Cyber School During Elementary Years

My younger cousin, who is in fourth grade now, will be going into virtual school soon. I'm interested to see how he does in online school because I think it would be harder for younger grades.

Cyber school needs more patience and self-discipline than public school. I mean think about it, you have to create your own schedule, and spread out your work in a specific amount of time. Just waiting to do all of your work on the last week is pretty tempting. I don't know if kids who have only been in school for a few years could easily control themselves.

This is why I personally wouldn't suggest virtual school for anybody under the age of about 13.

Also I do find public school important growing up. In public school you do learn really important things like how to manage your time and get homework done. Along with that you learn how to interact with people, how to handle different situations, how to respect teachers and students and making friends.

You can see how without all of these traits it can be hard for a kid later in life. So if you don't do public school you have to find another way to learn these things like my friends the O'Wells. They have always been cyber and home schooled, and their way of coping with that is getting involved with community things like church and their local fire hall.

Another reason I wouldn't recommend cyber school to younger kids is because having real teachers in a classroom setting is important. During those years most of the subjects are reading, writing, basic math and logical thinking. All of these subjects are very important foundation lessons that you need to really grasp well before moving on.

In virtual school it could be hard to spend a lot of time on one subject, instead of just barely grasping the concept then doing the test and just completely forgetting about it. Also it would be frustrating to learn those subjects that are so complex at that age, and not have a teacher next to you to answer your questions. Not to mention it would be tough to learn reading if you can barely read the instructions.

Home schooling is a little bit better than cyber school in lower grades, but even though it eliminates the whole idea of grasping a subject and having somebody with you, it doesn't really eliminate the first problems of less developed social skills.

With all of that said, I do think there is a way to do virtual school and home schooling the right way like the O'Wells and have the children turn out absolutely fine, but I still don't recommend it.

There are many pros and cons to cyber school, and you have many questions. Can you play sports in cyber school? How do colleges look at cyber school? Is cyber school right for me? Get answers to all of your questions and more at Cyber-School.org