correspondence education

correspondence education, historic method of providing education for nonresident students, primarily adults who received lessons and exercises through the mails or some other device and, upon completion, returned them for analysis, criticism, and grading. It was extensively used by business and industry in training programs, by men and women in the armed forces, and by the governments of many nations as part of their educational program. It supplemented other forms of education and made independent study programs readily available. This mode of education has been largely replaced by online distance learning.

(Read Arne Duncan’s Britannica essay on “Education: The Great Equalizer.”)

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distance learning: Correspondence schools in the 19th century

The correspondence movement evolved in the mid-19th century, fuelled by the need for an educated trade and working class brought on by industrial and urban development, and facilitated by the development of improved printing and postal services. Correspondence courses were first offered in Great Britain, Germany, and the United States but spread rapidly throughout the world.

Originally correspondence courses were largely confined to vocational subjects; private correspondence schools, industry, government agencies, and universities then offered such courses in virtually any field from the elementary school to the postgraduate level. Many of the subjects were not generally given in residence schools: camera repair, horology (clock-making and repair), floristry, locksmithing, gemology, and safety, for example.

Instruction may not have been wholly by correspondence or by a combination of home study and resident seminars or laboratory work. It may have included sound records or tapes, slides, films, videotapes or videodisks, teaching machines, computers, and the use of telephone, radio (including a two-way radio with each student using a transceiver, as in the Australian outback), and television. In the late 20th century the advent of email increased the speed of response to student work.

Courses often included kits of tools or instruments and materials to be processed, as well as texts and study guides. Courses in Braille and on records or cassettes were available for the visually handicapped.

Many schools offered guidance and placement services, though the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in 1981 cracked down on some schools for implying more in the way of future employability or placement help than they actually delivered. Programs sponsored by schools and other public agencies often included special provisions for periodic home visits by teachers, occasional student get-togethers at local centres, or series of short-term residential school sessions for school-age children, as in New Zealand, or for discussion groups or study circles, as in Romania.