The ‘Other’ of Education : Deconstructing another Binary

The Open Distance Learning (ODL) system was set up in India with a view to educate and empower the immense human resource potential of the country. The fact that the ODL has delivered what was expected of it is also very much obvious by its performance in the last thirty years or so. However, what is also obvious is the fact that the ODL institutions are still not being perceived at par with the institutes providing traditional or ‘regular’ mode of learning. Philosophically speaking, the emergence of the ODL institutions are seen only as an ‘alternative’ to the regular departments and they have been made into the ‘other’ of this binary of our Education system, in which the regular departments seem to be enjoying the status of the privileged part among the two, centered around their historical perception as the ‘first’ and hence the more ‘authentic’ mode of imparting education. Now what such perspectives about things can do is that they can make the ODL students feel as if they are underprivileged in terms of access to quality education. Further, it is not only the students who suffer from such a perception of things. Most of the staff in the ODLs ?both teaching and non-teaching- share this perception that they are working in an environment which is only a support base for the regular university system and hence these people lack the sense of being involved with an independent system which can stand on its own without the need of conventional system of education to define its mode of being. Such psychological perspectives, both from students as well as staff of the ODL are unwarranted and need to be changed. In the present times, when the Internet and Social Networks have dynamically altered the way information is transmitted around the globe, the ODL systems are not only standing at par with the regular mode, they seem very likely to surpass the traditional methods on many counts. Like all perspectives which are ‘fixed’ by historical perceptions rather than facts, the 21st century with its radical modes of Information Exchange would make sure that this privileging of the ‘Traditional’ over the ‘Open’ is deconstructed. Once this is done, the human resources involved with the ODL systems would start functioning with more vigor and passion, which would only further the aims of ODL in India. Although these changes would come itself as a part of a historical evolution of the education system, it would be beneficial if we are able to get out of the frame of mind which still privileges regular mode of education to the