Cultural Changes: Education and Religion^773

Clerical work toward the end of the nineteenth century.

mobility, extremely difficult to achieve. Craftsmen and skilled workers had
a far better chance for social ascension than did unskilled workers. As in

the United States, those who did move up to middle-class employment
were the exceptions. The vast majority of marriages in Europe took place
between partners considered social equals. Working-class women were
more likely than their brothers to achieve some social mobility—for exam­
ple, by marrying a clerk or railroad station employee.

Cultural Changes: Education and Religion

In every country, states took enormous strides to bring education to more

people. More children went on to secondary school, now including some

girls. The states increased role in education in Western Europe con­

tributed to a growing secularization of public life. At the same time, the

established churches lost the allegiance of many ordinary Europeans.

Education

Literacy rose rapidly during the last decades of the century in Europe as

more governments enacted educational reforms. Literacy rates were higher

in western—above all, northwestern Europe—than in southern and east­

ern Europe, although progress was notable in Russia around the turn of

the century.

In Britain, Parliament passed, over Anglican opposition, the Education

Act of 1870, which placed education in the hands of the state by permit­

ting local education boards to create schools in districts where neither the

Established Church nor its Dissenting Protestant rivals had established a