I came across this article recently about how Career and Technical Education can be effective, even enhanced,  in the online-only environment made necessary by the COVID-19 pandemic. When I saw the headline and started reading, I felt some hope. By the time I finished, my hope had evaporated.

Here’s a short excerpt:

“While teaching CTE programs in a virtual environment is somewhat of a necessity today, it does offer long-term benefits. Online programs offer flexibility. Students can learn from practically anywhere and at their own pace if they have the proper devices and internet access. Students also can stay engaged in their learning and extend what they learn in the classroom with interactive learning opportunities they participate in at home.“

To be sure, CTE encompasses a broad array of fields, and some of them adapt well to online learning, especially those focused on cyber-security, programming, cloud computing, and the like. 

But extolling the advantages of online education for these areas of study and extrapolating that CTE in general works online is like saying your baseball team has a great shortstop and second baseman, so they’ll win the World Series, even though their pitching stinks.

There’s no way to sugarcoat this: As long as schools are fully or partially shuttered, all of the opportunity gaps that plague us will widen, and the students who most need hands-on, individualized attention will suffer most. Watching a video of an intricate car engine repair, or the complex measurements and precise touch required to make a carpentry joint are a pale substitute at best for the tactile experience of getting hands on actual materials. There’s just no way around that.

Preparation for the construction trades in particular seems particularly ill-suited to online-only education. And, as we’ve stressed elsewhere, there are abundant jobs in those fields that pay well and that are searching for qualified applicants. 

To the extent that CTE programs can prove agile and adaptable, and provide multiple options for delivering content, count me as an enthusiastic supporter. But it’s not helpful to pretend that everything will be just fine if students preparing for careers in industries requiring hands-on work have to move their learning online for an extended period.