Distance Learning 360 B.C.

Posted by ERUDIO in Inspiration on Dec 18th, 2009

Does the concept of distance learning throw you? Does it feel too new, too different?

Our learning and knowledge is but little, compared with all of which we are ignorant.--- Plato

Fear not. There’s nothing new under the sun. Humanity has experienced much earlier information revolutions, huge ones, long before now.

Thousands of years ago, a startling new technology shook up the whole world of learning. It was called The Written Word.

In ancient times, the development of writing, the written word, was even more revolutionary than the internet is to people today. It totally changed their world.

Since the beginning of writing down thoughts and ideas, students have studied and learned things in places geographically separated from their professors. And for centuries, or even thousands of years, higher education professors have taught many of their students at a distance, when necessary.

We know this from many famous sources. One example of written course materials (available to students) came with the Plato’s publication of Socrates’ Dialogues.

a statue of socrates

Socrates (as depicted by Plato) uses the play form to debate the merits of distance learning. In Pheadrus, Plato’s Socrates questions whether the amazing discovery of the written word serves to teach students, or is a wrong approach to learning.

Because of the new thing called writing, Socrates has (the demon) Theuth offering the Egyptian Pharaoh the full array of learning at that time. Algebra, geometry, gambling (statistics), astronomy, and most of all— the written word. He argues that “All this can be learning by the whole of Egypt, through the miracle of writing and reading.”

Socrates, a hands-on teacher, loved to sit for years and debate philosophy with a few handpicked students. The idea of multitudes learning all at once, from the new tech called writing, made him feel small, perhaps. But he couldn’t deny the astonishing possibilities.

So Socrates has the demon Theuth say that writing ideas “makes Egyptians wiser and provide them with better memory”.

But the Pharaoh isn’t sure: “this will provide forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it … . You have found a drug not for memory but for reminding. You are supplying the opinion of wisdom to students, not truth. For you’ll see that, having become hearers of much without teaching, they will seem to be sensible judges in much, while being for the most part senseless, and hard to be with, since they’ve become wise in their own opinions instead of wise”.

Socrates then admits that writing serves to make distance learning possible, in so many ways— poetry, speech writing, and the writing of laws.

Just the same today, with the web and distance learning. In some universities, professors feel threatened. They fear being made obsolete.

But let’s be real. Many university classrooms have become as huge as warehouses, often with hundreds of students who never even meet their professor.

If the technology exists, why shouldn’t higher learning be to available to all? And can’t students learn how to think, while learning what to know?

a computer workstation

Why not, especially since the best teachings are already written down— classes accessible through distance learning tools, like books once were, or the web is now?

We live in a wonderful age in which you can click your mouse and read these words, and know my thoughts instantly.

You can bring your own thoughts into the mix of human knowledge, too. And the whole of knowledge can grow. Not just in classrooms, but worldwide. On the web.

Distance learning is a democracy of ideas. It’s glowing on your computer screen, waiting for you, ready to become part of your mind.

And democracy was born in ancient Greece, even before the time of Plato and Socrates. Those ancient thinkers, the pioneers of distance learning, would have loved Google and online learning and all the rest of the astonishing mind-portals of the worldwide web.

It’s here for you— all the web’s empowering learning resources, online classes, and degrees— available to everyone who has the power to read and write, and access to the net.

Think of distance learning as a mind-power tool against being crippled for life, by ignorance.

Distance learning is not only here to stay, it is the very future of higher education. And I believe it will become the soul of equal opportunity— knowledge for all.

Never forget— ignorance is your worst enemy!