Why Online Preschool Is a Terrible Idea

It used to be that parents sent their young children to kindergarten to prepare them for elementary school. Now things have developed to the point where parents are sending their 3 – 4-year-olds to preschool to prepare them for kindergarten! What is the world coming to?

It’s becoming a place where there is no time to be a child anymore. And that’s not all. It is becoming a world where children no longer run around and learn through play and interaction. No, thanks to online preschools they are now learning sitting on a couch, staring at a screen and clicking a mouse.

Parents of young children can now enroll their child in a cyber preschool that provides digital learning materials, activity guides and “homeroom teachers” online through a home computer, tablet, or smartphone. This is the latest way to start a child’s education, but is it sensible?

Preschool teaches important social skills

Think about it: why are children sent to preschool in the first place? Isn’t it because they need human interaction? One of the most important skills children learn in preschool is how to make friends. Life is about human relationships after all. How do you learn about making friends, sorting out differences, and obeying the rules when you are staring at a screen, looking for the right color to click on?

Children learn through play, not screens

Young children don’t learn best through computer-based instruction. They learn through activity, primarily play. They use all their senses, their entire bodies to learn. They learn through touch and smell, running and crawling, building houses with odd materials, making dams in the back yard after the rain. And most importantly, they learn about their place in a social context from their peers and teachers.

Experts express concern

Early childhood experts agree that online preschools are a bad idea. More than one hundred early childhood leaders and organizations signed a position statement in which they express their deep concern about the high-tech industry’s push to target young children.

They point out that current knowledge about human development demonstrates that children learn best through exploratory, creative play and relationships with caring adults. And they quote the American Academy of Pediatrics: “Higher-order thinking skills and executive functions essential for school success, such as task persistence, impulse control, emotion regulation, and creative, flexible thinking, are best taught through unstructured and social (not digital) play.”

Online preschool is not a quality education

Preschool is not about learning letters and numbers on a computer screen. Preschool is about hands-on learning and exploring. “Children who are given this pseudo-preschool experience will not have the skills or knowledge of their peers who attend quality pre-K programs; the opportunity gap will widen at an even earlier age. States have a responsibility to provide high-quality early childhood education to every child,” warns Nancy Carlsson-Paige, professor emerita at Lesley University and co-founder of the nonprofit Defending the Early Years.

Online pre-K will only widen achievement gaps even more and increase inequality, says Carlsson-Paige. Children who get their preschool education through online preschools will be at a disadvantage compared to children who can attend preschools that offer activities that stimulate their cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development. Bottom line: you can’t compare what a child can learn through a screen to what a child can learn through human interaction.