Distance Education Offers a Timeline

¶ … distance education offers a timeline of distance education that stresses a new and independent view of individuals. Most interestingly distance education began as a for profit industry associated with teaching those who could not travel to educational institutions, vocational subjects that would be of interest to them, even though they were often many miles from the instructor and received material only by mail. This shows in part the interest of opening education to a broader audience, including women and to those who were working to make a living. Women also benefited greatly from early distance education, and though the article does not mention it the contention that women would be damaged by the society of higher education, removing this environment from the equation by offering home coursework was a broadening of the role of women.

The stress of vocational education was clearly one that outpaced the more academic liberal arts and broader education standards of higher learning, making it clear that in many places in the world people were very interested in learning those things which they believed they would most likely use in their daily lives, rather than more theoretical curriculum of universities, and much of this came about prior to the full establishment of compulsory education for children which really was an ideology based on the idea that educating citizens, specifically about government and civic institutions would make better voters in the future. To a large degree the early distance education system, even when attached to the new land grant universities associated with the Morrill Act intended to bring education to the masses, not just to those who could afford the time and tuition it took to attend universities. Early demands by the culture, even prior to the passage of the Merrill Act were seeking to strengthen the nation by strengthening one of its greatest resources, agriculture and skilled trades, rather than simply continuing to support the elite through supporting university instruction of law and medicine, the two most common forms of university education.

It is also interesting that when the early distance education programs began they were dependant upon the newly established postal systems in every nation where they began. The postal systems and then the rail and road systems spread information as well as goods, a reality not necessarily thought of by many who study the history of these infrastructural systems, in the U.S. And elsewhere. Working people for the first time had greater access to fundamental educational pursuits that actually contributed to the ways they lived their lives.

The early 1930s trend to legitimize correspondence schools by attempting to set standards and codify them through the National Home School Study Council and other organizations also enlightens the reader. The trend to legitimatize institutions and reduce the influence of "for-profit" programs of all kinds was reflective of massive growth and as with so many other social and cultural movements of the earlier industrial revolution a period of massive growth and new mobility, those who were less that scrupulous needed to be separated from those with what they considered legitimate correspondence schools. A similar trend was seen in many areas of U.S. society, such as the restriction of medicinal claims on products and other trends that began in the same decade.

It was very interesting to find that the U.S. Armed Forces had any part in distance education, and specifically how broad the areas of study offered by the U.S. Armed Forces Institute. The student base of about 500,000 is also interesting and surprising, but might be explained again by the fact that the nation was in constant need to make better citizens, and feeding the brain was though to be essential to this. It would also be interesting to see how much the USAFI utilized the programs to stress the importance of military service, though it is also clear that much of the work they did was to educate existing service men who had left education to join the military.

In many ways the history of distance education is a timeline of communication technologies. As the postal system developed distance education systems became widespread, even more so with the rail lines, telegraphs and materials transport, then the telephone played its part and then television became an active part of distance education. Currently the trend toward interactive multifaceted distance education through the technology of the internet is surfacing and becoming highly utilized. The multi-media trends of University of Wisconsin AIM and British Open University foreshadow the current technology and the desire to bring education to the masses at lower costs.