A History of Modern Europe - From the Renaissance to the Present

Middle-Class Culture 543

school. Private schools operated by the clergy continued to exist, and in

many places provided the only schooling. In Catholic countries, middle-class

families sent girls to convent schools to learn about drawing, music, and

dance. However, state educational systems, staffed by lay teachers, gradually

eroded ecclesiastical control of education. In France, liberals and republi­

cans opposed a pronounced role for the Church in public life, demanding

public schools that would teach secular, nationalistic values. In the German

states, ecclesiastical and secular authorities battled it out, but the estab­

lished churches retained greater influence over public education. The clergy

still controlled schools in Spain and the Italian states. Yet in 1847 Piedmont

became the first European state to establish a ministry of public education.

The educational systems of early nineteenth-century Europe did provide

many more people than ever before with basic reading and writing skills.

The literacy rate in Western Europe moved well above 50 percent. But

social barriers remained daunting. Relatively few families could afford to

send their children to secondary schools, which could provide them with

more advanced skills needed for better-paying employment. In France in

the early 1840s, only two of every thousand people attended a secondary

school. Some working-class families still resisted even sending their chil­

dren to primary school, not only because they could ill afford the modest

costs involved, but because they needed their children s wage contributions,

however small, to the family income. For women, very few formal opportuni­

ties existed for secondary schooling.

More young men went to university in order to prepare for careers in

law, medicine, the church, or the civil service. Even in Russia, the number

of university students tripled, from 1,700 in 1825 to 4,600 in 1848—still

precious few in a population of more than 50 million.

Religion

Religious ideals still played an important part in the middle-class view of the
world. Although disenchantment with organized religion permeated novels
in Britain, France, and the German states, contemporary writing rarely
challenged common assumptions that closely linked Christianity and moral­
ity. Biblical references abounded even in the treatment of secular subjects,
because they were understood by all literate people. In the German states,
as in the Scandinavian countries, the middle classes were more likely to go
to church than other social groups. Throughout Europe, women manifested
a much higher rate of religious observance than did men.
Many middle-class men and women deplored the materialism that seemed
to have lured some of their own away from church. The novels of Jane
Austen (1775—1817), the daughter of a clergyman, were highly successful at
least partially because she affirmed that character, moral rectitude, and
proper conduct, including control of the passions (in short, “respectability”),
were not the preserve of wealthy landowners and titled nobles, many of