China - Part One.

After reading the article I was quite surprised to see how old distance learning dates. It seems to be a huge success and work really well, and its obvious that China are much more developed than most parts of the world when it comes to organizational structure.

Chine favours distance learning, in particular through the use of television to educate children, due to the amount of population across the county. As it has be proved,television as a convienient and effective way of delivery messages to a mass audience. Between 1960- 1966 8,000 students graduated by using the television based learning and 50,000 students passed single courses. These statistics show how effective distance learning is, as the amount of students who gratuated using television as their aid of learning is more than the amount one lecturer could educate in the classroom. This article has really opened my eyes to education in different forms of media, as I generally think schooling is the best option, but after reading the successed of China, I can see how different ways can work out just as well.

The whole notion of this distance learning can be linked to the conept of "social-determinsim" with the society working with and functioning around the technological advances available to us.

Televisions have the ability to send messages to a massive audience, and although it has proven to benefit and work well for people in China, the whole idea does make me doubt the quality of learning, as distance learning doesnt offer face to face or interacting with other students, which surely lowers the effectiveness compared to that you would find in the classroom? Another issue which makes me question the overall effectiveness is that everyone is getting the same standard education. Obviously, this can be seen as a good thing as it means eveyone has an equal chance of succeeding, but to me I see it as everyone learns exactly the same within their field, which isnt neccessarily beneficial as its better that people have the chance to further there education and focus on areas which they feel more comfortable in? It works well for China I admit.