29 Jan Online vs. Classroom education

I’m in an interesting conversation right now. A friend is interested in taking a course online on asked my opinion of the online education trend. I was honest, maybe too honest, in saying that i think it depends on what you value in education. On multiple levels, they frighten me for the future of education. For anyone who has ever ‘taught’ an online course, there is evidence enough that they lack some of the most fundamental interactive processes of learning, particularly in critical thinking. On the other hand, for those who don’t care strongly for the actual process of learning, only for the learned outcomes (and the neoliberalization of education has, in fact, added to this phenomenon – on which I’ve too much to say), then, yes – they’re fine. I think the bigger questions have to do with considerations of education as a product – I think those that see it as merely a stepping stone or credentialing package for better paying jobs, then they work fine. However, conversely, there are more studies coming out showing that distance learning degree programs have very little cache in the job market. On the other hand, maybe these new ones will be perceived differently than, say, City Colleges of Chicago or Phoenix. For me (and many in my field and it’s sister fields), this is a pedagogical issue. But we are social science – and in the eyes of many people, a waste of time. I subscribe to Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and am deeply indebted to the work of bell hooks and her Teaching to Transgress. Each of their work is about undermining traditional learning frames of learning for the sake of ascribed knowledge and actually push both students and teachers to make the classroom experience one of mutual leaning and personal growth. I have my students read pieces from one of these two works at the start of each course and help them to learn that their already attained knowledge – whether as Freshman or Seniors – is not only valid, but enriching to the process of all of us in that classroom. And I do mean all, as in, me too.

Learning, particularly university learning, is about doorways for exploration and there is nothing more enriching than the wonderful, sometimes difficult and uncomfortable, sometimes funny, sometimes seemingly unproductive conversations that unfold in the classroom.

Unfortunately, the decision by universities to create online courses are not always about enriching students’ lives. And maybe they will learn how to, someday. I’ve worked on some international online learning modules through AAG, but they are crafted to connect students across the globe to each other, not students to data. But for now, in these early phases, the decision to create these are coming from a need for money.

I ruffled feathers. Others insisted that any schooling is better than no schooling, and even another insisted that “education is a human right.” The question of education in the global south was raised, the question of education for the working class was raised. I will agree with that last statement but make a caveat – equal education is a human right. What we are seeing is a breaking off of education – online, technical, and skills-based schooling for the poor and working class; classroom learning with extended professor contact for the elite. Those of us who struggled to work our way through school – i have worked at least part time, but usually either full time or two part time jobs since i was twelve, including while in undergraduate and graduate school – should not be shuffled out of the classroom and into the impersonal online world of computer-based learning. And i will go so far as to include the global south.

At root is the question of quality. Why are the poor, the working class, the less endowed forced into a different kind of education? I can’t say, class to class, program to program, area of study to area of study, whether online programs are good or bad, but i can say that forcing a different kind of education is a new kind of Jim Crow – separate, but sill equal? I don’t think so.

I recently had a Skype conversation with a dear old friend of mine. We agree on most things until we talk about the global south. He tends towards a paternalistic, “they need to have fewer children to save the environment, they need to learn to value money, they, blah, blah, blah” – i adore him, but he frustrates me. So i was surprised when he called to ask what i thought of him setting up a non-profit education program where he would create online learning modules for people in Thailand (where he is living now) so they can learn skills to make money. He was specifically thinking of his own skill set in web design – the kinds of skills that can be outsourced across oceans. I was not very encouraging. But he was convincing – learning skills to make money – good money, even! – while learning from home. The chance to get out of poverty. The chance (and really this is what it came down to) to teach young women skills so they could make their own money and stop waiting around for a rich white dude to marry them (his experiential grounding, not mine).

He isn’t the first white male i’ve met who got it into his head to create online learning modules for people in the global south (or, Africa! as one guy put it – he was applying to the Gates foundation for a 10 million dollars to set up his project) – nor is he the first white male with no education background, much less experience in  non-profit work, to even begin to think that he is qualified. What is this fascination that White Saviours from the US have with education? And why does it always have to be so different?

And why, oh why, is the conversation always boiled down to access, and not equal access?