Traditional schooling is better than online schooling

I"ll start off with a bit of framework for this debate. First, keep in mind that we are talking about the value of online vs. traditional schooling as a whole, which means all aspects of each educational system are considered and the impact for all students is taken into account. Second, based on your arguments, I"m assuming that we"re only focusing on K-12 here, so that"s where I"d like to keep this debate. Now for my arguments in favor of traditional schooling: 1. Lack of Social Interaction Traditional schooling teaches students a lot of important things, but social skills are some of the most important. In a classroom setting, students are forced into social contact with other students, many of whom they wouldn"t talk to in any other circumstance. This allows students to learn more about people different from themselves and broadens their worldview. In addition to this, traditional schooling builds teamwork skills by assigning group projects that students have to collaborate on. These teamwork skills cannot be taught in an online setting. Finally, face to face communication is key to almost all social interaction and business and must be learned in person through experience. "Only a small percentage of communication involves actual words: 7%, to be exact. In fact, 55% of communication is visual (body language, eye contact) and 38% is vocal (pitch, speed, volume, tone of voice)" [1]. This means that online scholars are likely to be less capable of communication than traditionally educated students. I"ll touch on some other social points farther down. 2. Productivity It may seem like having all schoolwork in the home on the computer would increase productivity, but for most students, that is not true. Most students would be more distracted at home in front of their computer than in a classroom with a teacher looming over them. With the entirety of the internet just a click away, what is there to keep the average, unmotivated student on task? The answer is a pretty clear "nothing". 3. Some things need to be done in person I"m mainly thinking of tests and lab work here. Test, quizzes, and assessments would all be impractical for online schooling. All the tests would be open book/open internet, so it would be impossible to get a real assessment of a student"s progress. Almost all sciences use labs or demos that would have to be removed in online classes. While some demos could be videoed and put online, students would lose the hands on experience. 4. Technological Access For those in rural areas, online school isn"t always an option due to lack of internet connectivity. Also, poorer families, especially those with multiple children, would struggle in providing internet and computer access to all their kids. 5. Making the Switch The conversion from traditional to online schooling would be a hard one to make. Not only would it make thousands of educational buildings across the country obsolete and useless, but it would also take jobs from all the current and future teachers. As of 2013 there are about 3.5 million teachers in the K-12 school systems [2] and thousands of people in college training to become teachers, and that"s not even counting all the administrative, custodial, and other staff. Taking away all these jobs would cause a large spike in unemployment and harm the economy as a whole. Now, onto my responses to the Con arguments 6. Long bus rides Con claims that his long bus ride (1 hour) was a massive waste of time, but while this may be true, it is not a good reason to switch to online schooling. First off, most students don"t have that long of a bus ride to school. Second, they should get used to the commute because as adults they will average a 24.5 minute commute to and from work each day [3]. 7. Time and Distraction between classes Even though Con considered time between classes to be a chaotic waste, for most students they provide some time to relax mentally between classes. If they were forced to sit in one classroom for 4 hours in a row, most would go crazy. They would lose concentration and have to change gears when changing subjects anyway, so there is really no harm done. 8. Bullies Yes, bullying in school is a problem. No, online schooling is not the solution. There will always be bullies in life, whether it be at school, in the workplace, in your social life, or at home. It"s better to learn how to deal with them in a setting where you can get support from teachers and parents that can intervene than trying to figure it out after leaving home. Online schooling doesn"t remove the problem; it only delays it without teaching the skills to deal with it. 9. Socialization Con makes the argument here that out of school activities and online communities can replace in-school socialization. Out of school activities are indeed a good place to learn social skills, but they are often tied directly to schools. School sports, clubs, and fine arts programs are some of the most common out of school activities for students and taking away the traditional schools would make these harder to access. In addition to this, activities that aren"t associated with schools are much harder for low-income and minority students to participate in. In one study, low-income parents reported only half the success of higher-income parents in finding affordable, high quality, and interesting out of school activities for their children [4]. In response to his point about online communities, please refer to my first point about how much of our communication is physical and vocal. These are just not present online. 10. Homework & Learning at Home Con claims that if schools want kids to learn at home through homework, they should just have all schooling in the home. This is not true because the point of homework is to get the student thinking about the material more than just once during class. Also, Con says that in-home learning is preferable because the parents can get involved, but once again this is not true. In many cases the parents are busy working and even when they aren"t, they don"t necessarily have the skills and knowledge to help their child. For all these reasons it should be clear that traditional schooling is the right choice. [1] . http://finance.yahoo.com... [2] . http://nces.ed.gov... [3] . http://project.wnyc.org... [4] . http://www.publicagenda.org...