3 ms·

I didn't say they invented it. I said it's normalizing was due to them. Big difference.

• skissane 1y ago
  If we imagine an alternative history in which the Reformation never happened, or in which the Catholic Church succeeded in suppressing it - I think compulsory education would still be a reality in most of the world today much as it is in our history. There are strong economic arguments for it. Given it arguably still would have happened even if Protestantism hadn’t, I don’t think Protestantism was essential to its modern prevalence-they did play a pivotal early role, but that was more a historical accident than anything else, and their biggest contribution arguably was to accelerate a development which was going to happen anyway. In a world without Protestantism we’d still have it by now, but history would record it as having started somewhat later than it did in our timeline. While that late start may plausibly mean we’d have somewhat less of it by now than we actually do, it is equally plausible that we are already so far down that path that we’d be in roughly the same place by now anyway, that even though in that other timeline we would have started later, by now we would have caught up.