Some individuals think that schools are not important anymore, as the internet has made it viable for students to self-study sufficiently. In my view, in this day and age, the internet is an excellent source of information. However, there are certain things that schools that are excellent at that internet could fail to teach.
Clearly, the internet has an endless source of education materials that anyone of any age can use. Books, encyclopedias, and even video materials make learning easier than ever before. Children can use such online resources to learn what they are supposed to learn at schools anyway. Learning as such opens the possibility for any person to learn at their own pace. That is, if a prodigy is in the same class as an average child, they, more than not, are left behind their true potential. Of course, the same logic applies to those that are less intelligent.
However, schools do not teach only about math, language and other scientific classes. They, although indirectly, teach social skills to children, which is only possible through everyday interactions they have there. The internet is obviously lacking in this aspect; children can’t make friends with just books and videos. We are social creatures and children need to have such interactions from an early age, otherwise, we would effectively be setting up their futures for failure.
From my standpoint, the hope for online education is not all lost. Such education has incredible potential and schools should adapt to it. Instead of, say, all online education, offline hours a child spends at school can be reduced. So that they can have more personal time to recover.
To conclude, the statement that children can learn from the internet is not completely wrong. However, it overlooks another aspect of schools that the internet can’t teach. And I think they should adapt to the internet instead of choosing it as a successor.