It has recently been argued that schools no longer play an indispensable educational role as children can conduct successful Internet-based self-study in the home. Truth be told, I find this view unconvincing.
On the face of it, children today can certainly receive a great amount of information on the Internet whenever they wish to learn new things at home. Since the advent of the World Wide Web, it has undeniably been easy for everyone, kids included, to undergo eye-opening experiences when they get online. Never in human history has there been such great access to so much information just with a click of the mouse. To illustrate, if a student wants to find English materials for IELTS, they can search on the Internet and there are a vast number of websites available for them like IELTS Simon, IELTS Mentor, TED-ED, IELTS-Up and so on.
However, it does not mean that all children using the Internet are able to teach themselves efficiently without school teachers. Arguably, the vast majority of kids are actually in need of professional guidance from educators in how to select quality sources of information from the ocean of websites and how to get the best out of them. More seriously, at a young age, most children are likely to be distracted from healthy learning activities by a wide variety of unhealthy online games, not to mention the harmful effects of adult materials in the virtual world that abruptly appear on the computer monitor while children are using the Internet. Therefore, it could be said that while children’s Internet use is one matter, learning effectively from its information sources is another.
In conclusion, despite children’s Internet access in today’s context, I believe that schools still are, and will forever be, of the utmost importance in bringing academic success to children.