the syllabus, learning programming or a foreign language that their school does not teach. For self-directed learners, the classroom can indeed feel slow. The claim that children in general 'study well at home', however, assumes a level of maturity that few of them possess.

The first thing a screen cannot supply is a structured environment. Most children, left alone with a device that offers both a physics lecture and endless entertainment, will not choose the lecture, and working parents are not at home to insist. Nor can a video notice that a pupil has misunderstood: a teacher reads a child's written work, identifies the precise error and gives tailored feedback, which is how understanding is actually built. Schools also teach what is not in any curriculum, such as how to cooperate, disagree politely and get along with peers from different backgrounds. The school closures during the Covid-19 pandemic made all of this plain: despite online lessons, pupils in many countries fell behind academically, and those from poorer homes, with less space and parental help, suffered most.

Ultimately, the Internet is a superb supplement to schooling but not a substitute for it. Until a website can instil self-discipline, correct a child's thinking and teach them to live among others, schools will remain necessary, above all for the children who have the least support at home.