Why is the world selling the idea that learning can be 100% online?

I have noticed over the past 2 years of COVID that there is a trend, both over social media and within campus, of perceiving this crisis as “a GREAT opportunity to move to and promote online learning” and make it accessible to everyone. I see some merit here, such as the argument that some people are too inconvenienced by attending classes in person due to family responsibilities, disabilities, bad traffic, or other legitimate reasons. However, I personally disagree with this push for the “virtualization” of learning across the board and with little regard to the content.

Don’t get me wrong. I am an avid YouTube learner, and I follow many educational YouTube channels such as Numperphile and 3Blue1Brown. I even have a GreatCourses subscription! Much of my learning happens online, and there were concepts in computer science and math that I would have never been able to figure out was it not for YouTube videos. However, I don’t think this approach can be simply adopted across all disciplines. For example, can we ever trust a medical doctor that has conducted all their training online? What about geologists who need to touch the material to describe it? What about students who can’t afford to do chemistry experiments at home? What about agriculture students? How can they really learn how to plant and take care of plants virtually?

The other dimension, of course, is that I don’t think any virtual platform so far has been able to solve the problem of class discussion. Zoom simply cannot replace a good face-to-face organic class interaction, especially when people turn off their camera, or their internet connection is unstable. There has been some commendable attempts like Gather Town. But, I think we are far from getting there. Maybe augmented reality will get us there someday? I don’t know, but I am sure it is no time soon.

I think some subjects lay themselves well to teaching online, while others don’t. And I think we should be very careful not to simply ride this virtual hype and to first be mindful of its pros and cons and when it does and does not work.