9.4 Education and Cultural/Personal Preferences

4) Is there a potential problem being stored up for people if 'education' is tailored to fit into their cultural and personal preferences?

I believe that a potential problem in tailoring education to an individual’s specific needs is that what fits one person may not fit another and we may not have the resources to offer each individual a different set of teaching methods. However, I do not believe this problem to be anything new, as at the moment people can be divided into visual, aural or active learners and therefore will find it easier to learn in different ways.

Some people, like me, may have a more traditional view towards education, and believe that actually writing rather than word processing, and having something explained to you face to face holds many benefits to sitting in front of a computer and having information delivered into your inbox.

I believe that this way the process of socialization is lost, which I see as being one of the main problems with the continuing development of technology and its increasing affect on the way we live our day to day lives. If people’s cultural and personal preferences dictate that learning remotely via the computer is best for them, what will happen to the institution of schooling and the ideologies which are installed into us through this? I doubt a computer will be able to offer the same sets of attitudes and values, and you could be much more open to being influenced by all the nasties which exist on the Internet, for instance pro-anorexia web-sites, pro terrorism web-sites, web sites encouraging odd cults etc. etc. This is made all the more worse by the fact that at the age in which education takes places, young people are attempting to find their own sense of self, so being negatively influenced at this stage could potentially be extremely damaging,

Of course this is an extremely cyber-dystopian view point, as I am only pointing out the potential negatives of this. There is a possibility that eLearning could also bring its fair share of benefits for the individual, as it could open people’s eyes to view points they would not be taught in a school environment and encourage cyber democracy. However, in my eyes the potential threats seem to outweigh the potential benefits to the individual.