Writing Instruction, Formal Schooling, and the Increasing Wealth of the Freeholding Peasants: Early 19th Century Roots of the Swedish System of Compulsory Schooling

Abstract

The Swedish system of primary education before the 19th century relied almost entirely on informal domestic instruction, aiming at reading ability and catechetical knowledge. During the era of Enlightenment, efforts were made to extend the curriculum to uniting, arithmetic, history, geography, etc. At the turn of the 18th century, many parish schools were founded, most of which couldn't offer more than writing and arithmetic in addition to the prevailing ecclesiastical curriculum. School records and church examination registers reveal how the growing writing skills were restricted not only to the male part of the population, but also to the upper strata of the rural society. This pattern of ‘commercial literacy’ is especially marked in those parts of Sweden, that were characterised by the commerdalisation of the agriculture. Primarily serving the needs of the nouveau-riche and self-confident peasantry, the parish school from the early 19th century represented an educational pattern of Margaret Archer's substitution model, the characteristics of which prevailed several decades after the school reform bill of 1842. The presented results on Swedish writing ability rates, coupled with new evidence on widespread European reading skills, independent of signing ability, implicate a more general Western pattern of alphabetisation characterised by high reading rates and restricted writing skills.