What was the impact of the printing press on education?

Education in the middle ages, before the printing press:

• Education in the middle ages was mostly for people going into church careers, plus a few rich people (most scholars had church positions)
• education expanded but it was still pretty rare
• literacy rate
  

Impact of the printing press, first 100 years

• increase in literacy rate
• more people read the Bible
• printing press aids spread of new scientific ideas
  
• Caxton is an example of how more kinds of books begin to be printed--how to play chess, romances
  

Jump to mid 1700s, industrial revolution is beginning:
Industry was spreading, particularly with the development of the Factory System, and that led to a wider interest in science and technology.

• We talked a little about the steam engine in the industrial revolution, but perhaps the most important development of the industrial revolution was the development of factories
  
• the first big industry was cotton textile factories, though other kinds of factories developed as well
• machines had been used some by workers who did piece work at home with spinning wheels and hand looms.  What brought the workers together into a factory was the invention of machines for spinning that could spin more than one thread at a time and then the application of water power first to spinning (1764-1779) 

 Spinning Jenny

and then to weaving 1786-1788

PEM photo--power loom (Slater Mill)

• There was a big market for cotton cloth
  
• With these technologies the industry took off--by 1833 237,000 people were employed in cotton textile factories in England
• key shift of the industrial revolution--shift from the majority of people working on farms to the majority working in industry
  
• this was a whole new way of life
  • 46% of workers were women, 15% children under the age of 13 ( Child Labor )
  • wages were barely enough for a family to survive if all members over the age of 8 worked
  • in some areas 1/2 to 3/4 of worker families lived in a single room with no plumbing (dumped their chamber pot into the street or gutter)
• reform laws started in 1833-- factory act of 1833 forbade employment of children under 9 and limited hours for children to 9 hours a day for children 9-13 and 12 hours a day for children 13-18
• Chartist movement fought unsuccessfully for political change, but conditions gradually improved.
• schools were created to educate workers in their spare time (usually just Sunday)

Because of industrialization people are very aware of living in a new kind of world.  How do you adapt to living in an industrial society?  You had better learn more about technology if you want to get ahead.  The industrial revolution creates a demand for books about technology and science.

By the early 19th century books were being published designed to help people learn for themselves, so education wouldn't be limited to those who could afford to go to schools and universities.  Learning was being democratized.  We need to look more carefully at that how that happened.

Self-education by books was possible partly because of improved printing presses made possible cheaper books

• the first group was faster because they didn't use a screw mechanism to press the paper to the type
• then several inventors tried to develop a rotary printing system, and Friedrich Koenig finally succeeded in 1814

People wanted to learn about science and technology by reading books.
Lienhard gives you a good example.

Few people remember the books students read in the 19th century, but they tell us a lot about what knowledge was available, how it was taught (and how that was changing) and what people thought of science and technology.  Technology (how machines worked) was actually a bigger part of education before the mid-19th century.  After that science began to be taught in a more theoretical way.

Consider another example of the earlier thinking (late 18th early 19th century) about living in a new technological age: what do people need to know?


 Amos Eaton The history of Rensselaer Polytechnic shows the struggles of early engineering schools

• The Rensselaer School was founded in 1825, the first civilian technical school on the college level.  Stephen Van Rensselaer put up the money and Amos Eaton (1776-1842) provided the ideas and directed the new school.
• Eaton was a scientist--he educated himself while in jail
  
• Eaton stressed that students would learn science from its practical applications.  At Rensselaer: "In every branch of learning, the pupil begins with its practical application; and is introduced to a knowledge of elementary principles, from time to time, as his progress requires.  After visiting a bleaching factory, he returns to the laboratory and produced the chlorine gas and experiments upon it, until he is familiar with all the elementary principles appertaining to that curious substance." Eaton was struggling to figure out the relationship between science and engineering education.  He was also a pioneer of hands-on education.
• Van Rensselaer wrote in 1824: "My principal object is, to qualify teachers for instructing the sons and daughters of Farmers and Mechanics, by lectures or otherwise, in the application of experimental chemistry, philosophy, and natural history, to agriculture, domestic economy, the arts and manufactures."
• Rensselaer was reorganized to teach more courses in engineering, particularly after Eaton left in 1842.   The trustees hired a director, B. Franklin Greene, who was committed to the French model .  This proved successful, and for twenty years or so Rensselaer was the civilian equivalent of West Point for training in civil engineering.