Term 1-00
Learning in 2000
If you are reading this editorial, it means that you have probably survived the Y2K roll over. The measurement of time is of course, a human construction. The point at which we are, in the scheme of things, is not even a blip in the vastness of eternity. In this regard, the rolling of the digits from 99 to 00 is unimportant. However, we like and need milestones. As humans we like to place great importance on change. We construct that importance like most of what we do. Thinking about importance, how important will learning be to you in the new century?
In thinking about what I would like to learn in the coming decade, the choices open to me have never been greater. The variety of experiences and the places and times at which I can learn seem almost endless. This, if anything, will become a norm. Learning will be more flexible, more integrated and more relevant in the new century. The idea of learning events scheduled in blocks throughout our lives will at some time soon finally be committed to the scrap heap of what was. Schools, Universities, TAFE Colleges, Community Colleges will become seamless with the workplace and all aspects of our lives. Learning will be ever present and highly valued by organisations, communities and Governments.
Scientifically, we may learn more in the first part of the next century than we have learnt in the last millennium. But will we be advantaged by this knowledge? Many would contend that we continue to make the same social mistakes that history informs us that we have already made. Rich get richer, poor get poorer and in no other area is this more apparent than in education and access to information. Although the Internet has ushered in the greatest period of wealth creation in history, more than 80% of people in the world have never even heard a dial tone, let alone surfed the Web. And the gap between the information haves and have-nots is widening. UN Secretary General Kofi Anan warned recently of the danger of excluding the world’s poor from the information revolution.
“People lack many things: jobs, shelter, food, health care and drinkable water. Today, being cut off from basic telecommunications services is a hardship almost as acute as these other deprivations, and may indeed reduce the chances of finding remedies to them,” he said.
According to the latest UN Human Development Report, industrialised countries, with only 15% of the world’s population, are home to 88% of all Internet users. Less than 1% of people in South Asia are online even though it is home to one-fifth of the world’s population. The situation is even worse in Africa. With 739 million people, there are only 14 million phone lines. That’s fewer than in Manhattan or Tokyo. Eighty percent of those lines are in only six countries. There are only 1 million Internet users on the entire continent compared with 10.5 million in the UK. Even if telecommunications systems were in place, most of the world’s poor would still be excluded from the information revolution because of illiteracy and a lack of basic computer skills.
In Australia and especially in Sydney, your choices are indeed many. We at Sydney Community College wish you an exciting start to this century and hope that for you, and all of us, that it will be one packed full of the joys and benefits of learning, for its sake, for our communities sake, and for the sake of the world to come.
Garry John Traynor
Principal
garry.traynor@scc.nsw.edu.au
