Virtual School Rant

I heard a report on the radio yesterday that virtual schools may soon become the only way our children are educated, and I almost drove off the road. Instead of actually going to school, our kids may soon just sit at their computer and learn from lessons that teachers post online. Here's what I heard.

The scary part is that they were trying to make this sound like a good idea! School budgets have been slashed, and educating students virtually is so much less expensive than the cost to send them through the public school system. Kids can learn at their own pace, and supposedly kids being taught virtually perform higher on test scores. Currently about a million kids in the US are being taught virtually.

Am I the only one who thinks this is a horrible idea??? First of all, kids learn their social skills at school. They learn to make friends and interact with other people. They learn discipline...they have to be somewhere at the same time every day, and if they're late they get in trouble. They get some (probably not enough) physical activity. If you no longer GO to school, these things will all be eliminated. Not to mention how are parents supposed to go out and work if their kids are home all the time!

My generation, Y, is already causing a drastic change in the workforce. We are a completely different animal than previous generations with our style of working, our expectations and our skill sets. But I feel that our generation is still contributing to things in a positive way. The generation below me will be even drastically more different, growing up with computers and cell phones and texting (don't even get me started on how texting is single-handedly ruining the grammar of this country). Now imagine if the following generation grows up sitting in front of their computers all the time, not even going out in the world to go to school. Can you even picture what these kids will be like when they get out into the real world? Sure they might be wizards on the computer, but how will they interact with clients? Coworkers? How will they learn all of the important non-education-related things that the rest of us have learned at school?

The report went on to say that with education budgets getting slashed left and right, soon virtual schools may completely replace brick and mortar schools, while the alternative could be no education system whatsoever. SERIOUSLY?!?!?

Can we please stop bombing Iraq long enough to give our kids and their kids the future they deserve? Yes, I understand that sometimes war is a necessary evil, but I just can't even fathom how they can spend billions of dollars on a war when they can't even properly take care of the people in our own country. Yes, I realize we are so lucky to live in America, but we still have issues. The education system is one of them. A real issue, not a virtual one. Can we please work on fixing it?