social and emotional development is a critical component of their role.
-I don't think this can be overstated. In school children learn the social norms and etiquette expected from them in a civil society, such as holding the door open for someone behind you, not cutting ahead in line etc. These are the small things that hold our societies together that are difficult to impart in a virtual setting.
How much social etiquette do you really learn at school, though? Holding doors open for others is certainly something I associate more with being taught by my parents and grandparents than teachers. Conversely, one could present a reasonable counter-argument that school has a deleterious effect on many children's social and emotional development. I sometimes lament the fact that my own high schooling occurred before widespread adoption of the internet; it seems to me that alienated or neurotic adolescents have a much better chance nowadays of meeting others with similar temperament or inclinations by going online than was possible for them in the mid-90s.
I suppose you are right about most social etiquette. What about group dynamic though? Teamwork, things like that? You can still work in teams in a virtual setting but it's not the same as being next to the person and bouncing ideas around. In fact, it's vastly different imo.
Can't argue with that, and upon reflection the benefits I espoused earlier about virtual communities have their obvious counterpoint in the insane levels of abuse that kids cop from one another while gaming online. That said, I think a lot of the things the physical classroom does better nowadays can't be precluded from the virtual classrooms of 2025.
Yes, because emotional intelligence (empathy) is a far better predictor of future success than any other form of aptitude testing and empathy cannot be taught in isolation. This is why every brilliant home-schooled kid on earth crashes and burns if they don't learn (and quickly) how to interact with their peers. The amount of information transmitted via face to face interaction vs. online interaction is equivalent to the amount of information transmitted by an HDTV broadcast vs. the amount of information transmitted by Morse code. Yeah, you can learn algebra from the Internet but you can't learn how to tell when the teacher is disappointed in you.