https://doi.org/10.31261/CHOWANNA.2003.20.12
Distance education is a symbolic illustration of the potential complementarity between technological progress and the imperative to ensure universal access to basic education in the near future. By combining not only didactic but even pedagogical goals with modern media, distance learning contributes to the fundamental mission of all education: the emancipation of the human being—wherever possible—mainly from limitations and ignorance. The urgent need for the widespread implementation of distance education results from various contemporary social phenomena, including the effort to ensure access to education not only for members of the emerging information society—that is, the society of the knowledge, information, and communication era—but also for those who exist today on the margins of that society, in so-called educational niches. For underdeveloped countries, it is often the primary method for eliminating secondary illiteracy, caused by the increasing lifespan of modern individuals and the rapid obsolescence of their knowledge and skills. The inadequacy of traditional forms of education in meeting the needs of adult education, literacy, the democratization of societies, and economic and technological evolution is exacerbated by the rapid and profound changes brought about by the emergence of new technologies and numerous scientific innovations. As the importance of information in the production of goods and services grows, and as cost reduction becomes a major factor in production, traditional education faces fundamental challenges. The crises experienced by national education systems highlight the difficulty of reconciling the school’s traditional mission—building and consolidating knowledge and skills—with new demands it must face: creating educational structures and types adapted to new challenges, especially to the evolving demands of the labor market. Telecommunications, computer networks, multimedia information and communication technologies (ICT), and the global World Wide Web have opened up an entirely new avenue of teaching and learning for a wide range of institutions—not only educational and academic, but also business institutions—located in different places, countries, continents, and time zones. Learners can be spread across the globe and still work and communicate freely with a virtual community. ICT has already been successfully used for several years to disseminate knowledge and competencies within society. It enables the material delocalization of knowledge by placing it in the global computer network—namely, the Internet. In this way, knowledge will no longer be concentrated in privileged and inaccessible locations for many interested individuals. Distance learning should become a tool for accessible education, a democratic form of learning tailored to each individual's needs—education that can be provided everywhere and to everyone.
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Vol. 1 No. 20 (2003)
Published: 2025-08-18
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