Address on the promotion of correspondence education

Abstract

Education by correspondence began barely one hundred years ago, on a very small and very primitive scale. It was usually operated by one single man who was knowledgeable in a given field and who wished to pass on this knowledge generally in order to make a living, to those who needed it. I shall not take up your valuable time with an argument about the first system of education by correspondence in the world. There still exist wags who, when speaking about the development of education by correspondence, begin by recounting historical tales of some 2,000 years ago. Such tales from ancient history are certainly pleasant but they should by no means always be taken seriously.