Elementary education was made universal and compulsory for both sexes in the duchy of Württemberg in 1565, in the Dutch Republic in 1618, in the duchy of Weimar in 1619, in Scotland in 1696, in France in 1698, in England in 1876. The delay in England was due to the wide extension of voluntary education through private religious agencies, and to the feeling in the ruling classes that in the prevailing economic system the education of the poor was unnecessary and probably undesirable.
