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HIST 251: Early Modern England

Lecture 17 - Education and Literacy. Professor Wrightson begins by assessing the state of education in the late medieval period and then discusses the two cultural forces (Renaissance humanism and the Reformation) which lie behind the educational expansion of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. While there were distinct hierarchies of learning in the period (with women and the lower orders having far fewer educational opportunities open to them than other members of the social order), this was genuinely a revolutionary period in terms of education. Attendance at the universities and the Inns of Court expanded exponentially, educational ideals for the elite were transformed, standards of clerical education reached unprecedented heights, grammar schools and petty schools were founded across the country and, by the end of the period, literacy levels in the population were much higher. England was now a partially literate society and was well on its way to achieving mass literacy. A threshold had been crossed, and this shift had far-reaching cultural and political effects. (from oyc.yale.edu)

Lecture 17 - Education and Literacy

Time Lecture Chapters
[00:00:00] 1. Education: Cultural Influences Underlying an Increase in Schooling
[00:09:33] 2. Elite Education
[00:21:03] 3. Clerical Education
[00:22:42] 4. Education for Commoners
[00:26:16] 5. Limits in the Educational Revolution
[00:30:41] 6. Literacy
[00:36:59] 7. Gender
[00:40:18] 8. Conclusions

References
Lecture 17 - Education and Literacy
Instructor: Professor Keith E. Wrightson. Transcript [html]. Audio [mp3]. Download Video [mov].

Go to the Course Home or watch other lectures:

Lecture 01 - General Introduction
Lecture 02 - "The Tree of Commonwealth": The Social Order in the Sixteenth Century
Lecture 03 - Households: Structures, Priorities, Strategies, Roles
Lecture 04 - Communities: Key Institutions and Relationships
Lecture 05 - "Countries" and Nation: Social and Economic Networks and the Urban System
Lecture 06 - The Structures of Power
Lecture 07 - Late Medieval Religion and Its Critics
Lecture 08 - Reformation and Division, 1530-1558
Lecture 09 - "Commodity" and "Commonweal": Economic and Social Problems, 1520-1560
Lecture 10 - The Elizabethan Confessional State: Conformity, Papists and Puritans
Lecture 11 - The Elizabethan "Monarchical Republic": Political Participation
Lecture 12 - Economic Expansion, 1560-1640
Lecture 13 - A Polarizing Society, 1560-1640
Lecture 14 - Witchcraft and Magic
Lecture 15 - Crime and the Law
Lecture 16 - Popular Protest
Lecture 17 - Education and Literacy
Lecture 18 - Street Wars of Religion: Puritans and Arminians
Lecture 19 - Crown and Political Nation, 1604-1640
Lecture 20 - Constitutional Revolution and Civil War, 1640-1646
Lecture 21 - Regicide and Republic, 1647-1660
Lecture 22 - An Unsettled Settlement: The Restoration Era, 1660-1688
Lecture 23 - England, Britain, and the World: Economic Development, 1660-1720
Lecture 24 - Refashioning the State, 1688-1714
Lecture 25 - Concluding Discussion and Advice on Examination