What type of education was there in the medieval times?

Answer 1

One Answer:

There really wasn't any, except for the monks. People did not know how to read, very little could write their name. People learned jobs from other people in apprenticeships or joined a guild where they were taught. Father's passed a business or trade on their son's.

One reason the churches have all the biblical stories in stain glass is because people couldn't read, but they could understand the story in pictures. Another thing we do that goes back to this time is give testimony in court. Again, because people couldn't read or write they told their story in front of a judge. Things like dates of events were very hard for people, so they would remember a birthday or event around something major like a war or flood. When people wanted a particular date remembered they would bring in a child, beat them, and tell them to remember the day/event. It was a whole different world and it will several hundred years before the idea of a universal education will come about.

Entirely different answer:

The Roman Empire of the East, which became the Byzantine Empire, introduced primary schools in 425 AD. They did this because they wanted to establish a policy that all military personnel be literate. Their system of primary schools was kept open until 1453.

The Church established a lot of monastic schools. We have record of one being rebuilt in Wales, near the Bristol Channel coast, in 426, after it was destroyed in a fire. It had been opened some time before 395, and was closed by King Henry VIII, after the Middle Ages ended. The oldest school currently operating in the UK, King's School in Canterbury, was founded in 597.

But schools were started by other organizations as well. The oldest state run school in the UK, Beverley Grammar School, was founded in 700 AD, in what is now Yorkshire. It was kept open during the many years the Vikings controlled the Danelaw.

The oldest schools in Iceland dates to the eleventh century. The oldest school in Latvia was founded in Riga when the town was only ten years old.

Altogether, there are over seventy schools in Europe that were opened during the middle ages and are still operating. How many there were in total during the middle ages is an interesting question for conjecture.

There were over seventy universities opened during the middle ages.

Jews, throughout Europe, and throughout the Middle Ages, were taught to read and write as a matter of course.

Muslims in Spain usually learned to read and write.

Vikings learned how to read and write in runes.

Please see the links below.

Education varied depending on time and location. Charles the Bald founded the University of Paris in 835 AD with Irish Monks. That University still operates. It taught all seven of the branches of knowledge. A number of Cathedrals had schools that taught three of the seven branches: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Monasteries and convents had schools. Rich people hired tutors. Rabbis taught Jewish children. The Roman Empire still existed in the Balkans and the Roman pattern existed there. In North Africa and Spain, the Arabs were great scholars and had excellent schools and universities. Around 1150 the Arab world had a great fundamentalist movement. Many of their best scholars escaped to Europe. They converted to Christianity. They convinced the leaders of the cathedral schools to copy the program at the University of Paris, and add the quadrivium. Then they got teaching jobs. They were in special demand as music teachers. Arab music used 21 notes in the octave. Western music used 8. Arab teachers took the western octave and added half steps.