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We still have plastic forks at our school. It's amazing how many of them get twisted into gang signs. We had to quit using metal forks and plastic trays because they would just get tossed into the garbage. Now it's only styrofoam trays and plastic forks and spoons.
On-line might work okay for some college courses. Labs of course will still be needed for many of your physical sciences. I can't see it working well at the K-12 level though. And let's face it, schools are #1 a learning environment for kids (subject material and learning how to socialize with other) and #2 a day care to keep them safe and out of trouble while the parents are working. That #2 is a huge reason why K-12 on-line is not a good idea.
Ironic how teaching degrees were one of the first to become obtainable online.
Only part of it. To get state certification, most states still require an in-person practicum.
The various teacher tests that are required by different states have mostly moved to computerized versions given at testing centers as well as uploading videos of the teacher candidate teaching in a classroom setting.
While normal interactive social skills will plummet.
The evidence does not support your thesis. In general, homeschool students thrive and do not lack social skills. The more important question is, "Which social skills do kids learn in public school?" Many bad ones.
One thing I think you will see after this is more and more responsible parents placing their kids in online schools. As public schools increasingly refuse to use effective responses and consequences to disruptive, violent behavior, online schools will become a more attractive alternative. Many of them will be our most gifted and intelligent students. Frankly, the fate of civilization rests upon how we educate and foster the development of those gifted kids. I hope many of them will also include gifted kids from disadvantaged homes. Those kids are mostly trapped in chaotic urban schools where very little learning occurs. They are the societal capital we waste the most.
As for the problems we're experiencing teaching in a virtual setting, that is true of every new endeavor. Then you learn and refine. As it happens, there are outstanding virtual schools that make it work and we have their experience from which we can learn.
I think it would be a utter disaster for elementary and middle school aged students and I'm saying this as someone who is usually very pro technology. Possibly it could work for some high school students who are highly motivated but I don't think it would work for the majority of k-12 students.
We do very little for highly-motivated, intelligent students as it is, and that will only grow worse as we myopically focus on the bottom end evermore each year. For that reason alone, it is worthwhile to expand virtual learning as an alternative.
This then begs the question of what "marketable skills" should be taught?
How to insert an IV? Maybe how to build a block wall? Accounting? "Marketable skills" are ephemeral and change every few years.
The marketable skills schools do teach are being on time, doing what you're told, finishing a task on time.
Some things have happened over the last 30 or so years, starting with A Nation At Risk. Kids who once would have dropped out now stay in school and every effort is made to keep them there. Contrary to "common knowledge" the dropout rate among every student cohort is lower now than it has been in history while the high school completion rate, especially who the stats go into "completion by 5th year and 6th year", than they ever have been.
Graduation requirements are higher than they ever have been. Had I graduated in 2012 instead of 1972 I wouldn't have graduated, I couldn't have done the math Maryland requires for graduation (or Science either).
What also isn't recognized is that every education reform, every single one, over the last 30 years has been aimed at the lowest performing cohort-you know, the kids that used to drop out but now stay. And those kids are counted now, they never were before.
And contrary to what you have been told, those graduation statistics are completely misleading, given all the artificial, and, frankly, dishonest means by which those numbers are manipulated by public school officials. I am a public school teacher and I have seen this firsthand, in addition to reporting on how endemic this is within the system. For example, the "credit recovery" systems so many public schools have, where students complete extremely shortened, dumbed-down equivalents of actual classwork to quickly "recover" credits from courses they failed. Chronically-absent students who a few decades ago would have expelled or failed all their courses are allowed to pass. Additionally, students on IEPs, particularly EBD students, are given modifications and accommodations that make it terribly difficult to fail. That did not happen in the past. Academics who do these sorts of studies are usually ignorant to what is actually occurring in public schools. I can hardly blame them, given how strangely effective people within the public school system are at hiding these things from the general public.
Graduation requirements may have been raised, but rigor in curriculum has fallen and grade inflation is higher than ever. Compare the numbers of students on school honor rolls today versus a couple decades ago and beyond. Kids have not grown more knowledgeable. Far from it.
Yes, indeed, every reform has been aimed at the bottom. Not only have they failed miserably, but they have come at a distinct cost to the students at the top, not to mention the kids in the middle. We have finite time and resources. So few educational reforms or dogma are based on any legitimate science. It shows.
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