It is acknowledged that schooling is for more than just academic and intellectual development, it is for general learning of social skills and how to work and play together. Criticism of homeschooling is generally towards the students' lack of development in social skills. South Park also poked fun at homeschooling through an episode on Rebecca (who won the national spelling bee) called Hooked on Monkey Fonics. So while online college and post-grad degrees have been available, we need to discuss the social implications of K-12 learning and full online high schools.
Knowledge Universe provides lessons for K-12 and has noted that in particular art and music are in demand as these courses are increasingly dropped from regular schools. These lessons will no doubt provide valuable tools for those that would already be homeschooled.
Regarding online high schools, such as Stanford's Educational Program for Gifted Youth, they allow students to go above and beyond normal high school coursework and scheduling in order to pursue their curricular or extracurricular interests. These online high schools can utilize virtual classrooms of students and teachers using video feeds, online chat and PowerPoint presentations, and boast to more connectivity and powerful tools then ever before seen in a normal homeschool or correspondence school.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the online high school trend, which gives H.S. degrees or GED's. Full online high schools appeal to these constituents:
-those that want to move faster than their classmates
-those who dropped out of traditional high school
-homeschooled children
-students with parents who need to travel for work
-and students with competitive extracurriculuar pursuits like ballet, tennis or gymnastics
Stanford's Online High School, in addition to having great teachers and flexible and challenging courses, also boasts to having an Asia Club, Music and Culinary clubs, and much more. The social aspect becomes very interesting as it relies more on gchat and skype- which students do anyway these days- but also it discusses video conferencing and meeting students from all over the world. In a way, this prepares students for a new type of social interaction that will become the norm, global interconnections through social media software that may become of the future of business communication.
On the other hand, the article comments on students dropping out of the program because of loneliness, and on students trying to organize their own dances to make up for prom. Fame came out in theaters yesterday, based on my high school LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and of the Performing Arts. Students at my high school really did act and dance in the hallways, and do 3-part harmony to math equations during math class. At the end of our prom the boat dropped us off at South Street Seaport where we promptly got up on the stage at the seaport and started singing "I'm gonna live forever", which I'm sorry Stanford, cannot be replicated in 0's and 1's.
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