Since the advent of internet technology, society has been trying to take advantage of its features to improve the quality of various aspects of life. In recent years, this has become especially prevalent in education, as the "flipped classroom" model continues to gain traction among educators. Amidst all this reform, some see total online learning as the logical next step. However, distance/online learning will never fully replace the physical classroom because with all its convenience also comes a less specialized classroom where it is harder for students to stay focused on their work and receive help when needed.

Distance/online learning is not entirely practical because it does not consider the increased degree of focus that students must have. In a physical classroom setting, there are students who are entirely engaged in the course, but there are also students who frequently allow their minds to wander. In these scenarios, the teacher will chorale those wayward students back into the classroom discussion because they will notice their lack of participation. However, this scenario is much more difficult to envision for a distance/online student. If they lose focus on an assignment, the internet will encourage this mental spacewalk by allowing the student to open other tabs and search for whatever piques their interest. When the student does this, there are little to no repercussions if they are sitting in their bedroom instead of a classroom. While some might argue that the online model teaches students independence and work ethic, many online students will likely never develop either of those skills because they were never truly held accountable for their actions in the firstplace. With all the temptations of the world-wide-web at their fingertips, it is no wonder why students would rather open a new tab and watch

Star Wars than complete their history report. Distance/online students are at a stark disadvantage to their in-person counterparts in both college and the job marketplace because the work ethics built by the in-person students will be much better. Distance/online learning does not take into account the temptations the online learner faces and as such leaves them vulnerable to developing an abysmally poor work ethic that does not translate well into college and the job marketplace.

With all of the resources of the internet, one would think that any distance/online learner would be able to receive whatever type of special help they required. This assumption is flawed. When students have an issue with an assignment in a physical classroom setting, they are only a hand raise away from an answer. Some distance/online learning sites have attempted to make up for this by allowing students to video conference with teachers, but this is only a partial solution. Online teachers often have extremely large class sizes where the "conferences" mainly consist of dozens of students watching a teacher lecture; as such, students can find themselves waiting much longer for help than if they were sitting in a physical classroom. When this happens, students would be forced to scour the the internet looking for answers for their specific issue, sorting through tons of content that is incorrect, irrelevant, and unhelpful before possibly finding the answer. Without an educated presence in the room, it is more difficult for students to differentiate between which online sources are completely credible and which are patently false. Distance/online learners are at an educational disadvantage because it takes much longer for them to receive help on coursework issues than their in-person counterparts.

The only conceivable convenience of distance/online learning is the fact that one does not have to leave the home. However, convenience should never given more weight than quality in the area of education. Distance/online learning requires a focus that not every student has; distance education leaves them behind. It becomes harder to receive a quality education when students are not given every resource possible; there is no complete substitute for an in-person conversation with a teacher about one's issues with a given course. By failing to find proper substitutes for the most important aspects of in-person education, distance/online learning hurts the very group it is trying to help.