Equity, Justice, and Human Rights in Distance Education

Abstract

The prospect of equity, justice, and democratic governance in distance education is an important issue. Originally, we hailed the promise of distance education to be the ubiquitous presence of educational opportunity in a globalized online world. However, it turns out that at least some of the challenges of distance education may be precisely the same as the historical impediments to traditional classroom education. This paper proposes applying the same ethical concepts of justice and human rights to distance education as in traditional classroom education. The argument revolves around the concepts of linguistic and cultural competence, as well as cultural accessibility. Until and unless these dynamics are recognized and dealt with institutionally and organizationally equity, justice, and human rights in distance education will not exist. The promise of open and democratic distance education will be a broken promise with no institutional commitments assuring equity, justice, and human rights as long as everyone does not have the same access to successful experiences in distance education. From this theoretical perspective, the dynamics of distance education in a global society have only been masquerading as the social engineering of elitism for the global society of tomorrow.

Moreover, these issues are particularly meaningful at this time as organizations such as UNESCO and UNDP are working towards establishing agendas for global democratic governance throughout schools the world over. Now is the time to initiate research programs that will monitor the development of these agendas for equity and democratic governance as they are inculcated throughout schools in every country around the world. Anticipatory and preventive research initiatives that are implemented now could help gauge the progress of democratic governance in distance education as well as classroom education.

Keywords: Distance Education, Equity, Justice