text: A distance learning option would better prepare students for the 21st century workplace. If school is meant to prepare students for the workplace as we are so often told, than why not let it reflect the modern day workplace? When public school students were largely being prepared to work in factories and mines, maybe this system of bells and rigid schedules made sense, but the modern American student is not being prepared to work in either of these places. The job market now is increasingly more reliant on technology and remote work, and this trend is likely to continue. To work in this sort of environment, students need to learn self-discipline in order to complete tasks. Students today should be able to practice this mode of self discipline by working remotely just as they are likely to do in the future. If as an adult a student will not be corralled into a single building with a rigid schedule, why should schools be like this? While the workers of today still have a boss, it is no longer the overseer threatening to cut your wages if the sleeve of your shirt gets caught in the industrial loom. The structure of schools should reflect this. Students should become more autonomous from their teachers as they get older. It is inappropriate for a 17 year old student to have to ask to use the restroom, a practice better reflected in the factory system of the Gilded Age than by the workplace of today and of tomorrow. Distance learning would better prepare students for the jobs they are likely to do by teaching self-discipline and a less authoritarian means of management.