At college or any level of school, the question, “What is an education?” merits serious consideration. After all, a school’s mission drives every facet of its functioning, from classroom design to core curriculum. However, such a question especially demands pondering given the changes in education that have occurred in the past two years under the COVID-19 pandemic.
When COVID-19 enveloped America in spring 2020, it potentially altered the trajectory of American educational methods for generations to come. In the first few weeks of the pandemic, school after school moved classes online, shocking onlooking students until the sheer deluge of cancellations and changes resulted in shared resignation and apathy. In the months that followed, schools sought to bring students back “safely,” setting overarching mask requirements, requiring social distancing, insisting on weekly testing, and limiting students’ travel beyond their dorm rooms. By the time a year of the pandemic had passed, many schools had added vaccine mandates as pre-requisites for students to return. In some counties of America—like my home county of Dane County, Wisconsin—schools still have not returned to normal.
Many of the perceived COVID-19 dangers have vanished in a vaccinated America dominated by the less frightening Omicron variant, but at least one danger remains: education might never again reach the “normal” that best cultivates good human souls. A shift in mindsets toward the greater acceptability of online education lies partially to blame for this.
The ease with which online or distance learning has infiltrated the education system ought to concern students, faculty, and human beings in general. Simply, in-person human interactions matter to human growth and development. People matter—not mere people in the abstract, but the actual friends, faculty, and “fellow travelers” who grace the lives of students. Any college student can name these defining but everyday companions, from the dining hall worker who never skimps on portions, to the dormmate who always asks how you are doing, to the professor who crosses your way on the walk up the stairs, to the eager leader who welcomes you at a new service activity, to the bright face at the desk next to you who greets you every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Even if unknown and unseen by the average citizen of the world, these people and those interactions are priceless. Online classes and education can never truly replace them. A lack of spontaneity, interconnectedness, and human touch will always burden and derail even the best online classrooms when compared to traditional, in-person learning.
Such weaknesses or total losses found in online learning eliminate key components of true education. That is, education is not academic alone in nature. Neither does education, fully construed, confine itself to the physical classroom. At college, for instance, students learn how to navigate both the rewarding and aggravating parts of adulthood and Life itself. Whether dealing with challenging roommates or setting aside sleep for the sake of a last-minute paper, students inevitably gain and practice independence, face and solve problems, flounder and succeed in social situations, make choices and bear consequences, juggle service to God and the demands of everyday drudgery, practice giving and taking, and attune themselves to the unique and beautiful talents or “music” of each person sharing their lives with them, sometimes from just a desk away.
Arguably, as many of these character-transforming events occur at dining hall conversations as at the whiteboard; major personal growth proceeds from the unplanned accidents of living life together with fellow humans. In an educational institution, a focus solely directed at disseminating book knowledge from instructor to student consequently falls perilously short of education’s purpose: to form truly human individuals who can live good lives appropriate for a human being’s nature.
Even when done by the most earnest and well-meaning instructors, online learning just unnecessarily and critically divorces the actions of accumulating knowledge from the richest sources of knowledge: Logos-animated, endlessly complex, ever-changing humans living real lives in community. A person filled with learned facts about humanity but unable to understand the particular human with whom he interacts—whether a grocer, a restaurant server, or a customer—cannot engage comfortably, fruitfully, or charitably with existence in a world populated by flesh-and-blood humans.
Thus, those partaking in and contributing to schooling cannot distill an education down to a lecturer, muted black boxes on Zoom, and a rehearsed or recorded lesson watched at 2x speed. We cannot communicate indefinitely through a screen, forgetting the feel of a handshake, the thud of a textbook, or the pleasant burden of a full backpack. We cannot lose focus on the significance of growing together, of laughing, crying, struggling, and studying among other mortals—those most fascinating subjects and teachers of all. Although online education proves tempting in its power to spread information more cheaply, readily, and conveniently to the masses, it does so at a cost. If we reduce education to one perceived end and ignore its means, we will have, in a very real sense, lost Humanity.
After all, we are communal beings, not self-sufficient islands unto ourselves. We are wonderfully created works, not scientific curiosities. We are amalgams of organic tissue, not machines of circuits and silicon. We are individuals with unique parts to play in the unfolding story of life, not collectives of empty drones waiting for a higher force to dump data into our heads. By investing in the intellect without protecting the intangible human soul of each person, we only step closer to actualizing the “men without chests”—and the ultimate destruction of the human race—that C.S. Lewis warns against in The Abolition of Man.
This post was edited and adapted from a rough, unpublished essay begun in 2020 but even more relevant today than then.