I think an interesting example of distance learning comes from a documentary on Channel 4 called The World’s Cleverest Child and Me (Broadcast 28/01/09). A youtube link is here.
Adora, one of the children mentioned on the programme, follows an online curriculum, I am assuming because she would be too advanced to be in a school with others her age. It therefore provides her with the opportunity to learn at a more appropriate pace for her intelligence. In this way, the dispersal of the concept of education through the Internet allows her to access the materials she needs to learn as much as she can through virtuality, as she is able to be physically in one place but remotely accessing information from another which I see as a large benefit of eLearning.
I believe that this is achieved through gift economy, in that lots of the information online is published without expecting anything in return, and I also suspect that removing her from school and learning exclusively online would mean that she doesn’t have to cope with some of the difficulties which she may face in a traditional school environment, for example feeling like she’s different to everyone else and possibly being bullied. Something which she mentions in the clip, although claiming that she likes being different.
In this way it seems as if online learning works in her favour, in that she is able to get the education she would lack if she were to be placed in the traditional schooling system. However, I would dispute this cyber-utopian view if eLearning as being removed from school might also come with it’s own set of problems, as school is where we learn a great deal about ourselves, and functions to shape who we become as adults, but removing this her family and the Internet are the only way she has to learn about the outside world. Which I would argue does not result in a healthy mental development in terms of social skills.
I think distance learning for a girl of such a young age is a terrible idea. To me it appears that her social life is being compromised for monetary gain, and you can't help but think of pushy-parent syndrome. From that clip she's not getting the social benefits she clearly needs. There's nothing wrong with fitting in.
ReplyDeleteI feel that Adora will come to regret such learning in years to come... but different strokes for different folks, I suppose. Perhaps in years to come everything will be learnt online and the social aspect will be removed. Who knows?
Nice exchange.
ReplyDeleteYou might spell out the 'virtual isolation vs. 'virtual connection' issues a bit more? (check it out online under the "Bowling Alone" label it is often discussed under -that's the title of a book by Robert Putnam.)
You might like to know that I interviewed a maths 'genius' in India who got his masters degree at 12 (after being denied access to the programme for a year -and when I met him he was 17 and submitting his PhD in Quantum Computing that week.
He told me that he was the one who pushed for his studies to be so advanced. His way of doing it was to study with people much older than himself. I met him through his website -which he made himself, but I don't think the web played much part in his getting a degree at 9yrs old.
In his culture, he was not bullied by the older people he studied with, nor his friends and relatives. India has a very strong respect for extraordinary abilities -maybe partly because of the child guru tradition? However, he was accused of being a fake -and he had to take a newspaper to court to get them to retract their claims!