But Mom, I learned it on the internet: online education a plus?

More and more schools across the United States are resorting to online classes to boost graduation rates, help students with credit recovery, and deal with growing class sizes. This story in the New York Times juxtaposes the value of an online education with the benefits of learning in a real live classroom.

At times, an online class provides the opportunity to learn where otherwise students would not have one. For example, the Westbrook School District in Maine is offering students Chinese classes online through the Virtual High School Global Consortium, a non-profit online academy in Massachusetts. Westbrook is facing giant budget cuts and simply cannot afford to offer advanced language classes to small groups of students. At charter schools or low-income school districts, make-up classes for failing students are also being offered online on a growing basis. Idaho school districts recently passed a measure that requires schools to provide free laptops for all students, making 2011 seem like the prime year to be a student among the corn fields.

And yet, fancy Macbooks and internet hype fests aside, educators can't ignore the question: do we really learn better from a robot than when a thinking, breathing human being guides and instructs us? And what about the value of a classroom dynamic that pushes students to argue and challenge one another on current issues? Online education is often "cheap education." And internet courses do offer convenient alternatives for ill or otherwise indisposed students to catch up on work. But can a computer replace a human being, and if so, where are we headed...and do we really want to get there?