Tuesday 11 January 2011

Learning Without Frontiers (LWF)

Emergence of Learning without Frontiers
          Learning without frontiers is a concept propounded and implemented by UNESCO. Life in modern times is becoming more complex, unregulated and challenging. In such a situation individuals and institutions should rise to the occasion and utilize fully the various knowledge related organizations to develop and update their knowledge and skills and thereby understand the changing trends in social and economic scenario and to modify their beliefs and customs.
          Only when every one discharges his duties and responsibilities, the progress of the world will be smooth. Glaring inequalities in education, employment opportunities and economic growth result in conflict and violence. Social consciousness among the people of advanced countries and communities is need to develop humanism, higher productivity and universal welfare. That is why life long education and much faceted education system are needed to reduce the imbalances between the advanced countries and underdeveloped countries.
          To consider education is a need for young persons only is a myth. It is not only a preparation for a job to meet temporary needs, but also a necessity to cope up with modern life. Now there are more than 900 million illiterates in the world, out of who 130 million are children, most of them from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Many reports have pointed out that our school graduates   are less skilled and lack essential knowledge about modern developments.
In such a scenario, learning without frontiers is one of the attempts to meet the challenges and opportunities that area facing mankind such  as disintegration of society, cultural degradation, weakening of the authority of government, disillusionment among people and rise of fundamentalism.
Construction of Learning without Frontiers
          Learning without frontiers, sponsored by UNESCO is an attempt to solve complex social and political problems. It empowers the individuals and enables them to reconstruct the society.
          It removes obstacles like distance, time, age, situations and tries to meet the needs of various sections of people all over the world. To develop this vision, voluntary organizations all over the world, non-governmental agencies, privately owned business houses, philanthropists, universities and charitable trusts should work together so that a conducive environment for Learning without frontiers should be created.
Salient Features
1.    Open Learning Climate: It includes informal education, formal education and nonformal education.
2.    Use of Technology in Education: To remove illiteracy, audio visual aids and information technology to be used widely.
3.    UNESCO prepared and used several learning packages which included.
4.    Youth from the marginalized sections of society to be given opportunities for the betterment of their societies.
A conference was held in New Delhi in 1993 on the theme 'Education for all'. This was termed as 'Distance Education Initiative'. In this summit nine densely populated countries (Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan) participated.
          The total population of these nine countries constitutes fifty percent of world population. In this summit, the role of distance education in national development was emphasized. The participant countries agreed to co-operate in the fields of teacher-education, meeting the further education needs of neoliterates and providing educational facilities for the school dropouts.
Technology in Learning without Frontiers
          In 1996 a conference was held in Bangkok (Thailand) to deliberate on the theme "Communication and Information Technology in LWF". It identified four phases in using technology in LWF like i) Planning; ii) Pilot Study; iii) Execution      and iv) Evaluation. It recommended the use of technology for locally produced materials in LWF, training for field workers and exchange of information and experiences.

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