- Question
- Should children be homeschooled?
Online schooling is a comfortable mix of home with actual teachers and a curriculum.
The argument
Online school provides a learning environment that is the best of both worlds. Students take classes online, communicate with their peers, and have access to a variety of teachers. Each of those addresses one of the standard objections raised against educating a child at home: that the child works alone, and that they are taught by whoever is available in the household rather than by specialists in the subject. The curriculum is tailored and polished, and parents can check in on what their child is learning, so the oversight parents value in homeschooling is retained without the parent having to design and deliver the material themselves. Online school is also done at home, so it is a mix of public, private, and homeschooling. That is the sense in which it occupies a middle ground rather than being a variant of one option. The setting comes from homeschooling, the curriculum and the teaching come from institutional education, and the two are combined rather than traded off against one another. In the United States, approximately 2.7 million K-12 students are doing education online. Even college students pursue this style of education, with nearly 25.8% of them having taken at least one online course throughout the duration of their education. Numbers of that size matter to the argument because they establish the model as an established alternative rather than an experiment: a method used at that scale has been tested across a very wide range of students, subjects and circumstances. Its growing population and flexibility make it a popular choice, and one that can even continue into college. The continuity is the final point in its favour. A method that works at school age and remains available afterwards does not require a student to abandon the way they have learned to study at the point they move on, which is a practical advantage neither conventional schooling nor homeschooling alone can offer.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Having school online may prove disastrous to some children. The internet is full of distractions, and students may stray from their schoolwork. Having school online may also create a habit of doing everything online, which may not benefit the child in the future.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] This format may not suit many children.