LECTURE 9: EDUCATION AND LITERACY Flashcards
What was written culture dominated by?
The clerical elites and their use of latin. A language not all were fluent in.
What did Oral and popular culture entail?
The use of vernacular, songs and storytelling, vocational/practical skills.
Was their social mobility?
You were expected to be born into a certain status and stay there, no social mobility.
Growth in Cities?
The growth in cities ensured that there were pockets of literacy. There was a higher level of lay literacy outside control of church.
Urban elites: lay education – in Florence 69% of male heads of households were literate in 1427.
There was Humanist educational theory and classical textual scholarship, but with emphasis on elites.
Some education for women.
What were Vernacular literary and translations indicative of?
Broader social participation and links across oral written culture.
Education for women?
Some expansion of education for women – role in educating children, the ‘moral household’, household accounts, letter writing,medical and culinary recipes, devotional lit.
Elite education?
Grammar schools – exclusively latin, greek- Training for becoming clerk, official, notary.
University- transmission of received knowledge (latin texts, lack of innovation), socialization of elite (rowdy, privileged ‘finishing school’), professional qual, medicine, law and clergy.
Still elitist.
Rural education?
Educating rural masses and wiping out superstition was the end goal (domincans) but pursued with new urgency (Jesuits). Fighting battle against rival church. Jesuit college providing free education, key instrument to winning struggle, for male children of elites.
Competitive struggle between…?
Rivals and aspects of broader cultural struggle, elites impose new belief of oral tradition and folk culture.
Education and reformation in 16th century?
It is imperative that both churches must spread word to masses, catholic and protestant.
Period of confessional, educational struggle.
How Catholic and protestant aim to Christianise population?
Pulpit (where sermons are delivered) was a key instrument of communication
There was conformism and repression of popular beliefs e.g witchcraft, popular region, heresy
Emphasis on importance of marriage and love magic denounced as witch/devil work, more orthodox society to assert values.
Church passive from of education – indoctrination.
There was a link between morality and literacy.
Sermons, Sunday schools, catechism classes, want people to read but read the ‘correct things’, not allowed to translate. It must be latin as bible problematic when translated because it allowed for wider interpretation.
The Vernacular bible – no room for interpretation, latin ensured this.
Shift attitudes of Luther following the peasant wars 1520s- worried of universal reading of literacy on social order so favoured memorising the catechism.
Heidelberg catechism 1563.
Clear statement of what they were meant to understand, does encourage critical/open mind enquiry.
Lutheran Sweden
Literacy grew from 21% 1614 to 89% by 1690 – learning by memory, not general education but to teach orthodoxy
Urban Rural divide?
Urban/ rural divide in 1640s. London literacy was around 78% (taken from evidence of how many sign name on tax forms but doesn’t tell if people read/write) but in counties max was 38%.
17thc highest literacy found in Amsterdam, lond ,paris.
France Literacy
Male literacy rate in c17 was 30% in eng.
29% france, protestant north higher than catholic south
more likely to be the reflect of higher concentrate of urban society in north compared to south rather than religion.
