VR schools: the future of education?
If you’re a parent, teacher, or student, you may have noticed that the implementation of virtual reality (VR) in schools has gained ground lately. In fact, there are now VR schools in elementary education that are entirely online.
Starting in third grade, full-time students wear a headset for thirty to forty minutes at a time, for four or five sessions, with built-in pauses so that the students don’t experience visual fatigue. (Younger students do something closer to regular virtual school, using Microsoft Teams and Canvas.) In the afternoon, kids complete their coursework independently, with teachers available to answer questions digitally.
The promise of VR schools
The promise of these VR schools is that they will improve education through online classrooms that “engage learners” using highly immersive technology. Why engage students online in this particular way? The argument seems to be that this sort of online engagement will decrease their feeling of isolation and loneliness—a common problem with schooling that’s entirely virtual. That, in turn, should optimize the learning experience of students.
Of course, this whole argument assumes that loneliness and suboptimal learning are caused by a lack of online engagement (as if kids weren’t engaged online enough nowadays). Unfortunately, there really isn’t convincing evidence to back up this claim. In fact, there’s a lot of evidence against it (UNESCO, 2023).
For example, a key reason has to do with the undeniable human need for in-person interaction. It’s crucial for early stages of learning. As social animals, we need normal face-to-face contact to cultivate healthy minds. In that light, having young students sit around with VR headsets in place of real-world social interaction … well, it doesn’t sound like an experience that would cure loneliness or facilitate optimal learning.
As psychologist Sherry Turkle has observed, when we allow screens and interfaces to replace people and faces, we usually end up feeling more isolated (or, as she puts it, “alone together”). In all likelihood, VR won’t be a panacea for loneliness, let alone for problems in education.
There’s no quick technological fix for complex social problems
Thinking that VR schools will somehow solve problems in education is what we’d call, to quote author Evgeny Morozov, a form of “technological solutionism” (Morozov, 2013). It’s the presumption that we can solve complex social problems with a quick technological fix.
But complex social problems, including those in education and literacy, require a rigorous research and analysis. Simply adding more new technology into schools, and then hoping it’ll provide a quick fix, probably won’t work. Now, having said that, it’s true that technological innovation may be part of a solution. Indeed, VR technology may end up being helpful to supplement some types of learning.
However, as educator Neil Postman reminds us, technology always takes place within a specific social context. If we don’t take time to consider that context, then just throwing more technology at a problem is unlikely to solve anything.
References
Morozov, Evgeny. (2013). To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. New York: PublicAffairs.
UNESCO. (2023). An ed-tech tragedy? Educational technologies and school closures in the time of COVID-19. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000386701
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