The Economic Rationale
The economic agenda also frames and affects issues around quality of learning. One of the primary economic rationales for the use of various technologies is what might be called "replace the teacher." This rationale emerged in the 1950s with the development of highly structured text based materials that used behaviorist approaches to develop specific competencies, for example, reading and mathematics skills.

The "replace the teacher" rationale has not disappeared. In fact it turned up in the final report of the Information Highway Advisory Council, in reference to the cost of what is termed "The Learning and Training Industry": Annual expenditures in formal education (excluding training expenditures or employer-based training) add up to approximately $50 billion. Formal public and private education (excluding employer based training) has a total payroll approximately equal to that of either the health and welfare sector or the transportation and communication sectors. Its payroll is larger than that of all levels of government combined.¹²

Rather than regarding this high proportion of educators as a measure of a country's commitment to social development, as does UNESCO, the IHAC report sees it as a drawback, one that calls for the use of "more efficient" technology based tools: Indeed, for producers of learning materials, teachers, trainers, and support staff, time is the highest cost of the learning and training process. Using the technology can make the learning process faster and more efficient, therefore cutting costs.¹³

As previous experiments with learning technologies has demonstrated, relying on technology to "replace the teacher" provides a very limited type of instruction suitable only for the most independent and self-reliant learners. It does not serve the majority for whom human interaction is a very significant part of learning. It is even less appropriate for those who face challenges in re-entering the world of learning and for those whose learning context is shaped by cultural differences, gender, disability or other factors.

Because of the high cost of development of materials, another outcome of the cost-based rationale is the increasing pressure to use the same materials for more and more learners whether or not they fit the profile of the learners for whom the materials were originally developed.

In its section on Learning and Training, the IHAC report asserts that "Canada lacks a critical mass of users to sustain a viable domestic learning and training industry," (which runs counter to the reality that Canada has been successfully educating its own citizens in its own institutions for the past 100 or so years) and encourages provincial and territorial governments "to develop, with the private sector, full credit courses and to make them available to all Canadians" (p.63).

This mass-market approach contradicts the often promoted advantage of the new technologies, that they can be readily developed and customized for particular learners. It also contradicts one of the basic principles of adult education, that the learner's context and experience must be included in the design of learning. This is a particularly critical issue for women learners who have had to adapt to materials and technologies developed for others, rather than have materials and technologies developed for them.