Many say that online school is great, the next big thing, and the future for education.  Me? I say I hate it.  It is not because I have never tried it that I am criticizing it; it is because I have tried it that I criticize it.  I have actually done it twice, for Geometry and English 11.  It was awful. I did not find it beneficial at all.  I hate staring at a computer screen all day and trying to mess with all the technical stuff.  That is not me.  Being at home, I was always distracted and never willing to give my full attention to assignments. Online is not for me.

I have spent two summers in online classes.  Maybe it is different when it is a full school year, but for a full year crammed into four weeks, it doesn’t work for me.  The first was Geometry.  I am bad enough at math as it is, trying to learn it online did not go over well.  Honestly, I would not know anything that was asked to me today about Geometry.  This past summer I took English 11 online.  I will admit that it was not as bad as Geometry, but it was still bad.

Personally, I hate technology.  I might love my cell phone, but that is about it.  Anything online is a struggle for me.  I am not good with the programs, nor do I want to be.  I especially hate online testing.  I miss having a paper and pencil test.  Yes, they do give us scrap paper, but it just is not the same.  I like being able to have paper materials, I just feel more comfortable that way.   Being able to write things out in with my hand is so much easier than trying to figure out how to put it on the computer.

I always had “technological problems”. My computer would constantly shut down or the program messed up.  I absolutely hate dealing with computer problems.  Not to mention the internet in my house is not necessarily the fastest internet.  I am not the best with computers, so I would always have to wait for my mom to come home to fix the problem.  By the time she had come home I would have already lost hours of time I should have been working on schoolwork.  However, since it is all online, if something does happen (as it did many times) there is nothing I can do about because it is all online.  Unlike homework from an actual class, which I would still be able to complete, online homework would not be completed. I also prefer a paper textbook ,which I love so dearly, to the hard-to-use online copy.

Staring at a computer all day is not ideal for me.  I hate staring at anything all day, including the television.  I prefer actually going to class and being social.  I have learned that I can work better in an educational environment instead of my bed (which is where I would normally “attend” class).  If I wanted, I could go sit at the kitchen table, but why go there when I have the comfort of my bed?  When I am at home I want to be comfortable.  It is also much easier to get distracted, such as with my phone, television, the kitchen, my cat, or really anything else I can do at home that I cannot do at school.

The workload is such an annoyance.  Maybe that is because it was summer, but having to do eight hours a day of one class? I cannot focus for that long on one subject.  I was not about to spend four weeks of my summer on school.  I want to be able to go out with friends and relax in the summer, not work hard.  This might suggest that I am lazy, maybe I am. So what?  It was summer and I was not putting my full effort into an online class.

Maybe I hate online classes because I’m stubborn and once I dislike something I have to put my full effort into rejecting it.  One bad experience and I hate the whole system.  I hate how everything is becoming dependent on technology.  I do not like the direction that online classes are taking education.  Being in class is so much better than being secluded at home with no real interaction.  Relying on computers for everything is just making our youth less involved in the real world.

I may be one of the few critics to online school, but I will stand fully behind my reasoning.  I like tradition.  That means I like school to stay offline and on paper.  I believe that one day all this technology will just crash and then where will we be?  Messing with computers is just too much work for someone like me, someone who does not wish to become fully knowledgeable in the tech world.   I refuse to jump on the bandwagon that supports online school.  However, I will admit that maybe, just maybe online school works for some kids a whole lot better than it does for me.