Quote:I remember that this habit also existed in Christian Europe also, the Church monopolized education, a very disgusting habit.
I don't know about "disgusting habit," I suspect that is just modern bias creeping in.
Literacy is an expensive skill to acquire and it is not unreasonable that people with no use for it would not bother to attain the skill. Your average peasant farmer worked from sun up to sun down in a subsistence economy. He did not have the time to read nor the ability to purchase reading material which was rare and expensive.
