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As historians have begun to examine the links between reading and schooling, however, these have turned out to be neither as direct nor as simple as they had expected. This was especially true of the early modern period—roughly between the early sixteenth century and the late eighteenth centuries. In early modern Europe, people learned to read and write in a great number of settings; the teaching and learning of these skills was by no means limited to the classroom. Rather, this was, in the words of one historian, "a murky and ill-defined world in which grammar schooling was practically irrelevant and yet reading and writing skills were sought after. Conversely, the agenda for classroom instruction, although it nearly always included at least reading if not writing, was by no means restricted to these skills. The curriculum of many early modern schools, especially those sponsored by church authorities, municipal governments, or charitable endowments, often emphasized religious or moral instruction first and foremost. These lessons were often more important to the sponsor of the schools, if not to their pupils, than were the skills taught.

— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes

Reading, writing, and arithmetic—that's what elementary schools are all about. At least that's what we usually assume. And despite the criticism so commonly heard these days of the schools' handling of their basic pedagogic tasks, we find it virtually unthinkable to call upon any other sort of institution to impart these skills to children.

— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes

To some historians of the early industrial family, the schooling movement appears as another of the many reforms insensitive to the realities of the family economy of the peasant and industrial working classes. It turns out to have been imposed from above, and in some cases even destructive of already existing educational institutions rooted in popular culture and lifestyle.

— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes

One of the earliest revisionist insights brought to bear upon our understanding of the schooling process was that the people involved in the reform the pedagogic theorists, school officials, local volunteers, and the like represented specific kinds of class interests. A new and critical reading of the documents on educational policy and theory has emphasized the extent to which the goals of reform were repressive in character, that is, aimed at disciplining and containing the classes on whose behalf they were put forward. This argument has challenged the more common emphasis upon the progressive character of reform, and opened up for reexamination many other aspects of schooling history as well.

— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes

Schools are viewed as means of fixing individuals into social positions largely determined by the constraints of the given social structure and by their initial class position in it. According to this critical approach, the dominant belief in the independent power of education to assign social roles serves the function of getting the lower classes to accept the existing social order by persuading them that those in positions of power are there by reason of their personal merit.

— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes

That educational accomplishments determine career patterns and social success is central to theoretical traditions now dominant in most Western nations, and to popular understanding of and justification for education, as well. This faith in the efficacy of education in channeling the most talented individuals into prestigious, powerful, and highly remunerated social positions naturally deflects criticism of the inequalities characteristic of advanced industrial societies. In contrast with earlier types of inequality, the newer forms can be defended as, to a great extent, the result of differences in individual merit.

— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes

But there was relatively little discussion of the process of implementation of school reform, or of its consequences. All reforms were generally assumed to be "progressive," and were interpreted as signs either of spreading democratization or of increasing enlightenment on the part of the state, church, or lay reformers. Furthermore, research rarely strayed from the administrative documents that recounted the activities of state and church agencies, or the writings of pedagogic theorists. The perspective typically adopted was that of the proponents of schooling. The focus of research in educational history until recently has been to trace the origins of new ideas about education or to track down the political and administrative processes by which those ideas were translated into official policy in various European states.

— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes