Education for all by the year 2000! This has been the battle cry of countries across continents since the 1990 Jomtien Conference on Education for All. In less than three years, the year 2000 will be upon us, yet we are not any closer to this goal despite the dramatic efforts of governments and the private sector to universalize primary education and eradicate illiteracy.
Seven years after the Jomtien Conference, the picture is still bleak. Close to a billion people can neither read nor write and compute. Nearly 130 million boys and girls of school age are not in school, and an alarming number of young people drop out of school, and for many of them, the prospects of retrieval are dim on account of reasons they and their families alone cannot resolve.
To provide immediate and effective educational service to these hapless sectors of the world's population before the year 2000 will require forays into unbeaten paths and a paradigm shift in delivery systems and curricula. No time must be lost in meeting the challenge of adopting fresh approaches for providing basic education and illiteracy eradication programmes that provide the foundation for lifelong and lifewide learning which should equip them for life in the next millennium.
Traditional solutions to the problem, such as, providing more classrooms, teachers, and books alone can no longer be depended upon to solve the problem. There is an urgency for new alternatives that will make it possible to reach the vast unreached populations as quickly, effectively and economically as possible. There is no time to waste. The approaching millennium will require more and higher level skills for coping with life in a more complex, technologicallydriven world. This is the raison d'etre for the need to accelerate the tempo of action towards the delivery of education for all.
How can the vast unreached populations be made functionally literate more quickly, effectively and economically within the little time left before the year 2000? How can greater learning effectiveness be insured? Technology is the answer. Technology that is appropriate and affordable, if properly used, can be the solution to the problem of how the great masses of illiterates across the world can be made literate in order to prepare them for the challenges of life in the next millennium which is only less than three years away.
Technology is capable of revolutionizing the way education and training are delivered and the manner in which individuals learn, if properly harnessed. It is known to have toppled critical barriers to learning, such as, fixed and rigid class schedules, so that learning can take place any time with appropriate use of old and new technology. Learners who cannot join the formal school or training programmes can now learn wherever they are and whenever they can with appropriate technology in place: print, radio, audio and video, TV or computer, or a combination of any number of these.
Technology can raise the quality of learning by making teaching more interesting and consequently encourage learners to stay on until they complete basic education or become functionally literate and capable of managing their own lifelong and lifewide learning.
Technology has proven effective in countervailing the rigidities of the formal school and in reaching out to vast unreached schoolage populations. This has been well demonstrated in Australia, New Zealand, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Thailand where distance education programmes have effectively delivered education to young people who are unable to attend school or training courses for various reasons. They have been able to effect outofschool learning for youth and children and even adults who are separated from the teacher in time and space through learning systems that heavily rely on printed selfinstructional materials backstopped by radio and audio and video tapes and supported by occasional contact sessions with tutors and facilitators and userfriendly assessment systems.
Where teachers are insufficiently trained, distance education technologies offer alternatives for providing them muchneeded training or upgrading of competencies without pulling them too often from their classrooms where they ought to be.
Technology has made it possible for China to train 1.2 million teachers through TV broadcasts within six years. The Allama Iqbal Open University Primary Teacher Orientation Program of Pakistan trained 47,000 teachers in only six months. The various permutations of distance education practised worldwide provide a "smorgasbord" or selection from which education providers can choose alternatives that are appropriate and affordable for unique target groups of learners. Experience documented worldwide indicates that while the initial cost of distance education programmes is high, in the long run, they prove to be cost effective. Distance education need not be prohibitive.
Technology can improve the quality of learning and its outcomes by encouraging active learning. This has been effectively demonstrated in interactive radio instruction which has been experimented on in Nicaragua, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, Bolivia and Costa Rica to improve the quality of teaching and learning.
Technology can make it possible to individualize instruction and make learners experience a sense of achievement in learning through computer networks called integrated learning systems. The teacher can assign students individual learning paths which they pursue at their own rate in a psychologically secure manner. Technology can develop thinking skills by provoking thought through interactive video and computeraided programmes. With computers, it is possible for students to collect and evaluate information efficiently as well as communicate what they
think and feel. Experience in many computerbased learning systems suggests that if learners are provided a collection of computer applications and taught how to use them, they can significantly improve in the way they think and work.
Technology can thus contribute to the development of personal and social competence. Technology offers countless possibilities for providing quality education for all in less the time that traditional strategies require, provided that its utilization is well thought out, planned and subject to continuing evaluation and system renewal.
When the old approaches continue to be ineffective in meeting the goals of education for all, it is time to explore new avenues, to try out fresh approaches and venture into unbeaten paths. Technology can infuse newness that can generate interest and effectiveness in old approaches. It can provide the innovative ingredient that spells the difference between success and failure in meeting the goal of quality education for all.
It will do well for education decision makers and providers to muster courage to depart from the old strategies and structures for providing education for all and adopt technology that is appropriate and affordable. Innovative or stagnate! might well be their battle-cry. They must have the courage to experiment, to develop and try out new alternatives. This might be a combination of old and new technologies, or a new technology grafted to an old strategy to replace the traditional one which has become ineffective.
There will be some risks that will make those with faint hearts falter, but they should have courage and not shirk the challenge of crafting a more effective solution to a long festering problem. They must draw inspiration from Andre Gide who said, "No man can discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shores."