The Dark Side of Online Education

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How important is the quality of education in America to its citizens? Although it may seem obvious this question may not have a very clear answer. Traditional classroom style education that this country has followed for hundreds of years is becoming endangered to electronic takeover. Not in the way that the classrooms will become more technologically advanced, but that they are being replaced by at home online courses. Unfortunately many of the students enrolled aren’t because they need this type of education but rather that they do it out of pure convenience. The problem with all of this is that people are so impressed by the possibilities that they forget that homeschooling is not necessarily the best environment for education. Although convenience may be important to many Americans today, the potential harm of an online education to a young student is not worth its possible benefits.

One aspect most often overlooked when discussing education is the social skills that are acquired throughout years in a classroom setting. It is taken for granted that school is majorly responsible for the way in which a student socially develops. In an article that discusses the barriers faced by students enrolled in distance education Jill Galusha concurs with this by stating, “The ‘Distance’ aspect of distance learning takes away much of the social interactions that would be present in traditional learning environments” (Galusha 4). Even when presented with this evidence it is not always understood the drawbacks of not being in a classroom full of students. Teamwork skills will develop much slower if at all, as well as the skill to simply socially interact with a peer or a student of the opposite sex can become greatly underdeveloped.

When en...

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