Cultural issues

How comes the cultural issue in?

  1. Are there culturally different learning styles? Is there something like an Asian Learner? Does this mean distance education needs to operate differently in Asian contexts, e.g. is it true that Asians have more difficulties with 'autonomous learning' or individual text based studies and would prefer the classroom and more synchronous technologies?
    I believe in this respect the provided evidence is rather poor. That Asian learners (if such a construct, putting Indians, Chinese and others from very different cultural and religious backgrounds all in one basket, at all makes sense) can deal with individualized studies is amply demonstrated by the STHEE system in China. Much of what Ramanujam identifies as a cultural problem seems to be a resource problem. (Cf. Peters, 2001, Ramanujam, 2001, Jayatilleke, 2002).
  2. Should we always respect traditional cultural values? The message is mixed: we are asked to respect culture and on the other hand identify certain cultural features as barriers to equity and access (e.g. tradition treatment of women in some cultures, barriers to minority groups like the Indian 'untouchables'). Is the 'culture discourse' a sort of double talk?
    Sen (Chapter 2: 1999) considers the conflict in the section Tradition, Culture and Democracy. He says: "The real conflict is between
    1. the basic value that people must be allowed to decide freely what traditions they wish or not wish to follow; and
    2. the insistence that established traditions be followed (no matter what), or, alternatively people must obey decisions by religious or secular authorities who enforce traditions - real or imagined."

    Religious leaders may sense in the reference to 'people' an allegiance to a Western concept of the autonomous individual to which they contrapose e.g. Asian values which are seeing the individual always as being part of a whole. Why should we accept that individuals are allowed to make such choices instead of protecting them against such perturbing impositions? Having to make a choice will already impinge on your consciousness. Should youngsters see pornographic films to decide if they want or not? The example serves only to demonstrate that imposing a choice may already imbalance supposed cultural harmony.
    I think Sen does not offer a real solution here. He only warns against taking cultures as something homogeneous rather than something embracing itself diversity and having itself a history. Often religious leaders try to impose a specific interpretation as the only true interpretation (like the Saudi Whahabism as the only correct interpretation of Islam). Sen tries to discredit the second alternative because it does not necessarily represent the culture. Culture is itself interpreted as something changing historically by reacting to outside perturbances.
    Alternative one is, on the other hand, not to be seen as an endorsement of Western values. In a later chapter Culture and Human Rights, Sen (1999) takes issue with the concept of Asian values. He shows how the construction of freedom as a Western concept dating back from Greek democracies is a cultural construct which purges from Western tradition selectively many other stands which, until recently, where also quite dominant. On the other hand he points out quite convincingly the range of traditions contributing to Asian values. He mentions Ashoka, Kautilya from the Indian tradition, he interprets Confucius, discusses Islam's record on tolerance. All this shows that (i) traditions are quite diverse, (ii) traditions show a lot of cross-cultural influence.- Practically this may not resolve all problems. It makes us aware, however, that religious and political leaders may not represent the whole of a culture and that their way to 'protect people from having to make choices' may be regarded with some suspicion: "people must be allowed to decide freely what traditions they wish or not wish to follow".

  3. What about language? Language is both a cultural as well as an economic issue. In terms of culture English is seen as dominating to the extent of marginalizing other languages and consequently cultural expressions. The extent to which English is dominating I found documented in a recent article on the "Superpower English" (Ammon, 2000). The article tries to estimate the size of the English language community (which he defines as the "set of all speakers of a language"). Obviously this includes speakers of English as a second language. The author reports figures between 670 million and 1.8 billion and settles for 1.5 billion as the size of the English language community, which means that it comprises about a quarter of the world population.
    Moreover, the speakers of English as a second language more often than not belong in their countries to the elite. The author estimates the economic power of the English linguistic community ( this time in terms of mother tongue speakers) and comes up with the following figures: English 4.27; Japanese 1.28; German 1.09; Russian 0.8; Spanish 0.74; French 0.67; Chinese 0.45 (in trillion US$). Note the proportions! - An additional interesting indicator is the "number of states with a specific official language": He comes up with the following numbers: English 48 ; French 27; Arabic 23; Spanish 20.
    The influence of the English language in science: the natural sciences have clearly adopted English as their language of communication. The percentage of English scientific publications is about 90% whereas no other single language gets more than 3%.
    In the world of media the dominance of English is even greater: the three world greatest media companies (Time Warner, Walt Disney; Viacom) are American (followed by the German Bertelsman (No 4) and Lagadère, France, (No 10)). Interestingly the dominance is even greater in the non-print media than in the print media.
    The enormous growth of 'knowledge written in English' confronts developing countries with uncomfortable alternatives which are, whatever the choice, costly. Either a country make the conscious effort to translate, or they make efforts to enable their people to read in English, or they loose access to the respective advances in knowledge. Coulmas (1992) analyzes in some detail economic aspects of languages and the choices for multilingual policies. On an institutional level the reference in Latchem et a., that IGNOU addresses learners from 1652 language communities, amply demonstrates that linguistic diversity can be economically costly and will have repercussions on course development and efficiency.

  4. What about distance education and adult education in developing countries? There is a close link in industrialized countries between adult education and distance education. To provide a second chance in higher education, to allow to combine work and study, - all these have been factors militating for distance education. Critics (Mace, 1978) have pointed out that from a social rates of returns perspective, it is better to invest in the young since the benefits in terms of productivity society can draw from such an investment extend over a longer period. This argument is partially invalidated by the increased need to retrain. In developing countries, however, the linkage between distance education and adult education is less on the level of higher education but on the level of basic education. The clientele of higher education in developing countries is predominantly young urban males.
  5. What are the threads and promises of 'borderless education'? Partly one can read the insistence of the importance of local culture as a ploy to defend one's local market. Ramanujam's insistence of the dangers of following Western curricula, may have a tinge of that. It is interesting that cultural homogeneity is defined in such a way that major competitors can be fended off: IGNOU ventures across its borders to offer courses in many other Asian (and even African) countries. The construct of Asian culture is large enough for IGNOU's economic aspiration and allows to warn against European competitors. But we need to admit that there is more at stake than jockeying for market shares in what becomes increasingly an international educational market. This has to do with language and with curricular content. It is adamant to have content which is locally relevant if education is to be translated in increased productivity.
Quotes from Latchem at al. pertaining to culture.

India's Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) was established in New Delhi in 1987. It is mandated to serve students from all cultural, ethnic and socio-cultural backgrounds across this vast developing country of 26 states, 1652 languages and 190 religions.

The Indian open universities are still struggling to fulfill their intended positive interventionist roles in regard to patriarchal ideologies and cultural marginalization. Indira Gandhi National Open University and the Dr B. R. Ambedkar Open University enrollments are still predominately urban, male and middle class (Pandey, 1995; Polu, 1997). These institutions cannot be held wholly accountable for this. The disparities caused by language, religion, caste, creed, gender stereotyping and other socio-cultural factors particular to India are barriers to access and equity to be addressed through multilateral action, not simply open and distance education.

Asian countries may seek western technology and greater participation in the global economy, but do not necessarily subscribe to the egocentricity and competitiveness that characterizes western societies. They take pride in their own cultural identities, social structures and value systems, and these in turn shape their educational systems.

It is axiomatic that course content and material should relate to cultural and vocational contexts. However, globalization is leading many international distance education providers to look upon Asia as a vast untapped market, to the extent that the Asian University of Science and Technology Prospectus 1997 suggests that imported courses represent a threat to students' sense of identity, culture and family values

The Open University, of Hong Kong has found that courseware from the UK Open University and Australian universities is not well suited to its students' needs and now develops most of its own courses. a practice strengthened by reversion to Chinese sovereignty. Mar and Mak (1998) describe the power-coercive, empirical-rational and normative-reducative processes used introduce open learning into Hong Kong Polytechnic University and develop an open-mode Diploma of Social Work at designed to address acute staff shortages in the profession. reformulate the programs philosophy to one of reflective practice and reduce study time. Subsequent development of this program for the People's Republic of China, achieved through an academic exchange program, had to address major differences in semantics, terminology, conceptions, professional practice, social and cultural practices and values.

He sees great danger in institutions in developing countries trying to catch up too quickly with their western counterparts when the cultural differences, economic constraints and technological gaps are so great. He advocates the evolution of more indigenous models and suggests that while the current lack of theory and expertise will make this a slow and difficult process, as products of Asian circumstances, they will have greater strength and relevance.

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References:
--Ammon, U. (2000). Weltmacht Englisch. Merkur, 54(9/10).
--Coulmas, F. (1992). Die Wirtschaft mit der Sprache. Fankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.
--Jayatilleke, B. G. (2002). Asian students, are they really different? In H. P. Dikshit, Garg, S., Panda, S., Vijayshri (Ed.), Access and equity: challenges for open and distance learning. New Delhi: Kogan Page India Private Ltd.
--Mace, J. (1978). Mythology in the Making: Is the Open University really cost-effective? Higher Education, 7, 275-308.
--Peters, O. (2001). Reflections upon Asian distance learners, Distance education in transition.
--Ramanujam, P. R. (2001). Distance open learning in the developing Asian countries: problems and possible solutions (ZIFF Papiere 117). Hagen: Zentrales Institut für Fernstudienforschung (ZIFF).
--Sen, A. (1999). Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press.