ABSTRACT
Education in the Middle Ages was primarily vocational. A boy or girl was given the education appropriate to his or her job in life. If a boy was to be an agricultural worker, as most were, then he acquired the necessary vocational skills on the job and his religious and moral education he learned from his parish priest in church; going to school never entered into the matter. If he was to be a tradesman or craftsman he was educated as an apprentice of a master under gild rules, and again it was unlikely that he would go to school. If he was the son of a knight he was educated as one of the feudal landed aristocracy, not in school but in some noble’s household and in courtly manners and the arts of war rather than letters and book learning. It was not thought necessary that all mankind should have a common education in literacy, and schools were only for those whose job in life necessitated the ability to read and write Latin; they were for potential clerics and lawyers, administrators and schoolmasters.
