In praise of distant learning
In regards to your Talking Points article in July’s issue, I would argue that the ‘value’ of online education is just as great as an education gained from attending a traditional brick university.
I am a history student with the Open University, an organisation that has created so much potential and opportunities for thousands of students in Britain alone. With module content produced primarily online, supplemented by textbooks, the courses offered at institutions such as the OU create a wealth of possibility likely not obtainable for many without it.
The opposite of being “not the ideal”, it creates immense opportunity in an everchanging world. People of all walks of life are able to obtain solid, recognised qualifications that otherwise wouldn’t have been achievable. With alumni including former president of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi, and former president of the Women of the Year Lunches, Joan Armatrading, the OU offers a more diverse, inclusive student life that is tailored to each individual. I hope that the ongoing pandemic highlights the strengths of distant learning and allows distant learning students to finally be seen as having real qualifications in the eyes of brick university students. Stacey Tyler, Worcester
Childcare challenges
I enjoyed Helen McCarthy’s very comprehensive article, Who’s Holding the Baby? (July), charting the difficulties that women have faced in balancing childcare and paid work during the past century. It made for relevant reading, given that, for many working mothers (and fathers), the suite of childcare options available in the 21st century has very abruptly disappeared during the coronavirus pandemic. As a mother of two who has spent the past three months balancing working from home with home-schooling, I felt a great affinity with those foremothers Helen McCarthy describes doing piecework with small children underfoot.
I had to smile when McCarthy wrote of the 1980s that “new technologies connecting home and workplace seemed to promise greater flexibility for mothers”. Twenty-first century technology has been invaluable during this difficult period, keeping us connected both socially and professionally. However, it’s not without its drawbacks, as any parent trying to conduct a video call with a child in the background can attest!
Thankfully, this current situation is a temporary one, and the childcare we’re so used to will resume. Living through this lockdown period has certainly made me appreciate the advantages working women of my generation have, and the struggles encountered by those who went before me.
Sarah King, West Lothian
Radio times
I very much enjoyed the letter of the month, ‘Island Stories’, in your July issue and hope you might find the following of interest.
My late brother frequently visited a family in the Channel Islands in the early 1950s and they told him the following unusual story. A young German officer with whom they had become friendly was billeted with them during the war, and came in for his evening meal either at 7pm or 10pm. On one occasion he told them that he knew they had a radio in the house (forbidden, of course, by the occupying authorities) and, unless they got rid of it, they would all be in trouble. They did as he advised.
Soon after the end of the war, they visited him in Germany and asked how he knew about the radio. He replied that, if he had his meal with them at 7pm, their clock was always a little slow but, at 10pm, it was right. The family had been listening to the BBC’s 9pm news bulletin and correcting the clock (as many of us did) by the chimes of Big Ben. Maurice Graham, Croydon
Missing M*A*S*H
Having read Grace Huxford’s interesting
article How We Forgot the Korean War (July), I was surprised that her list of books and films that commemorate it did not include M*A*S*H, the 1968 novel, 1970 film, and very popular TV series that ran from 1972 to 1983 in America and 1973 to 1984 in the UK.
The novel, co-written by an army surgeon who had served in Korea, and the film, were black comedies, their stories linked by the thread that it was only comedic mayhem and
other mischief that enabled conscripted medics, at odds with professional officers, to survive the horrors of their tours of duty. By its end, the TV series had devolved into a sitcom. However they’ve all certainly kept the memory of the war alive to this day.
Peter Freshwater, Edinburgh
Korea confusion
Grace Huxford’s feature reminds me that, when I was posted to Korea in 1952, my mates asked, “Where is Korea?” As a stamp collector when a schoolboy, I remembered some stamps of Japan were overprinted ‘Korea’. So I told them I thought it was like Wales or Scotland is to England – joined to Japan. I found out the hard way! D McCarthy, 5taʘordshire
Britain’s guilty secret?
I studied 18th-century British and European history for my JMB A-level History from 1961–63. We covered the growth of the British empire, William Pitt the Elder, mercantilism, and so on. I have no recollection of slavery being mentioned in textbooks, teaching or classroom discussion. Have I just forgotten – surely not! – or was the topic deliberately omitted from the syllabus like a guilty secret? What do other readers think?
Mike Dickson, Leeds