ABSTRACT
Distance education has managed very well without any theory. It has been used to bring education, through print, radio or television, to thousands and thousands who would never get to school or college. And, as practitioners, at the British National Extension College and at the International Extension College, we have shunned theory, arguing that we were interested only in practice. Partly that is policy – though one man’s policy is another’s prejudice – and a desire to keep out in the wide open spaces of educational innovation rather than creep into the house of theory, seen as an annex to the ivory tower of academe. Partly it is a reflection of our intellectual tradition; ‘The British were never ones for theory in any case. We have always been empiricist, anti-metaphysical in philosophy, mistrustful of theoretical systems.’ 1 And partly it is a suspicion of two kinds of theory – of those which try to simplify education to a theory as grand as E = MC2 and those who try to restrict it to a theory which ‘is neutral with regard to ends but exhaustive with regard to means’. 2
