Online Schooling: Yet another concept I disagree with

In The New York Times, Sam Dillon wrote an article titled "Online Schooling Grows, Setting Off a Debate". The article discussed the new trend of online schooling that is slowly increasing in America . Somewhere around half a million children are taking online classes and some are receiving only learning from the virtual public schooling that now exists. Online schooling is raising a controversy because of it's recent growth and issues like whether or not online learning is a good thing for younger children have started getting questioned. Wisconsin, Florida, and Illinois are all places where online schooling has begun to rise. At the moment most of these online schools only allow middle school and high school students to enter. However, some parents are home-schooling their elementary school children, but legally are considered public school students because the online teaching is taxpayer financed and the children can be subject to federal testing requirements. Online schooling gives students a chance to move at their own pace through lessons, which is different from public schooling greatly. Overall, this new form of teaching is going to be met with a great deal of opposition, but that doesn't mean that the supporters won't go down without a fight.
Personally, I disagree with the majority of online schooling, but do see that it is helpful in some cases. I don't disagree with online schooling because it eliminates a lot of my job opportunities as a future teacher; I disagree with it because online schooling can cause a great deal of damage to a student in my opinion. Students need the actual environment of school because it provides social and personal growth that cannot exist in home schooling settings. Public schools are sometimes a painful and emotional experience for an individual; however, I would rather have painful memories than no social skills and the overall experience of school no matter what grade it is. Friendships, bonding and even boyfriends and girlfriends are all much harder to acheive when you don't attend an actual school. Even though a student may be able to learn at a better pace with home-schooling, they are going to run into much larger problems later in life. Look at me for example, I'm still struggling with public speaking and I never was home-schooled!