Traditional Education v. Online Education

Traditional schooling has come under fire in recent years because of the rise in popularity of online schooling. However, the cons of online schooling outweigh the pros. There are many reasons why someone would choose to drop out of high school and pursue an online education, but in the end their social and cooperative skills will suffer more because there is no physical interaction between students and teachers. It is clear that in a world where cooperative skills and connections are more important than book knowledge that online education does not fully prepare its students for that task. Another problem with virtual education is the business of scamming. Many online degrees that are offered have no value when put against a degree from a university. It is easy for people to work hard at an online degree, only to realize that it is not accredited or reputable.

Although people often encourage online classes because they can be completed at your own pace, it is often deceiving. As a student who has taken multiple online courses I know the difficulty of completing everything before the end of the semester. A student has to have the motivation to work piece by piece at the course, and many high school students do not possess that type of character. It is not appealing to have to sit down and work for three hours at a time just staring at a computer screen. Some people say that you can earn a high school diploma in as little as one week, which seems extremely fishy. I would say that in spite of the "cons" of traditional schooling it is still better than online education because there is physical interaction and at school you are forced to work with others. Online high school or college can be more challenging and not nearly as beneficial in the end.

Virtual High School is certainly a highly contested practice. Time after time, arguments and court cases have arisen debating the merit of online courses, whether or not they can truly take the place of actual, hands-on, real-life teaching. One such debate occurred in 2006, following the creation of an online VHS laboratory for science classes. The professor who created it invested a good deal of time in its creation; he worked with video game designers, to create an interactive media outlet through which students could perform potentially dangerous experiments without fear of harming themselves, others or school property.

It wasn’t long before suspicion grew, and the College Board confronted said professor, and presented a panel of extremely intelligent, attentive college professors to examine his online laboratory. The Board was unsure that the cyberspace version of dissecting a human may not match its equivalent when it comes to the pressure of a real-live situation.
“Professors are saying that simulations can be really good, that they use them to supplement their own lab work, but that they’d be concerned about giving credit to students who have never had any experience in a hands-on lab,” says Trevor Packer, one who assists in the Board’s AP placement decisions. “You could have students going straight into second-year college science courses without ever having used a Bunsen burner.”

Such cases are the main problem with VHS. Online, impersonal schooling that does not conform to the student’s unique traits can never compare to a human teacher, who can understand, work around and produce results from any abnormalities that a student might have. Don’t get me wrong; VHS is a stellar program to function for those who might find education otherwise inaccessible; in regard to that, I can find no better system. However, as a replacement for traditional schooling, I’m afraid that VHS will never be a true rival or substitute.

-Peter and Hannah-