3 ms·

People didn't read books by making copies of them. Producing new copies of manuscripts was a skilled occupation.

by giaour 2y ago

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
Nope, that’s not true. You had monks copying books of course (mostly bibles), and very rich people could afford very expensive books made by scribes, but students at universities were expected to make their own copy during a reading/lecture run by a reader/professor. The words are still used in some older universities.
- giaour 2y ago
  I was a medievalist before moving into tech, and I was always taught that students usually could not afford parchment on which to take notes, much less to copy down every word read out to them. Please cite a source for this claim. Also, people bought books to read them outside of the context of universities.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    Most students couldn’t afford books. Here is one ref, which revisits pre-printing press university education in a piece about the last step people complained about (the internet) https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/6104 https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/6104 > Before the printing press, faculty had to assume that none of their students had books. This led to a widely adopted practice known as dictation, in which faculty slowly read out the text for students so that they could make their own handwritten copies. (This was, of course, not the only mode of instruction. But it was a common one.) Blair writes that dictation was widely believed to have pedagogical merit, as “the act of copying out a text was often considered an essential part of mastering it” (p. 46). She provides a wide range of support for this view, going all the way back to Demosthenes and St. Jerome. However, others argued that dictation hurt student learning as the focus on writing distracted students from paying closer attention to the faculty themselves. (Presumably no one likes to stand in front of an audience and have them all looking down at their phones parchment the entire time.) > You may be unsurprised to learn that there is a strong economic undercurrent to the conversation about dictation, and that it often pit students against faculty and others. Blair notes that students saw it as “a cheaper way of procuring oneself a classroom text” (p.45). Consequently, a ban on dictations by Arts Faculty at the University of Paris in 1355 “anticipated vehement student resistance to the ban.”

People didn't read books by making copies of them. Producing new copies of manuscripts was a skilled occupation.

by giaour 2y ago

People didn't read books by making copies of them. Producing new copies of manuscripts was a skilled occupation.

Nope, that’s not true. You had monks copying books of course (mostly bibles), and very rich people could afford very expensive books made by scribes, but students at universities were expected to make their own copy during a reading/lecture run by a reader/professor. The words are still used in some older universities.

giaour 2y ago
I was a medievalist before moving into tech, and I was always taught that students usually could not afford parchment on which to take notes, much less to copy down every word read out to them. Please cite a source for this claim. Also, people bought books to read them outside of the context of universities.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  Most students couldn’t afford books. Here is one ref, which revisits pre-printing press university education in a piece about the last step people complained about (the internet) https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/6104 https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/6104 > Before the printing press, faculty had to assume that none of their students had books. This led to a widely adopted practice known as dictation, in which faculty slowly read out the text for students so that they could make their own handwritten copies. (This was, of course, not the only mode of instruction. But it was a common one.) Blair writes that dictation was widely believed to have pedagogical merit, as “the act of copying out a text was often considered an essential part of mastering it” (p. 46). She provides a wide range of support for this view, going all the way back to Demosthenes and St. Jerome. However, others argued that dictation hurt student learning as the focus on writing distracted students from paying closer attention to the faculty themselves. (Presumably no one likes to stand in front of an audience and have them all looking down at their phones parchment the entire time.) > You may be unsurprised to learn that there is a strong economic undercurrent to the conversation about dictation, and that it often pit students against faculty and others. Blair notes that students saw it as “a cheaper way of procuring oneself a classroom text” (p.45). Consequently, a ban on dictations by Arts Faculty at the University of Paris in 1355 “anticipated vehement student resistance to the ban.”