Released this week, this criticism (and another one here) of a home schooling class by K12 Inc., a company headed by former US Education Secretary William J. Bennett, was circulated on DEOS this week as an example of the criticism online learning proponents should expect to face. From the opening paragraph readers know what to expect: the author criticizes a lesson on Egyptian culture on the ground that it may be occult. Aside from some criticism of the use of images in a lesson on the Roman Empire and the use of an inflatable plastic globe, the author is preoccupied with content and seems concerned only with the fact that history is filled with sex and violence. It may be true, as the author argues, that history must be taught from a moral perspective (though I have my doubts), but no formal, methodological or even informal and offhand argument is provided to underline the pedagogy behind this criticism. Online learning may be vulnerable to criticism - of that I have no doubt - but it has nothing to fear from such carping as expressed in this report.
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