5 Facts You Should Know About Virtual Homeschools→

The number of “homeschooling” students learning online has grown exponentially during the past decade, and it’s been no accident.

The US government has contracted private businesses such as K-12 to provide an online education for your child. And virtual schools are nothing less than capitalistic enterprises with marketing budgets large enough to convince you that virtual schools are best.

BUT ARE THEY?

There is overwhelming evidence that virtual schools provide a sub-par education.

THE FACTS

1) One need not look very far to find the evidence. Consider this: 54.6% of virtual high school students graduate within four years compared with 85% of high school students nationally, according to the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder.

But even if virtual schools did provide a good education, what effect does online learning have on a child’s social and emotional development?

Social Development

2) A lack of proper social development is a matter that should concern us tremendously. To develop excellent social skills, one must socialize.

To put your child in front of a computer all day, and expect that he'll grow up to be a socially-adept person is wishful thinking. 

It would be like confining a child to a playpen and expecting him to learn how to run.

Daniel Goleman first pointed out in the 1990s that emotional intelligence, which includes good social skills, is vitally important to a person's ability to do well in life.

People with high EQ tend to function better in their personal and professional relationships leading to less stress and greater happiness. Let us not forget that personal relationships also include the parent / child relationship.

Ancient philosophers understood the importance of emotional intelligence, and many modern studies have confirmed Goleman’s findings.

Even if we had no studies, we have our common sense. 

Screen Addiction

3) Another oversight by us is the idea that a child can study at a computer all day and not develop the habit of using the computer. What we do every day becomes our habits and forms who we are.

Who do you think will be at a higher risk for gaming or internet addictions: the child who plays sports, reads, and has an active social life or the child who spends a large part of his day in front of a computer?

We want our children to form good habits when they are young, so they grow up to live good lives.

 The Virtual Teacher

4) What about the role the teacher plays in the child's learning process? A good teacher inspires a student to love the subject, and a good teacher motivates a child to work harder.

A good teacher influences a child to become a better student because the teacher develops a meaningful relationship with the child.

How can a computer screen with a teacher staring at you from the other end be a replacement for a teacher in the room? Can the image of you in a mirror ever replace you? Both have a real person behind them, but there is only one real person in the room. 

Health Problems

5) Sitting in front of a computer all day causes health problems. Adults suffer all sorts of ailments from time spent in front of computers such as musculoskeletal injuries, headaches, poor vision, inability to focus, obesity, cardiovascular illnesses, and declining memories.

Why do we ignore the potential health risks for our children when they are in even more need of physical activity than we are?

Here are only 3 health issues we should consider, but there are more.

a. Myopia

Children who use the computer are at higher risk for developing myopia (nearsightedness), according to researchers. In the past few decades, as computer use has become more and more common for children, so has the necessity for reading glasses.

(Too early reading may cause this too.)

Myopia when young can lead to eye diseases long before a person is old. Sadly, myopia in students increased significantly during Covid when many young children were in front of computers and continue to be today.

b. Effects on Posture

Posture is also a problem because sitting at the computer causes us to slouch forward and tilt our heads back, which can lead to headaches, muscle strain, and chronic neck and back problems.

c. Obesity

Obesity amongst children has become a significant concern amongst pediatricians because of the physical and psychological health problems that accompany it like heart disease, musculoskeletal issues, and a lack of self-esteem, to name a few. 

The Alternative

We have this idea that only "accredited" teachers can teach, but there isn't a proposition more ludicrous than this one.

As parents, we are always teaching our children.

Rather than using the virtual schools riddled with so many unwanted side-effects, why not homeschool your children with real books instead? 

Learning from real books and a real teacher is more engaging, more fascinating, and more rewarding which will lead to overall better academic success.

Remove the computers, and your homeschool will become a place of constant social interaction with everyone in the family, naturally leading to closer families too.

It’s a win / win.

☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, Elizabeth will guide you in homeschooling with the classics to raise brighter and more creative children.

Enroll using the link below and feel confident knowing you have the guidance and support you need to homeschool successfully.

For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with Elizabeth’s original online course, Raise Your Child to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a homeschooling thought-leader and the founder of Smart Homeschooler.

As an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach, Elizabeth has 21+ years of experience working in education.

She has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child, and she devotes her time to helping parents to get it right.

Elizabeth is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.

*****

“Elizabeth has given us counseling and guidance to help us succeed with our home school planning. When I feel overwhelmed, scared, or lose my confidence, she offers words of wisdom and support.”

— Sherry B., Pittsburg, PA

When Is Online Learning Recommended for Kids?

It is physically, emotionally, and intellectually superior to teach your kids without computers.

Yet, there are times when we can justify online learning for our kids, but these times should be the exception, not the rule.

The Problem with Screen Use

Sitting in front of a computer for long periods during the day is unhealthy, regardless of age. Yet, it is even worse for children because they are still developing the habits which will become their way of life. 

Their brain is also developing and needs exposure to environments that don’t hinder its development. 

We want our children to be physically active, socially competent, and intellectually sharp.

To accomplish these goals, we need to put our children in environments where they learn to enjoy physical activity, engage socially with people of all ages, and develop their minds, including their memory, which is a vital component of intelligence.

IT'S ALL ABOUT HABITS

Yet, a child who develops the habit of sitting in front of a computer for long periods during the day is not getting physical activity, social stimulation, or developing his memory. 

He is developing the habit of using the computer, which requires almost no moment on the user's part. It is an anti-social activity requiring no social skills and virtually no use of our memory.

As one young person said, "Who needs a memory when we have all the information we need at a push of the key?"

“Neurologist and Oxford professor Baroness Susan Greenfield believes that video game addiction can cause a form of what she describes as “dementia” in children.​”

Given that our memories are a part of our brains and that a good memory is always present in highly intelligent people, it would be prudent to develop and protect our memories by using them. 

We don't want to waste our or our children's minds sitting in front of screens tapping keys.

The Social Factor

Another parent noted that "online pupils tend to abandon manners that most would adhere to in the classroom."

One of the concerns, when a family is considering homeschooling, is the social factor. "Will my child develop good social skills?" Yet, we put our kids in front of computers and call that homeschooling without connecting the dots. 

Online learning is not homeschooling; it is anti-social schooling. 

Kids growing up in anti-social environments will most likely become anti-social adults. Online homeschooling, with kids sitting in front of computers for too many hours per day, will produce anti-social kids.

Developing social skills and learning to enjoy other people's company is a result of

1) being taught manners when young, so we don't offend others, and

2) having ample opportunity to practice social skills, so we learn to be comfortable and confident in social situations.

We also learn to enjoy the company of other people, and we discover much about ourselves by interacting with others. 

We are social creatures; living these technology-consuming, anti-social lives is unnatural!

Dumbed-Down Schooling

An in-person teacher provides a socially-active environment for children where they engage and develop their social skills. A teacher also creates an intellectually-stimulating environment for children where they can ask questions and search for answers. They hold books and learn to read well so they can tackle subjects independently.

If we aren't raising kids who know how to ask the right questions, who know how to find the answers, who know how to teach themselves, then, as Dorothy Sayers said in her essay on education, "...whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain." 

Online learning is effort spent in vain.

“Steve Jobs was not a proponent of tech in the classroom. His kids read real books. ”

— EYH

Even Steve Jobs was on to the problem with technology and children. Have you read his interview about it in the New York Times?

Lastly, let me briefly mention the ill effects of screen use on our physical, emotional, and intellectual health, according to the Mayo Clinic:

• Obesity

• Inadequate sleep schedules and insufficient sleep

• Behavior problems

• Delays in language and social skills development

• Violence

• Attention problems

• Less time learning

With attention problems also comes learning problems. Who’s fooling who?

“In a 2010 Iowa State University study published in the journal Pediatrics, viewing television and playing video games each are associated with increased subsequent attention problems in childhood.”

We know kids have died from blood clots after gaming for too long. We want to protect our kids from the habit of computer use until they are older when they can no longer avoid it. Hopefully, they'll be able to exercise sound judgment and self-control by then. 

When can we let our kids learn online?

We can let our kids learn online when we have exhausted all other options. 

Below the age of nine, I would not let my child near a computer. The brain is still in a crucial stage of development until a child reaches adolescence, when the brain does a self-pruning of any weak pathways. 

Age Nine

At nine, I would make an exception and let my child study Latin for half an hour online, one day a week. The rest of the week, I would do my best to help my child study, using the lessons for instruction and inspiration.

Age 13

Around the age of thirteen, if there were any subjects my child needed, such as more advanced mathematics, and I could not teach them, I would hunt high and low for a teacher.

I would try to find other homeschooling parents who might understand the subject and could teach my child. I might ask qualified neighbors or put an ad up in a local bookstore for a tutor. I would do everything I could to find a natural teacher.

“In a 2015 University of Utah School of Medicine brain imaging study published in the journal Addiction Biology, brain changes were measured in video gamers that are correlated with increased distractability, impulsivity (hallmarks of addiction and ADHD), schizophrenia and autism”

Once I had exercised all options, I might look online if I still could not find a teacher. But my goal would be to keep my child off the computer if I could help it, and if I could not help it, to restrict online learning as much as possible.

Age 16

If my child were older, say 16, according to my state's law, I might consider graduating him from high school and moving on to college or dual-enrollment in our local community college. 

College is our best option for an older child when in-person teachers are unavailable.

☞ Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

When you join the Smart Homeschooler Academy online course for parents, I guide you in homeschooling with the classics to raise intelligent children without computers. You can enroll using the link below and be confident knowing you can and will homeschool successfully.

For parents of children under age seven who would like to prepare their child for social and academic success, please begin with our online course, Raise Your Child Well to Thrive in Life and Excel in Learning.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an Educator, Homeschool Emerita, Writer, and a Love and Leadership Certified Parenting Coach with 20+ years of experience working in children’s education.

Utilizing her unusual skill set, Elizabeth has developed a comprehensive understanding of how to raise and educate a child. She devotes her time to helping parents get it right.

She is available for one-on-one consultations as needed.

5 Reasons Why You Will Love Homeschooling and Never Look Back

Fear is the #1 reason that stops most parents from homeschooling.

Once you move beyond the fear, though, and decide to homeschool anyway because public school or online schools are no longer options for you, a whole new world emerges.

Most homeschooling parents then wonder why they waited so long to embrace the teaching of their own.

Here are four homeschooling perks that will make you fall in love with your new homeschooling lifestyle.

You Own Your Time

1. While the fear is that you'll lose your free time, what you don't realize is that you gain control over your time, you don't lose it. School no longer dictates what nights the kids need to be in bed early or when you can take your vacation or when your day ends and when it begins. These decisions are now yours to make.

If you have a family party to attend on a Sunday, you can stay as late as you like, maybe treat Monday like a Sunday and begin this particular week on a Tuesday instead. If you want to travel overseas for a vacation, but not pay prime rates for high season and deal with a deluge of other tourists, you can visit off-season and adjust your homeschool schedule to fit into your vacation time. 

Compound Perks

2. The compound perks that vacations offer is that you can turn any vacation into a homeschooling day of study. Think history, art, literature, and language arts. You are no longer restricted to the classroom for study, but travel can also become a hand's on way of learning.

If vacations are more than your budget can afford, weekly outings can fill the same role. 

As for your own free time, if you learn to manage your time and manage your children well, you should be able to replenish your energy reserves weekly. If you are going to homeschool, this is essential as the state of burn-out is real.

You avoid this by planning ahead and making sure you have enough time  to fill your reserves as needed. 

Many parents today are more overwhelmed because their children run them ragged with their constant demands on their time. Parents no longer know how to establish clear boundaries with their children.

To homeschool successfully, you have to get the management of your family under control first.

Homeschooling is a job, but it isn't one that should leave you feeling exhausted. On the contrary, it should feel rewarding and fulfilling to you. If it doesn't, then something needs tweaking. 

3. Another significant stress in life that the act of homeschooling eliminates immediately is the battle parents and children endure every day regarding getting to public school, readjusting to coming home from public school, and the homework fiasco. 

All the stress these demands bring into your life melt away just like that.

Gone. 

Regarding homework, parents who help with homework are homeschooling, so why not just homeschool without all the extra pressure that comes with having your children in school?

4. Your children do not get graded and slotted into arbitrary categories of excellent, above average, average, and below average. They don't get ranked with their peers and made to feel better than they are or worse because there is no average with homeschooling. 

They don't develop false limitations about their academic ability, but they learn to do well and to excel in their studies. If they don't, you don't move them on until they do. You are a private tutor to your child when you homeschool, so you know when he knows the material and when he doesn't know it.

It's that simple.

You might do reviews with him, but you never need to test or grade him. He is competing with himself, and he naturally learns to do his best work. Sometimes, this may require a discipline tactic or two, but he is being trained in your home school to be his very best, including the work he produces.

Grading, on the other hand, is for the classroom when a teacher has no idea where each of her 30 students is concerning what she has taught them. How can she be expected to know this without testing them?

And then come the grades with the boxes children get squeezed into that help to form their perception of who they are rather than who they can become. 

5. While your children may easily find friends in public school, you may not always approve of their friends, and you seldom know the family of their friends. If your child gets in with the wrong crowd, and there is no guarantee that he or she will not, you will watch your child be brought down by bad company, and there will be little you can do to stop it. 

With homeschooling, a prudent parent will choose good friends for their children, because the children are too young to know a good influence from a bad influence. When they get older, they'll have more discernment and be able to choose wisely for themselves.

As a homeschooling family, you'll make friends with other homeschooling families. You plan social events as a family, not as individuals.

Socializing as a family is the norm in so many other parts of the world, but in the West we've lost this habit that’s so vital to our family’s well-being. 

Homeschooling is a lifestyle that puts the family back at the center again and allows us the time to build stable families with members who enjoy each other's company and are loyal to one another. 

Many homeschooling parents have told me that they felt a distance grown between them and their children once the children entered school.

Have you noticed this too?

My own mother said this about all of her children, and she had seven. It's par for the course, this social distancing, and it's impossible to avoid when children spend eight hours in school and then two to four hours doing homework in the evenings.

Your children are not with you for a large part of the day, and you don't share a social circle. When families were tighter, there was less segregation by age and more intermixing of entire families.

This mixing brings shared experiences and fond memories, which are the stuff bonds are made of.

After having gone through the public school system myself, and after homeschooling my now-grown children, I can honestly say that putting my children into public school for their elementary or middle-school years was never a serious consideration, ever. 

The homeschooling lifestyle was too good.

Don’t miss our free download, Ten Books Every Well-Educated Child Should Read.

Increase your child’s intelligence by joining the Smart Homeschooler Academy summer program to learn how to give your child an excellent education at home.

Join our waiting list for Elizabeth’s online course: Raise Your Child Well to Live a Life He Loves.

How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader—a free guide and book list with over 80+ carefully chosen titles.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.

Using her unusual skill set, she has developed a comprehensive and unique understanding of how to raise and educate a child, and she devotes her time to help parents get it right.

Disclaimer: This is not a politically-correct blog.

If you are "Homeschooling," You May as Well Homeschool

Here are some points to consider now that your children are home, and you are expected to homeschool them.

Even if you were already homeschooling, these points will serve as a good reminder of the advantages to homeschooling.

A Real Homeschooler

A "real" homeschooler does not enroll their child into a state-funded program because you understand that it's an oxymoron. You cannot homeschool and have your child enrolled in public school at the same time. They are two different approaches to a child’s education.

In other words, your are either homeschooling your child or you are not homeschooling him. And the reality is that if he is in an online program, you are not homeschooling.

He's public-schooled at home and classified as such by the state. 

Furthermore, enrolling your child in a public-schooled at home program defies the benefits to a homeschool, which are many.  It’s crucial that you understand these differences so you can make an informed decision for your family that will serve your family in the highest way.

Freedom of Choice

For starters, you want to exercise your freedom of choice regarding your child's education. You want to be free to choose when you teach, where you teach, what you teach, and how you teach and for how long you teach. 

You also want the freedom to take vacations when you want to take vacations. Vacations are very important when you are homeschooling!

When You Teach

Not all children are ready to learn all things at the same time. One of the benefits of homeschooling is to start your child when he is mature enough for formal training, and you want to let him go at his own pace.

Allowing your children to go at their own pace, teach them to compete against themselves, which fosters an independent and self-motivated spirit. It also allows them to soar ahead when the material grabs their attention or just because they can. 

It's common for homeschooled children to be above their grade level in subjects for this very reason. The system is not tethering them to mediocrity. 

What You Teach

Educate your child with books, not on a computer. Raise them to treasure the feel of a book, the smell of a book, the content of a book.

Make reading their habit, not staring at a computer screen, which is both bad for the brain and bad for the eyesight, not to mention one's overall health (think childhood obesity). 

Expand their minds with the original writing of great men and women who have made major contributions to Western civilization instead of watching sound bites by people who regurgitate what has already been regurgitated many times before. 

Educate your child to know that they can learn anything they put their mind to learning. There are few limitations to discovering the universe of the mind for a child who is raised to understand that he is capable of so much more. 

How You Teach

When you homeschool your children, they are not stuck in a regime of boring classes that consume the better part of their day.

A real homeschooling day is much, much shorter than this leaving the child time for leisure activities to help him discover who he is and what motivates him in life; to contribute towards making him a person who is interesting to others rather than a good imitator of the latest ill-mannered sitcom character. 

Where You Teach

When you are homeschooling, you can teach your child anywhere because the world is his classroom. Establish a homeschool room in your house with a desk where he can write. Let him read in the living room, let him do science and art outdoors.

Take him on road trips to learn history, travel the world with him. There is no limitation to where you can teach a homeschooled child. You can teach him anywhere, no computer needed.

These are just a few of the characteristics of a real homeschooled education. If you choose to use an online program, understand that for all intent and purposes, your are not homeschooling your child.

Despite the fancy rhetoric, he gets classified as a public schooled student by the government, with all due respect, like all the other bricks in the wall as Pink Floyd so fittingly put it. 

If you haven't seen it already, do not miss this video clip!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjrfuDAEl10.

In a nutshell, bring your children offline and into the real world of learning. Resist the pull to depend upon the state for support by assuming responsibility for your child's education, and lastly, enjoy it.

Homeschooling is a marvelous lifestyle!

Homeschool the smart way by joining the Smart Homeschooler Academy to learn how to give your child the best of an elite education at home.

How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader—a free guide and book list with over 80+ carefully chosen titles.Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.

Using her unusual skill set, she has developed a comprehensive and unique understanding of how to raise and educate a child, and she devotes her time to help parents get it right.

Disclaimer: This is not a politically correct blog.

Bill Gates Should Learn the Difference Between Online Schooling and Homeschooling

As a parent, who may have a child learning online, you are entitled to know the facts about Bill Gates and his corporate push towards online schools.

The Business of Virtual Schools

The fact is that nationalizing our public school curriculum through the adoption of the Common Core, largely funded by Bill Gates to the tune of billions, opened the door for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to offer an online learning program to the public schools. How do these online programs get paid for their services? By us, the unconstitutionally-taxed taxpayers.

Here’s how it works: the public schools contract these online learning businesses, such as K-12 Virtual Academy, to teach the public school students. We, the taxpayer, then fill the corporate coffers with more of our hard-earned cash in what amounts to millions of dollars.

Another brilliant coup on the American people from some of the world's most greedy yet brilliant businessmen.

Shocking, no?

Isn't big businesses' hold on public education a sign that something is terribly wrong with our system? These are not educators calling the shots; these are businessmen interested in making money. They are not interested in providing a quality education for your child, nor do they provide one.

John Taylor Gatto courageously informed us in his History of Modern Education why this is so. If you have school-age children, you may want to read his two classics: Dumbing Us Down

and The Underground History of Modern Education. 

And if you have a child enrolled in an online learning program, you want to understand something Bill Gates does not: the difference between online learning and homeschooling. 

The two are not the same at all.

Why Online Schools Are Not Homeschooling 

Let's begin with the definition of homeschooling.

The Confusion of Terms

The original definition of the word "homeschooling" meant to educate your child at home. You had the option to hire a tutor, as the aristocracy always did (telling in and of itself), or you could teach your child yourself. 

In other words, homeschooling is the action one takes to educate one's children at home free from state control. The key point here is that the State has zero involvement in your child's education. 

Any other definition of homeschooling is erroneous and misleading.

Since people such as Bill Gates and other cronies like the ex-con, Mike Milken of K-12 Virtual Academy, have entered the fray, homeschooling has now come to have various meanings today. 

The definition of homeschooling now can even include its exact opposite: an outside location where children are taught in a school through the charter (public) school system.  

Children in these charter schools are legally classified as public-schooled children, yet, many call themselves homeschoolers.

How is it possible that homeschooling has come to include the exact opposite meaning from its original definition?!

Public-School Students Are Not Classified as Homeschoolers

With the onslaught of the charter school programs—a hotbed for much financial fraud—many parents enroll their children in these charter / virtual school programs and call themselves homeschoolers even though the State does not classify them as homeschooled students.

The State actually classifies them as public school students because they are public school students. 

I once asked a friend who ran a "co-op" charter school why they didn't just call it for what it was: a school. She told me that the State forbid them to call themselves a school. The State mandated that they call themselves homeschoolers even though they are registered by the State as public-school students.

What?!

Well, here's a reason to go digging, which I did at the time of hearing this. I was pretty disgusted with what I found, which is why I mention Bill Gates and Mike Milken.

What it would behoove you to understand is what homeschooling actually means. If you are Covid-19-stuck-at-home with your children who are ostensibly being "homeschooled" I want you to know that there is a much better way to educate a child than what these insatiable businessmen are making claim to. 

“For the sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.”

— Dorothy Sayers

There is an easier way, too, where your children can get a stellar education in half the time and you will enjoy teaching them and also educate yourself. If it sounds too good to be true. It isn’t.

We need to say “no” to the fraud of online learning while we still can because it will not provide your child with an education. Not the kind of education I’m talking about, anyhow, or the kind of education we were once admired for around the world.

Our literacy rates were not only high then, but higher as a nation than any other country and other countries looked up to us for this.

Now we are so dumbed-down as a nation that it’s embarrassing, courtesy of mandatory schooling.

“Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the State of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted — sometimes with guns — by an estimated eighty percent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880s, when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.”

— John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling

*****

To be continued next week in Part Two:

If you are "Homeschooling," You May as Well Homeschool

Homeschool the smart way by joining the Smart Homeschooler Academy to learn how to give your child the best of an elite education at home.

How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader—a free guide and book list with over 80+ carefully chosen titles.Elizabeth Y. Hanson is an educator, veteran homeschooler and a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education.

Using her unusual skill set, she has developed a comprehensive and unique understanding of how to raise and educate a child, and she devotes her time to help parents get it right.

Is Online Learning Really as Good as They Say?

The number of public school students who learn online has grown exponentially during the past decade. Private businesses like K-12 have been contracted by the government to provide an education for these virtual students.

Now with the Corona Virus in full bloom, the virtual world is bustling with young children sitting in front of computers, instead of classrooms. Bill Gates must be pleased. So must Mike Milken.

It's a major coup on the American people who are pumping their tax dollars into the hands of these large "educational" conglomerates, but that's another story. 

The Question

The question to ask now is, is virtual learning the right way to go in light of this crisis, and if not, what is an alternative that's within your average parent's reach?

 While holding that thought, it's always wise to remember that just because everyone is doing something doesn't make it right. There is ample evidence now that virtual schools provide a sub-par education.

Ineffective Way to Learn

One need not look very far to find the evidence. Consider this: 50.1% of virtual high school students graduate within four years compared with 84% of high school students nationally, according to the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Putting aside the low educational standards and the bleeding of the taxpayer's money, let's look at the other disadvantages to the virtual schools that too many parents fail to take into consideration.

Social Development

1) A lack of proper social development is a matter that should concern parents tremendously. To develop excellent social skills, one must socialize. To put your child in front of a computer all day, and expect that he'll grow up to be a socially adept person is wishful thinking. 

He won't. It's like confining a child to a playpen and expecting him to learn how to run.

Daniel Goleman first pointed out in the 1990s that emotional intelligence, which includes good social skills, is vitally important to a person's ability to do well in life. There have been many, many studies since which have confirmed his findings. 

Even if we had no studies, common sense would tell us this is true. 

Screen Addiction

2) Another oversight by parents is the idea that a child can study at a computer all day and not develop the habit of using the computer. What we do every day becomes our habits and forms who we are.

Children who spend time in front of computers for any purpose, even education, are at a far higher risk for developing video games and social media addictions later. 

If a child has a video game problem or a social media problem, do you think he or she will be out playing sports or engaged in social activities or reading books? 

What consequences will this have on his or her life? They'll have more health problems from a lack of physical activity, and they'll do less well in life from a lack of well-developed social skills. 

The Virtual Teacher

3) What about the role the teacher plays in the child's learning process? A teacher inspires a student to love what he or she is teaching; a good teacher motivates a child to work harder; a good teacher builds a relationship with a child that influences the child to become better at what he does.

A computer screen with a teacher staring at your from the other end of nowhere is simply no replacement for the real thing any more than the image of you looking back in the mirror is you. Both have a real person behind them, but there is only one real person in the room. 

Will the child be inspired to emulate his virtual teacher in the way he does his real-life teacher?

Health Problems

4) Sitting in front of a computer all day causes health problems. Adults suffer all sorts of ailments from sitting in front of a computer and not getting enough exercise such as musculoskeletal injuries, headaches, poor vision, inability to focus, obesity, cardiovascular illnesses, waning memories, and so forth.

Why do we think there are no health risks for our children when they are still developing their minds and bodies and in even more need of physical activity than we are?

Myopia

Children who use the computer are at higher risk for developing myopia (nearsightedness), according to researchers. In the past few decades, as computer use has become more and more common for children, so has the necessity for reading glasses. (Too early reading will cause this too.)

Effects on Posture

Posture is also a problem because sitting at the computer causes us to slouch forward and tilt our heads back, which can lead to bad posture, headaches, and muscle strain.

Obesity

Obesity amongst children has become a significant concern amongst pediatricians because of the physical and psychological health problems that accompany it like heart disease, musculoskeletal issues, and a lack of self-esteem, to name a few. 

The Alternative

Rather than using the virtual schools, riddled with so many unwanted side-effects, why don't you homeschool your children with real books instead? 

You may have the belief that you aren't qualified to teach your child, so take a moment to reflect on the fact that you were the first teacher to your child, and you were successful. You taught him how to walk, talk, get dressed, tie his shoe, and so forth. 

When you are a homeschooling parent, instead of tying shoes, he is learning math. It's that simple. There is no magic to it. We have this idea that only "accredited" teachers can teach, but there isn't a proposition more ludicrous than this. Anyone can teach. You are always teaching your children whether you're aware of it or not. 

It's a mindset, that's all it is. Homeschooling parents have confidence in their ability to teach their children. 

You will need a curriculum, you will need to understand what to do, you will need to schedule your day, but the actual teaching is not rocket science. Anyone can teach a first grader to read. 

If you're wondering what you'll do with your child all day, remember this: his childhood will be over before you know it. Instead of panicking about what to do, enjoy this time. Read to him, take him to the park, help him with his schoolwork, bake with him, do art projects with him.

The world has never been short of lovely things to do.

Join the Smart Homeschooler Academy to learn how to give your child the best of an elite education at home.

How to Raise a More Intelligent Child and an Excellent Reader, free guide and book list with over 80+ carefully chosen titles.

Elizabeth Y. Hanson is a Love and Leadership certified parenting coach with 17 years experience working in children’s education. She has two successfully homeschooled children in college.