Education in the New Millennium: Supporting a Learning Society

Abstract

The organisers of this seminar invited me to speak on the present developments and future trends in Education as we prepare for the new millennium. Those of you who know me well enough also know that while I am modestly familiar with the former, I am not very good at the latter, i.e., soothsaying, and the few times that I have attempted doing this seemed to confirm my self assessment of a singular lack of this talent. But, there are some very clever people out there in the big world who, with their computers and uncanny foresight, are predicting the developments in industry, technology, communication, commerce, environment, population, governments and humanity's knowledge base. Using their wisdom, I will attempt to speculate on some new directions for education generally. Together we could also look at what entails for distance education, particularly, if indeed such a dichotomy continues to exist in the coming millennium.