Thanks Polyesco & Roskilde
Mary looks pretty elegant.
Anyway, as you now know the law of public schooling was implemented some 200 years ago. And that meant that all boys (girls naturally weren't supposed to go to school, they were to be brought up to be good Christian housewives. With the notable exeption of daughters of the middle and upper class, but tht was a private matter) were to go to school to recieve a basic education.
Here is a typical classroom from that time, with no less than four seperate classes recieving "lessons" at the same time!
https://app.box.com/s/yk07x18cf2gqsz6npgno
And here is a typical school teacher, with his "main-tool for education":
https://app.box.com/s/e4jkgm38tsqcd9c10ouo
School teachers in public school were not trained teacher, they were employed at genuin and private schools or as private tutors, so teachers in public schools were basically inskilled laboures who could read and write at least to some degree and who first and foremost were reasonably well versed in the bible. Apart from that they were more often than not otherwise unemployable, alcoholics and with sadistic tendencies.
They were underpaid, drunk or slept rather than taught, that is when they weren't busy "admonishing" the pupils.
Children went to school four hours in the forenoon and three hours in the afternoon, or until sunset, whatever came first.
The main purpose of the whole thing was to bring up the children to be good
Lutheran Christians, so they were drilled, repeat drilled, in Luther's Cathesism each and every day. And only then, if there was time... if the teacher was in the mood... or sober... or competent did the children learn basic reading, writing and arithmetics.
Those who could afford it send their children to private schools, socalled "Latin schools", where the education was orders of magnitudes better. Or they employed private teachers or send their children to boarding schools.
That doesn't mean that children of ordinary people didn't recieve education before that. In the centuries before that the local clergy kept an eye on the brightest boys in his parish and such boys were selected to go to "latin schools" to be destined either to become civil servants, go to the university or pursue a career in the church. Such children were sponsored either by the local noble (a kind of "my peasants are brighter than your peasants", because there was a good deal of competition between nobles in that respect) or in the towns typically by a local guild or merchant.
The beginning of the public school was to put it mildly problematic but by 1860, according to a US historian, (I'll dig up his name if you wish) Denmark, Sweden and the US mid west (the farm belt) had an almost 100 % literacy rate. The top three in the world at that time.
There were quite a few public schools prior to 1814, put these were set up and run locally. And there was no national standard for anything. The reform that was started by the Crown Prince in 1809 and passed in 1814, ensured a number of basic standards in regards to the lessons and the teachers, but it took years before these standards were lived up to.
It was certainly remarkable that TV2 news stated that "it was almost impossible to find someone (within political circles) who had something bad to say about Christian Friss Bach".
