Social and Economic Technology - 5.3. Social Impacts viewed from a Sociological Point of View.
Secotek and Distance learning for children.
Secotek extends the principle of remote working from rural areas to the principle of remote learning for children in rural areas. This concept clearly overlaps with a great deal of effort being put into distance learning for children. However there is a significant difference between Secotek distance learning and conventional distance learning trials that are currently being conducted within schools. The key word here is the word "within". Nearly all present trials start from the premise that the child it already physically present in his or her school, and the distance learning occurs from school to school. Thus the very issues being dealt with by Secotek are side stepped. The Secotek concepts is to enable a child to actually be an academic pupil of a particular school without physical attendance. Socially this makes the issues involved completely different.
To date, most forms of distance learning have involved implementing distance learning from moderate sized school to moderate sized school, and has not really attempted to address the problem of children that would need to be transported miles to exist in a moderate sized school. The distance learning technology also tends to require building teaching methods around the technology, and not building technology for the teaching methods. Indeed, distance learning shows little signs of having an impact at all in rural areas except from the starting point that children have been pre-transported into schools similar to the ones in towns. Yet this transport is phenomenally expensive, and is in direct competition to the provision of teachers. The concept of parental choice for schooling in many rural areas is practically a non starter. There is quite often only one school within practical range. If parents decline that one school, the transport burden on the parent is formidable.
The daily Transportation of children miles away from home destroys rural culture. This has been shown time and time again. What goes on in the buses is not good for the education of the children. The problems are even more acute in the case of special needs children.
The solution is to develop a distance learning system that a teacher can take a physically spread-out class, but use as far as possible conventional teaching techniques. Teachers need to be able to transport their skills and expertise. This does not necessarily mean physical transport. Doing it electronically could make more specialist classes viable when interest in the subject is spread thinly over a wide area, as well as drastically expanding parental choice. There is no reason why a full curriculum, even a specialist curriculum, should not be available to every child in a rural area without prohibitive expense, and without massive physical transport expenditure. Yet the pastoral care should not be distance transported, that should be provided right where the child is, from local teachers. It is all a matter of exploiting the technology from the point of view of the problems that need to be tackled.
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