Virtual High Schools

OK, Armageddon, I'll give you a response & hopefully get this discussion up & running:

I think some internet learning, in conjunction with existing methods of learning, is an excellent idea! ... BUT, for now, anyway, I don't think it's an ideal 100% replacement for "real" schools.
Why?: Lots of reasons. The first being that qualified adult human beings (in the flesh!) are the best communicators/helpers/advisers when students need support & guidance in their learning. Many (most?) students) respond very well to this human element in their learning process (as they do in their lives outside of school!).
Because you may be an absolute dynamo with computers, it doesn't follow that you will necessarily be brilliant with the requirements of particular areas of study online, without other support. These are entirely different skills.

There are more reasons I could give you, but I'll leave it here for now. However, I have a question for you: On what basis do you declare schools to be "costly, inefficient, and outdated by over 60 years"? I'd be very curious to know what your thinking is here. (I'm wracking my brain to figure out the 60 year significance.)

Also, what makes you think that "kids" won't be listened to? (Is it imperative that you get a 100% positive outcome - completely your way - for you to believe that you've been properly "listened to"?)

It's not always easy, but it can be done. There was a renowned chemistry teacher in my high school who retired right before my junior year... the year that some students were set to take the Chemistry A.P. (an advanced-level standardized exam that is administered to certain states in the U.S.). The teacher they hired to replace him turned out to be a hack (I was not in his class, but my friends attest to his utter lack of ability to communicate coherently), and the students of his class made such a fuss about it that they not only go the school to fire the guy, but also got the school to convince the former teacher to come out of retirement temporarily and help salvage what was left of the school year.

I'm sure there were lots of factors that made this possible, in ways that might not have been possible in other schools; for example, the students were able to use that looming A.P. exam to add pressure to the administration. Still, we weren't a rich school by any means (in fact, since I've left the school has been absorbed into another local school to consolidate costs) so it was heartening to see that students could make their voices heard.

One of the many problems I see is the problem of incidental learning. Only about 10% of what we know is learned in the direct instructional experience -- textbooks, homework, lectures. The other 90% is what we learn from our parents, other adults (including teachers in more informal settings), and especially our peers.

A virtual high school would be socially isolating, and would severely cut into a student's incidental learning.

I feel like I learned a lot more than that from my teachers... but then, I don't know how to divide my knowledge into percentages. How does one arrive at those numbers?

That would fall into the same category as home schooling, except
Mom is replaced by a computer

An acquaintance of mine had her son home schooled. Initially, I could see her reasoning as the boy was bullied in first and second grade while attending
public schools. She meant well, but her son turned out to be a shy, socially
inapt young man who has tremendous difficulties with his peers.

I couldn't make an assessment of his academic abilities, but seeing him
cope with the social isolation was heartbreaking.

shapeless, I've tried to find those stats and haven't come up with them. They're lodged in my brain because they're a big part of arguing for immersion American Sign Language (ASL) programs rather than mainstreaming for Deaf kids (this is something I've spent a lot of time on, professionally). The idea is that in a mainstream situation, with one Deaf child in a hearing classroom and an ASL interpreter conveying only what the teacher is SAYING, this is actually only a very small percentage of the knowledge that other (hearing) kids receive at school.

"Knowledge" includes not just stuff like math and literature (though one study I remember seeing showed that kids in language immersion situations picked up things like fairy tales through playground interactions -- jump rope rhymes, make-believe play) but the very important unwritten rules of social interaction that CalamityJane refers to.

highschools
my schooldays were "way back when ... ".
looking back , i'd say making life-long friends and comeradeship were probably the most important parts in my school-life .
luckily i had mostly some really well-qualified and understanding teachers that made learning interesting and even fun , and even at my age i look back at some of the lessons learned : showing tolerance and understanding towards others .
i don't think i would have liked to grow up without a traditional kind of school ... but i have to remember that my shoolyears were not exactly traditional by the standards of the day .
hbg

I've known only a handful of people who were home-schooled for the first part of the lives (most of them started attending public schools in junior high or early high school), but each of them is quite intelligent--some of them inspiringly so--and socially well-adapted. From what I gather, being home-schooled didn't prevent them from being in social environments with other kids their age because their parents saw to it that they participated in extracurricular activities.

I think that Msolga is right that internet learning could be perfectly fine if it were used in conjunction with other things. Something tells me that internet learning as a substitute for either home-schooling or "conventional"-schooling (whatever the opposite of home-schooling is!) would be a bad idea. The last thing we'd want to see are parents leaving their kids in front of the computer all afternoon and calling that home-schooling.

I completely agree.