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Elementary education and the practices of literacy in Catholic girls’ schools in early modern Germany

Girls’ schools in the early modern era were largely run by nuns and can therefore be distinguished as Catholic institutions of learning. These schools flourished in the Catholic parts of Europe since the turn of the seventeenth century. Despite their focus on religious education, elementary skills such as reading, writing and sometimes arithmetic were taught as well. Based on curricula, didactical methods and the texts used in class, the article analyses the practices of literacy in Catholic girls’ schools in seventeenth and eighteenth century Germany. As the intentions of school founders and teachers reveal, the acquisition of literacy by the female population was not an end in itself. It rather served the denominational, gender- and class-specific socialisation of the girls. Nevertheless, learning to read and write enabled the girls to participate in the literate culture of their times. The impact of schooling on female literacy can be measured by correlating literacy rates and data on school attendance. Compared to coeducational schools where girls often only learned to read, whereas the boys were also taught writing, girls’ schools proved to be the better alternative.