International Cooperation in Telecommunication for Educational and Cultural Purposes

Abstract

The relation between telecommunication and literacy is an established fact, Wilbur Schram has written that countries have underdeveloped communication systems, too. The new technologies of communication satellites make possible an expansion of facilities for telecommunication. TELSTAR and its successors open up new circuits for telephone, telegraph, radio, facsimile pictures, and television. Literacy is a condition sine qua non for social and economic development; infor mation is an indispensable requirement for greater freedom and dignity for the world's people. Through radio and in particular, it is possible to raise educational and cultural standards; space technologies enable us to do this on a global scale. The American Early Bird and the Russian Molniya programs point the way to town-meets of the world, to seminars from country to country with direct participation of people around the globe, to of the air for peoples everywhere, with the resources and know-how of different countries pooled in concerted endeavors to raise the level of enlightenment and thereby standards of living; it is even possible to look forward to a continuing Venice Festival of the Air with the best products of different cultures channeled to individual receivers. In the meantime, serious differences in arrangements for national and international telecommunication exist, differences that create political, economic, and ideological obstacles to effective international co-operation. This paper will concentrate on the aspects of the problem of reconciling these different approaches. In the United States, educational is decentralized; it follows the national educational pattern of localized operation and control. While the National Educational Tele vision network groups together over a hundred local stations in a loose federation, control and planning, by and large, take place on a local level. In England, the British Broadcasting Corporation began broadcasts in 1924 and has steadily expanded its programs for classroom use. Similarly, Radiodiffusion Television Fran?aise and the Italian Telescuola or television school offer special incentives for education via television. In Germany, a network of locally controlled ETV stations has offered broadcasts since the first ETV station, operated by Hessischer Rundfunk, began operations in September, 1964. Soviet has experimented with both direct instructional and enrichment programs since 1962. In the same year a Chinese report indicated that stations in Peking, Tientsin, Canton, and Harbin were sponsoring tele vision universities and the Shanghai station was offering university-level courses in chemistry and physics. The Japanese Nippon Hosei Kyokai network inaugurated the first station of a separate national education