History proves some interesting insight to education.
Take for example literacy. There are Finnish/Swedish parochial records/church examination registries dating back to 17th century down to a level of individual families. This is
important due to Charles XI's Swedish Church Law of 1686 stating that everyone had to be able to read bible. So you can follow how that emergent Lutheran essence actually turned into literacy. From an individual perspective it was necessary to learn because you weren't allowed to take holy communion, be confirmed and later wed without reading ability. By 1750 some parishes started to have 90% reading ability. What is surprising is the writing ability. It achieved same levels only around 1900 (1920 in Finland). So that is clearly connected to industrial reform rather than spirit of protestantism.
At least my initial assumption that reading/writing go hand in hand was proven wrong. In light of this long history of literacy in Nordic countries I tend to value the South Korean jump in literacy from previous generation more highly, even if it was achieved through “culture of educational masochism”.
Book about this: Understanding Literacy in Its Historical Contexts: Socio-cultural History and the Legacy of Egil Johansson.
Take a look at pg. 47 at Google Books and see how incredibly detailed those church examination registries in 1688-91 could be (pg. 56 has a nice graph differentiating the development of reading and writing ability): http://books.google.fi/books?id=WBLOVq4ocLEC&printsec=frontc...
Take for example literacy. There are Finnish/Swedish parochial records/church examination registries dating back to 17th century down to a level of individual families. This is important due to Charles XI's Swedish Church Law of 1686 stating that everyone had to be able to read bible. So you can follow how that emergent Lutheran essence actually turned into literacy. From an individual perspective it was necessary to learn because you weren't allowed to take holy communion, be confirmed and later wed without reading ability. By 1750 some parishes started to have 90% reading ability. What is surprising is the writing ability. It achieved same levels only around 1900 (1920 in Finland). So that is clearly connected to industrial reform rather than spirit of protestantism. At least my initial assumption that reading/writing go hand in hand was proven wrong. In light of this long history of literacy in Nordic countries I tend to value the South Korean jump in literacy from previous generation more highly, even if it was achieved through “culture of educational masochism”.
Book about this: Understanding Literacy in Its Historical Contexts: Socio-cultural History and the Legacy of Egil Johansson.
Take a look at pg. 47 at Google Books and see how incredibly detailed those church examination registries in 1688-91 could be (pg. 56 has a nice graph differentiating the development of reading and writing ability): http://books.google.fi/books?id=WBLOVq4ocLEC&printsec=frontc...