By the age of 3, parents send their tots to pre-school, a place for kids to experience and learn outside of their homes. These small children learn to listen, behave, and, most importantly, socialize with other kids their age. With these social abilities, the kids are sent to kindergarden, a slightly bigger classroom in order for greater socialization and assimilation. What follows is middle school, then the largest, high school. However, with the rise of technology, an increase in a game-changing kind of education has been popularized: Online schooling. At an alarming rate, students have turned to this alternative in order to remain in the comfort of their own home. This comfort only goes so far; at what point does comfort turn into isolation? Through a screen, kids cannot nearly reach the needed amount of socialization and experience that regular, out-of-the-house schooling provides. Students would not benefit from the ability to take classes online as it hinders not only their social abilities, but also future job performance.

Students who attend school on a daily basis learn the basic social skills necessary for a job. Whether it's relationships with co-wrokers or bosses, these types of social skills help one keep up their career, something in which their livlihood depends on. Schooling provides knowledge on how to treat a boss. For example, in the memoir

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, Angelou claims that she skipped school in order to provide labor to her family business. When she got her first job as a housemaid at the age of 14, she had never experienced the discipline of a real teacher, a problem that also comes with online schooling. A few days into the job, Angelou broke numerous plates in spite of her "unfair" boss, but failed to realize the repercussions that would follow. If Angelou had attended real schooling, it's evident that she would be familiar with punishments that come with misbehaving, and likey would not have been fired. For online school, without a true disciplinary figure, kids could become just as naive as Angelou in the workplace. Outside-of-the-house school also teaches young adults about the social importance of punctuality. For example, for three years I've been the pianist for the school jazz band. Arriving to school at 7:30am every Wednesday is draining, however I've learned that if I'm late, I will get in trouble by not only my band director, but I will have also have let down all my band-mates. This has taught me to always be punctual to my hostessing job at a local resteraunt, knowing that if I fail to show up, I will have let down my co-workers. Such activites, that require punctuality, are not a factor of online schooling. Since punctuality is a necessary aspect of a job, students need to learn the trials and tribulations of punctuality in order to refrain from minimizing their good relations with co-workers and bosses in order to keep their jobs.

Online school will not provide students with proper skills in forming regular friendships. Healthy marriage, family, and peer relationships all are the product of how we learned to get along with others in the schooling days of our adolesance. For example, in the novel

Into the Wild by John Krakauer, outdoorsman Chris McCandless, from Annadale, VA, attended public school all the way until high school. Throughout his jounrney into the midwest, he credits all his friendships made along to journey to the ones that he made in Annadale. Always a social man, unlike other outdoorsman, McCandless learned to form bonds, for example the lifelong bond with elderly man Franz, in which they remained friends throughout the his journey. At resturaunts and bars across the west coast, workers claimed that McCandless had outstanding charisma compared to other wanderers. Other outdoorsmen who travel the west typically don't have the same social skills as they've been isolated from the world their whole lives. To compare it to online schooling, kids most likely will not gain the skills to form lifelong friendships if they are in isolation from the outside world, just like a typical outdoorsman. Also, with online schooling, students may have a harder time with future girlfriend/boyfriend relationships later in life as they've been isolated from their own age group for the majority of adolesance. My grandmother, being an only child and homeschooled living in the rural part of Louisiana, told me about the trials and tribulations of her finding my grandfather. Because she was so isolated from her own age group, she wasn't sure of how to properly act around men her age. Fifteen years of being an adult landed her next to my grandfather, but it was only after a long, hard single life that she was able to keep down the right one. Online school would have kids delaying their relationships due to lack of social interaction around peers their age, making it difficlult to find a solid relationship.

Others may disagree and claim that the online schooling resources, such as skype, will provide students with the social interaction they need outside of their own families. While skyping does provide some interaction, learning through a screen will never provide students with the same student-teacher bond that is necessary for building mentor-type relationships in the future. More importantly, with only a teacher, where is the peer interaction? Kids learn content most efficiently when interacting with other peers on a daiy basis. For instance, in AP chemistry, notably one of the hardest classes my school has to offer, the teacher assigns group work every day after learning a new subject. When I work on the content with my peers, they provide me with easier shortcuts and alternatives than what my teacher taught. With Skype, no peers are present to help a student with a touchy subject. There is just the teacher, and only what's in that teacher's brain can be offered to the student.            