VOL. 16, No.1, 113-125
This article examines the potential value of the Internet in serving disadvantaged groups, specifically First Nations living in rural and remote locations in Canada. It reviews the current scholarship on technology-based distributed learning and identifies some of the questions that remain unanswered. The conclusion outlines a framework for developing successful Internet-based distributed learning opportunities for First Nations populations.
Cet article étudie la valeur potentielle de l'Internet au service de groupes défavorisés, particulièrement les Premières Nations vivant dans les régions rurales et éloignées du Canada. Il passe en revue la bourse d'étude actuelle sur l'apprentissage distribué et basé sur la technologie et identifie quelques questions qui restent sans réponse. La conclusion expose les grandes lignes d'une structure visant à développer, pour les populations des Premières Nations, des occasions gagnantes d'apprentissage dispensé sur Internet.
To approach social issues in technology-based distributed learning is necessarily to focus on the educator’s responsibility (Kenway, 1996):
Given the implications of converging technologies for reshaping the lives of those in the so-called developed world and given their likely increasing importance for other parts of the globe, educators the world over have a responsibility to produce an agential citizenry which is well and critically informed about such technology’s social and cultural implications. In particular, it is important to ask “What are the quality of life and social justice issues which arise?” and “What sort of polity will new technologies help bring into effect?” (pp. 217-218)
As a phenomenon in the world of the 21st century, will the Internet promote or erode democracy? Writers such as Mason (1998) and Pelton (1991) are concerned with this question in terms of possible effects of Internet use in global or “international” education, that is, programming originating from countries of the First and Second Worlds such as the United Kingdom and the United States. With regard to Canada specifically, researchers such as Gutstein (1999) and Menzies (1996, 1997) voice their concern that if the Internet’s development continues here as it has thus far, it will become a powerfully anti-democratic force.
An important issue regarding technology-based distributed learning (TBDL) is: What is the Internet’s potential to provide high quality, accessible distributed learning opportunities for groups disadvantaged by lack of access to traditional university education? In examining this question, I wish at least to begin to address this more specific question: Is the Internet likely to improve access to and success in postsecondary education for rural First Nations students in Canada?
If it is important for educators to look at the Internet vis-à-vis technologically less advanced areas of the world, that is, the Third World, it is equally important to look at the Internet as a medium of learning for members of the Fourth World, understood to mean Indigenous peoples who are under the control of other peoples by being incorporated into a nation-state and by virtue of this historic circumstance living under conditions that include restrictions as to where and how they live, being subjected to external governmental control and monitoring, and having severely limited control over how funds set aside for their use are allocated.
We ought to first ask What is democracy? Few of the sources on the subject ground the question with a definition. One who does is Mosco (Gutstein, 1999) in his book The Pay Per Society: democracy is “the fullest possible public participation in the decisions that affect our lives” (p. 23). With this definition Mosco includes economic, social, and cultural as well as political participation, that is, that in a democracy, all [presumably adult] citizens should be able to have equal participation in decision-making in all these areas. In this definition democracy also requires that there be public discussion, debate, and decision on such matters.
But, according to Gutstein (1999), who follows Mosco’s definition, therein lies the rub. In order to so participate, all citizens must have equal opportunities to be well informed in all these areas. Therefore, as we might expect in what has come to be widely known as the information age, Mosco’s very definition of democracy turns on equal access to information and, moreover, to information that is of equal value.
As Gutstein (1999) points out in his book E.con, however, a distinction has already emerged between information of top quality and information of lesser quality, what he terms “high-grade” versus “low-grade browsing information” (p. 26). Given the commercialization of the Internet, it is hardly surprising that the “good stuff” is sold to the user (consumer) per item or in return for a higher, long-term access fee, whereas the lower-grade material is free. Simply put, most people will get only what information they can individually afford.
Those without resources may in fact get virtually nothing (pardon the pun) because, to make matters worse, even the free information network that we have in Canada, the public library system, is itself being pressured to impose user fees. According to Gutstein (1999), “If libraries surrender their traditional role, then democracy will have lost a key foundation stone” (p. 37).
This is part and parcel of the larger concern that Gutstein (1999) highlights: the fact that what has developed in Canada is an “Internet highway” rather than a “public information network.” Not only that, it is a toll highway, with the potential to widen further the gap between rich and poor in this country.
Now what if we were to pose the question “What is democracy?” to someone else? Were we to ask Rheingold, he would say that the Internet is, perhaps above all else, a place for building democracy. Kenway (1996) summarizes his position as follows:
As many argue, distributed public media require the renegotiation of the rights and freedom associated with public self-expression. They also require the renegotiation of issues associated with assembly and privacy. There is a well promoted view on the Internet that ... the Internet provides opportunities not only for building new communities, but for renegotiating the rules of social life and for provoking a more democratic polity (Reingold [sic], 1994). (p. 222)
Is democracy about “the fullest possible public participation in the decisions that affect our lives,” as Mosco says? Or, following Rheingold, is it more about the freedom to express ourselves and to associate with like-minded folks and thus to create interest groups, lobby groups, communities of shared interests? Perhaps we need to examine the content of the notion of democracy or democratization more closely.
I recently took part in a Web course1 in which we had an online discussion of whether the Internet is a democratizing force. During a freewheeling and intercontinental exchange, a large number of contrary points were made. In brief, the following were the major points made in support of the position that the Internet is a democratizing force:
All these points, however, have flip sides:
Point for point, our online debate was largely a saw-off; however, a number of matters remained unanswered to my satisfaction. Among these are two that Mason (1998) draws attention to in her discussion of the various types of arguments that portray the Internet as an anti-democratizing force.
First, Mason (1998) quotes Birkerts (1994) for his alarm at “cognitive losses” he believes are occurring in electronic learning:
In the loss column are (a) a fragmented sense of time and a loss of the so-called duration experience ...; (b) a reduced attention span and a general impatience with sustained inquiry; (c) a shattered faith in institutions and in the explanatory narratives that formerly gave shape to subjective experience; (d) a divorce from the past, from a vital sense of history as a cumulative or organic process; (e) an estrangement from geographic place and community; and (f) an absence of any strong vision of a personal or collective future. (p. 27)
Mason (1998) brushes quickly past this—Birkerts acknowledges that these are enormous generalizations—giving the impression that she does not find the cognitive argument credible, or perhaps not of great import. I agree, certainly, that some of Birkert’s points are wildly speculative; some are debatable as likely outcomes, and yet others are debatable as to what might be their cause. Some, if indeed true, may predate public use of the Internet and so can hardly be laid at its door. Nonetheless, if he is even in small part onto some real potential effects, I do think it worth considering a few of Birkert’s concerns.
We do know that there is variation in how people learn, that is, “learning disabilities” or the less stigmatized “learning styles.” It is inevitable, then, that a fraction of any population will not be comfortable with the online mode of presentation, organization, and learning. They will find themselves as confused and frustrated as the intelligent high school students who fail their first term in university because they have difficulty processing how the questions are framed. In the light of this it is unreasonable for educators who champion the Internet to expect all students to make a total and immediate conversion to this mode of teaching-learning.
As to the specific “cognitive losses” that Birkert lists, some do not seem far-fetched, for example, an altered, perhaps shortened sense of time and of attention. Both of these have been identified for years in critiques of the hyperactive world of video games and the sound-byte-driven, visually dominated TV news. Both Postman (1993) and Franklin (1999) have argued convincingly that based on historical precedent, the introduction of new technologies can be expected to change our social relations, political entities, common values, and so forth, causing major, even revolutionary impacts. Time and space are identified by both theorists as essential cultural understandings that will be deeply affected in this process.
What Mason (1998) calls the social argument against global education is another concern that ought not to be ignored when weighing the democratic and anti-democratic potential of the Internet. As she puts it,
Education, which has always been a net contributor to the positive benefits of physical communities, is now seen as undermining still further the physical experience of community and offering instead a much less substantial substitute in the form of virtual communities. (p. 9)
Internet supporters claim that the Internet exponentially multiplies the number of contacts a person may have on a daily basis. But are these the same as or even equivalent to face-to-face social relations? Are they as rewarding, as complex, and so forth? From my personal experience, I can only say that they are different, although certainly I found the Web course trying, especially at the beginning. The sudden explosion of input was daunting, and the medium seemed cold compared with an in-class experience. I was not alone in my response, and there is at least one piece of research that turned up similar experiences: in Kraut et al.’s work (1999), the finding was that “greater use of the Internet was associated with declines in participants’ communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness” (p. 1017).
Such negative associations, however, would not occur to Tapscott (1998) who argues in Growing Up Digital that a new brand of person is emerging: the independent, savvy, teen communicator of the “Net generation.” Tapscott claims that his research shows that the coming generation’s experience of the Net is wholly positive and creative and will lead to a brilliant future. In fact it will take a great deal more research to find the truth that lies between the two opposite poles of Tapscott’s and Kraut et al.’s (1999) depictions of how users are experiencing and being affected by the Internet.
The changes that Postman (1993, 1995), Franklin (1999), and others expect to result from the new technology would constitute deep and dramatic shifts in the nature of our identity, relationships, society, politics, and so forth. It is apparently easy for thinkers such as Tapscott to brand these possibilities only ravings of the Luddite or the technophobe, but I take strong exception to this. To shrug off such concerns only demonstrates ignorance of the history of technological change.
Menzies’ (1989, 1996, 1997) notion of democracy revolves around greater participation, a way of increasing the voice and power of the disadvantaged, the currently largely silent and powerless. Her socioeconomic analysis of the Canadian data, particularly in FastForward and Out of Control (1989), makes a solid argument for a potentially inequitable future. Menzies’ and like theorists’ unsettling conclusions are well summarized by Kenway (1996):
The digital revolution has contributed to the high degree of redundancy and job obsolescence in the manufacturing and increasingly in the service sector, to the decline of middle management and the middle classes, to mass and ongoing unemployment and to the rise of a permanent underclass. The information revolution makes promises about social and cultural riches and opportunities. However, it can only keep these promises to a fortunate few. For many it spells disaster.... It points the way to dangerous economic and social polarisation and accelerating disenfranchisement of major sections of the population. (p. 229)
In 1996 Menzies warned of a “new wave of colonization,” targeting the public sector institutions of health and education. In this process those on the socioeconomic margins of Canada (and other countries) could become even more marginalized. Will the Internet work to prevent this? What is Internet-based education’s potential role? Menzies’ (1997) goal is clear:
The terms provided and built into the infrastructures of the new communications environment threaten to turn more and more of education into a business, which is almost the antithesis of what extension departments are all about. [Therefore] ... the challenge for educators is to refuse to see this as an either/or dichotomy- as a choice between one or the other. Instead, as educators, we must see the differences between the business of education and the culture of education; ... We can do that best, I think, by jointly focusing on the generally marginalized people who have been traditionally served by our institutions. (p. 46)
As someone else concerned with the global role and state of education, Pelton (1991) has extremely high hopes about what the new technology can do globally, but he is no zealot:
The real question is what truly socially purposeful thing can this technology do. Although the answer hangs by a thin strand, it is my view that telecommunications, computers, and artificial intelligence can be combined to educate and enhance the health of billions of people in the next 50 years. (p. 4)
Moreover, he argues that with due care and attention to its purposes and global consequences, and through genuine international cooperation and shared decision-making, tele-education can become “a global force for knowledge, for intellectual enlightenment, and for global peace and co-operation.”
This is a wonderful vision; but getting down to brass tacks, what would it really take to enfranchise the already disadvantaged—the impoverished, the undereducated, those in remote locations? In Kenway’s (1996) opinion, one element is supreme:
Access is a baseline issue and includes matters of cost, availability and competence and indeed the quality of access. As Holderness (1994: 24) pointed out, there is high- and low-end Internet access and this can mean significant differences in what it is possible to do.... He went on to explain that the costs in certain countries of the world in relation to income are prohibitive and that in the less-developed countries the capital is not there to purchase or attract ... such “capital intensive goods and services” and that therefore some countries are unlikely to gain Internet access and the developments which will flow from it. (p. 227)
This brings us back to the point that with the movement into telecommunications for a rapidly expanding array of economic, educational, and even “social” activities, those who are already “behind” technologically will inevitably slip ever more swiftly and further behind “despite the hype of universal access and instant connectivity” (Menzies, 1997, p. 51). If something other than this is to happen, it can only happen through conscious intervention. Major commitments must come from the developed world if the developing world is to reap any educational benefit from the Internet’s potential. The same is equally true of the dispossessed in a nation-state, for example, First Nations in Canada.
The cross-cultural or intercultural aspects of international distributed education are just beginning to be explored. The issues are many and challenging, including:
Pelton (1991) surveyed a range of international electronic educational experiments and projects and clearly concluded that “today the most successful tele-education initiatives are at the national or even `local’ level” (p. 3). This is a well-understood, if not always faithfully acted on, principle in international development: local people who will be the beneficiaries of the “development” must be involved in the decision-making process from the beginning and at all planning stages, through testing, implementation, and evaluation. Similarly, in international education, the best way to put Internet-based educational programming together will be from the ground up, with funding from outside, but with primary control coming from within the group who will be the ultimate students and their communities.
Turning to the Canadian Fourth World, unfortunately, it seems that there is not even clear definition of the size and shape of the need. For example, there is a piece called “Distance education: reducing barriers” in the 1998 Education Quarterly Review (Burke, 1998). Based on Statistics Canada’s (1994) Adult Education and Training Survey, which “collects information on all structured education and training activities of Canadians 17 years of age and over,” it seems the very place to locate statistics on First Nations’ involvement in distance education.
But on the ninth page of this 10-page document the reader learns that the survey population was “All persons aged 17 years and older living in the 10 provinces, excluding those living on Indian reserves and full-time institutional residents.” So the territories, in which First Nations and Inuit are the majority, and all First Nations reserves in the country were explicitly excluded. How First Nations may already be involved in distance education in this country and to what extent evidently held no interest for StatsCan as recently as 1994.
In the same vein database searches for materials on Canadian First Nations or Indian2 education at the postsecondary level such as examples and evaluations of provision of courses to First Nations people via distance delivery, whether there were delivery modes that worked better than others, or ways of enhancing distance delivery to make it more personal and pertinent to First Nations students produced few hits, and even fewer for First Nations and distance education. The literature does provide some comparable US information from which cautious inferences may be drawn.
Salish Kootenai College (SKC) in Montana has done considerable research with a view to building degree programs to serve Indian students who do not have a tribal college in their community. They focus on keeping their model student-centered in the sense of being personal and supportive of the individual (Ambler, 1999):
The SKC research team and others see obvious advantages to distance education. It is unlikely that every reservation in the country can develop a tribal college, but most of them potentially could receive courses from tribal colleges and universities.... Tribal colleges attract students who cannot leave their communities because of family and cultural responsibilities. Distance education can reduce their isolation. (p. 6)
Such teams are careful to ensure that distance education does not in fact increase students’ isolation, and have developed several essential principles (Wetsit, 1999), including the following:
Clearly Native American students flourish under certain conditions, and this is in part a reflection of their cultural identity. Although generalizations are necessarily limited, there is a wealth of evidence in anthropology to show that, for example, peoples whose societies forefront kinship relationships do have a more group- than individual-oriented identity.
In my own experience with First Nations students at the University of Northern British Columbia, this means in practice that the student weighs his or her community’s needs—for example, needing certain categories of Native workers such as nurses, foresters, or social workers—alongside his or her own personal interests in taking certain programs or training. Similarly, personal educational priorities appear to be always subjugated to family priorities, matters such as illness or a funeral taking precedence over attending class, meeting an assignment deadline, and so forth, and this fact must be respected and responded to by instructors with understanding and flexibility.
Menzies (1988), Franklin (1999), and Postman (1993) all ask pointed questions regarding who will decide how the information highway will develop and who will benefit. Similarly, Livingstone (1997) challenges the “myth” that suggests that computers will almost automatically span the current divides of gender, income, where one lives, and so forth. According to his own research, the much anticipated high-paying, high-tech, rewarding jobs that will come with computer literacy are, at least to date, a fantasy, and the qualitatively different “knowledge economy” is itself a mirage.
Moreover, Livingstone (1997) says that if those outside the corporate world do not take an active role in shaping the development of the information highway, it will certainly become a primarily commercial enterprise for corporate profit rather than for individual education, community betterment, or social change. As shown by Menzies’ (1998) and Gutstein’s (1999) analyses, there can be no doubt that corporate interests are currently very much in control of the development of the Internet.
Gayol and Schied (1990) have proposed recommendations for how to organize and design nonoppressive technology-based distributed learning (TBDL) opportunities, what they call five “paths to creating a more democratic environment in virtual classrooms.”
If Internet-based education were to play a democratizing role with respect to First Nations in Canada, the following conditions would have to apply.
The future of distributed learning for First Nations in Canada could be dismal, a continuation of the destructive past, or bright, if it breaks markedly away from that history. Haig-Brown (1995) has summarized the problem succinctly:
First Nations people have fought for control ever since non-Native people began to define what should be considered an appropriate education for Native students.... Mainstream education, for the most part, has paid little attention to First Nations people’s lives and histories; but First Nations students need the tools mainstream education offers in order to improve their lives. (p. 78)
The predicted innovation of fully wireless Internet connection, for example, would vastly increase accessibility to people and places that lack current digital communications infrastructure. But it will have the potential to make their lives better only if First Nations communities can afford the new technology, can keep up with technological changes, and are able to use the technology in ways that encourage and support First Nations students and communities. Internet-based education for First Nations would have to be designed with their full involvement as per the definition of democracy cited at the begining of this article, that is, in such a way as to afford First Nations “the fullest possible public participation in the decisions that affect [their] lives” (Gutstein, 1999, p. 23).
Ambler, M. (1999). Educating the Native student at distance. Tribal College Journal, Spring, 6-9.
Burke, M.A. (1998). Distance education: Reducing barriers. Education Quarterly Review, 5(1), 8-21 [Online]. Available: http://eucott.library.ubc.ca/cgi-bin/webspirs.cgi
Franklin, U.M. (1999). The real world of technology (rev. ed.). Toronto, ON: Anansi.
Gayol, Y., & Schied, F. (1990). Cultural imperialism in the virtual classroom: Critical pedagogy in transnational distance education [Online]. Available: http://www1.cstudies.ubc.ca:8900/ADED501/Block2/gayol.html
Group presentations and discussion. University of British Columbia Centre for Distance Education and Technology, Adult Education 501 Web Course, January-April, 2000.
Gutstein, D. (1999). E.con: How the Internet undermines democracy. Toronto, ON: Stoddart.
Haig-Brown, C. (1995). Taking control: Power and contradiction in First Nations adult education. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press.
Kenway, J. (1996). The information superhighway and post-modernity: The social promise and the social price. Comparative Education, 32(2), 217-242.
Kraut, R., Lundmark, V., Patterson, M., Kiesler, S., Mukopadhyay, T., & Scherlis, W. (1999). Internet paradox: A social technology that reduces social involvement and psychological well-being? American Psychologist, 53, 1017-1031 [Online]. Available: http://www.apa.org/journals/amp/amp5391017.html
Livingstone, D.W. (1997). Computer literacy, the “knowledge economy” and information control: Micro myths and macro choices. In M. Moll (Ed.), Tech high: Globalization and the future of Canadian education (pp. 99-116). Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Fernwood Publishing.
Mason, R. (1998). Globalising education. London: Routledge.
Menzies, H. (1989). FastForward and out of control: How technology is changing your life. Toronto, ON: Macmillan.
Menzies, H. (1996). Whose brave new world? Toronto, ON: Between the Lines.
Menzies, H. (1997). The digital new economy and the virtual educator. Canadian Journal of University Continuing Education, 23(2), 43-59.
Pelton, J.N. (1991). Technology and education: Friend or foe? Research in Distance Education, 3(2), 2-9.
Postman, N. (1993). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Vintage Books.
Postman, N. (1995). (Ed.). The end of education: Redefining the value of school. In Some new gods that fail (chap 3, pp. 37-51). New York: Vintage Books.
Sullivan, E.V. (1983). Computers, culture, and educational futures: A critical appraisal. Interchange, 14(3), 17-31.
Tapscott, D. (1998). Growing up digital: The rise of the Net generation. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Wetsit, D. (1999). Emphasizing the human being in distance education. Tribal College Journal, Spring, 14-18.
1. My first experience of being on the working end of a fully Web-delivered course was instructive at various levels. It was a graduate level education course on social issues in technology-based distributed learning, offered by the University of British Columbia's Centre for Distance Education and Technology. Approximately 33 students from around the world worked asynchronously under the guidance of two instructor or tutors. Participation and assignments involved a heavy component of online discussion and group work as well as independent research.
2. The search term used was actually Indian, following the classification system that does not use First Nations at all.
Ellen Facey is an anthropologist, administrator, and eductor. She has been running the University of Northern British Columbia’s regional campus in Quesnel since 1993. Before this she taught for 10 years at the University of Western Ontario and Mount Allison University. Her research interests are in identity, women’s issues, cultural change, and education.