Is it better for the wide public to have access to knowledge, even if it might inhibit the learning of the wealthy? We now see the printing press as an invention that was pivotal to humanity's progression. It allowed people from all classes and trades to obtain information for themselves for which they previously would have had to rely on an academic or a church leader. However, many of those who already had access to that knowledge thought the printing press was a terrible idea. One argument, noted in The Renaissance in Perspective, was that it "would impair learning by lowering it to the level of the multitude." Others scoffed at how unattractive printed books were compared to the traditional copied ones.
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| The upper class of the renaissance were hesitant to accept the printing press for fear that common people would impair their learning. |
The printing press succeeded in expanding knowledge to the masses, but whether or not it tainted learning is not so certain. Regardless, I don't believe those who wanted to keep knowledge exclusive to the high classes were in the right. Societies and individuals thrive when knowledge is shared; that is worth the possibility that learning overall might be slower or less perfectly articulated.
I think we see a similar problem in schooling now. The American government provides schooling for free so everyone in the country can be educated. It allows for a wide spread of knowledge, which as we saw with the printing press, benefits society. However, not everyone goes to public schools; those who can afford it go to private schools. This hurts public schools because they receive funding based on how many students they have.
I see a problem of exclusivity here, similar to that with the printing press. Public schools educate children from all backgrounds, so students may receive more generalized education than if they went to a school exclusive to the wealthy. When this decreases the funding and therefore the quality of public schools, though, it becomes a problem of exclusivity. Of course this problem is more complicated than I can get into here, but we should look at the big picture: society benefits more overall when knowledge is shared among the classes than when elites have exclusive access.
Image credit: "The Gutenberg Bible" by Kevin Eng is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
