Educational Satellites: A Goal or Gaol?

Human and social problems, as well as benefits are often a consequence of technological advances. There is no reason to believe that the application of satellites to education will not create similar consequences. In this paper, several issues of significance in the wide-spread application and use of satellites in education are discussed, including the implications for education and cultural change; the organizational problems in operating a major satellite-based educational system; financing the activities; and the need to aggregate the market in order to amortize large investments for equipment and production, while maintaining a diversity of educational offerings to satisfy local needs. In one sense, the basic difficulty in applying satellites to education is how to develop and apply techniques that can be highly effective, but which are economical only when applied on a mass basis, to insure that there is enough flexibility and variety so that education can be responsive to local needs and desires. The task is to apply satellites to education in order to improve the quality of education, reduce its cost, increase the availability of educational opportunity, and create possibilities for additional choice, yet do so without creating new problems that outweigh existing ones. This is the challenge to those who are making decisions about applying satellites to education that is raised in this paper.