As a deadly disease, COVID-19, sweeps across the globe many school systems are looking to a extend period of time were the majority of their students will be in isolation. One way that school systems have attempted to avoid set backs in education during this time has been the use of online education resources. This system is effective in times were students can not physically attend school but would have catastrophic results if implemented into long-term plans. Although many supporters of online education would argue that it reduces the likelihood, and effect, of social problems that are commonly seen in schools, distance learning would cause major problems to students and destroy the positive developments the current education system has encourage. Some of the developments that would be removed from the education system are: an equal access to physical school resources across the school, the ability for students to preform in after school activities, and the current sociological benefits of doing school work at a physical school.

The problems that education faces across the country may be chronic, but schools still provide an equal access to help outside of the classroom across the school. A major resource that all students have access to is a school library. In some communities school libraries are the only libraries students have access to so they are the sole gateway to information outside of classes. Another resource is students access to teachers, this is critical to their learning and allows for them to conference about difficulties they are facing in the class. Most current forms of online school would eliminate teacher conferencing from schooling though. Finally some areas of the country lack internet access for many reasons. In these areas the implementation of online schooling would be impossible without major invest by the school system which in most likely is underfunded. The physical resources that can only be present at a school serve as a strong argument against online schooling.

With the implementation of online schooling the ability for students to participate in extracurriculars is immediately called into question. Without a physical building to meet in everyday many extracurriculars lack the funds to rent out a separate property and would quickly fold. Even students that were invested in an after school activity before a switch to online schooling occurred would face the difficulty in their ability to travel to the new meeting place of their activity. Many students do not have access to a car, either for financial or legal reasons (they do not have a license yet), so busing is the only way these students are able to travel to and from the school. With online schooling this busing would no longer be consistent and many after school activities would see huge drops in participation or fold entirely. This would be detrimental to the students who any have the talents to successes in other activities outside of the school. This would limit the opportunities students have causing the diversity of experiences the rising generation would have.

A common challenge that schools face is the maintaining of a "learning environment", although this may be difficult to deal with, this would be impossible for online education to fix. The transfer of learning from schools to the home would cause the "learning environment" to cease to exist. Although schools can issue computers that can only access education resources, there are still physical distractions that schools cannot stop. This is a challenge that many home school students have had to face but they are better equipped to solve this problem. Home schooled students typically get around distractions by having a dedicated space for school. This works for the typically wealthier home school students whose families can afford an extra room in the house. This solution is next to impossible to maintain in cities or impoverished areas were all the rooms in a given house are taken up, or potentially over used. The implementation of online schooling would destroy one of the greatest aspects of traditional schooling, the "learning environment".

Many supporters of online education say that it significantly reduces the chances of social problems that arrive from traditional schooling such as bullying. There are two main fallacies in this argument: first, that bullying can still happen outside of school; and second, that this sheltering makes it easier for bullying to occur later in life. Cyberbullying has become an ever greater threat to students and schools have been largely unequipped to deal with the problem head on. Online schooling would only magnify the problem by allowing problems to go undetected with the school having limited access to what is going on only when students are logged into a computer. The second problem arises from the transition that students make from high school to college. This serves as a difficult time for students already with hazing, bullying, and other bad social behaviors occurring. If a student is sheltered for all of their public education, from kindergarten to 12th grade, they are exposed to this harsh environment without the social skills or experience required to navigate these turbulent times. Instead of stopping the problem of bulling, online education only seeks to kick the problem further down the road.

Online education as a whole may appear promising in its abilities to "level the playing field" but it instead, if implemented, would result in a regression on many of the fronts; namely: physical school resources, after school activities, and the benefits from a dedicated school building. This would make the "playing field" of education only more uneven. As the COVID-19 virus sweeps across the country and schools must look to online schools for a time, it will be necessary for schools to remember the benefits of traditional education and see online schooling as only a temporary fix.