The Reflections of a Distance Learner 1977-1997

This paper explores one student's personal experience of the evolution of distance learning in the UK between 1977 and 1997. Reflecting on his experience, the author discusses the growth in opportunities available to the learner as more and more providers have entered the field; the changes in the nature of learning materials; differences in the assessment strategies adopted by the four different providers he studied with, and in learner support; and the extent to which the different providers exhibited degrees of openness. Based on this personal experience, the author discusses the changes that have taken place over 20 years: the increasing consumerism of the sector; the changes in the nature of the providers' response to the market, and in the nature of distance learners; and changes in the underpinning technology.     

The Scope for Stimulation of Demand for Higher Education

Calls for the large-scale expansion of British higher education raise fundamental questions about supply and demand. An increase of 400,000 students by the turn of the century would require action both to stimulate demand and encourage institutions to meet it. This article considers the main types of market that higher education will need to develop in order to fulfil such an ambitious target and concludes that a very substantial marketing effort would be needed in addition to financial incentives if the opportunities available are to be grasped.     

Electronic publishing: what the Physiological Society is doing

The following article is primarily addressed to members of the Physiological Society, and is intended to explain the reasons for the changes in presentation of the Physiological Society journals. However, it is of much wider interest, and we are delighted to publish it in our series on the response of learned societies to electronic publishing possibilities.     

Education,Democracy and Poverty Reduction in Africa

This article explores the political relationship between education and poverty reduction. It argues that authoritarian rule in Africa has exacerbated levels of poverty and sets out six ways in which this has happened. However, the achievement of greater levels of democracy will not be possible unless political culture and civil society in Africa become more democratic but this will depend on the spread of more democratic values and behaviours. As democratic values and behaviours are socially learned and are not genetic, education must play a part in fostering greater democracy. The article then discusses three examples from Africa where education has not played a significant role in furthering democracy and provides some further examples of African countries where serious attempts are being made to try to change education systems in a more democratic direction.     

A View of War and Soldiering in the Carey Novels of Ronald Welch

Ronald Welch’s novels featuring the military adventures of the young men of the Carey family were first published between 1954 and 1976 and have recently been reissued. They were uniquely representative of historical military adventure for children in the Britain of this period; and were the last example of a vigorous century-old genre in respectable children’s publishing, particularly intended for boy readers, which honoured warrior virtues and regarded war as a crucible of male character. Children’s fiction since then has generally shied away from depicting soldiering. Where it has done it has focused mainly on the First World War and shown soldiers largely as victims. Welch’s work melds a model of heroic military adventure, inherited from the previous century, with a perception of the horrors of twentieth-century war derived from two world wars and his own experience of professional soldiering. While significantly amending the notion of war and soldiering as a heroic adventure, which he inherited from his predecessors, his work nevertheless retains the idea of combat as a character-forming male experience and implicitly offers military virtues as a model of manhood. While the attitudes expressed in his work were rejected by his publishers towards the end of his career, his views were perhaps an expression of more widely held beliefs at the time. And, for some of his original readers, the republication of his books is seen as a welcome re-affirmation of old values.     

The Axiomatic Trap: Stultifying Myths in Distance Education

Although university-level distance education often sets itself up in contradistinction to conventional educational provision, the thinking most distance educators is framed by a set of un-stated axioms that derive from the conventional system. This axiomatically framed approach to university education at a distance may well blunt the potential for distance education to achieve its true potential. This paper describes the axioms and attempts to explain their continuing power to constrain education thinking in the light abundant evidence that such thinking flies in the face of the facts. It uses Athabasca University, a free-standing distance education university located in Alberta Canada, as a case in point.