Education

The Protestant demand for universal elementary education

The schools that were actually developed fell short of these philosophically based demands. This is especially true of elementary education. In the Middle Ages, the grammar schools (especially for the education of the clergy) had developed, and the humanism of the Renaissance had strengthened this tendency; only those who knew Latin and Greek could be considered educated. For basic, popular education there were meagre arrangements. Although schools for basic writing and arithmetic had been established as early as the 13th and 14th centuries, they were almost exclusively in the towns; the rural population had to be content with religious instruction within the framework of the church. This changed as a result of Protestantism. John Wycliffe had demanded that everyone become a theologian, and Martin Luther, by translating the Holy Scriptures, made the reading of original works possible. Everyone, he asserted, should have access to the source of belief, and all children should go to school. So it happened that church regulations of the 16th and 17th centuries began to contain items governing schools and the instruction of young people (mainly in reading and religion). At first, the Protestant schools ... (200 of 123,993 words)