Editing Scottish Enlightenment (section)

===Education system===
{{Main article|Education in early modern Scotland}}
The humanist-inspired emphasis on education in Scotland culminated in the passing of the [[Education Act 1496]], which decreed that all sons of barons and freeholders of substance should attend grammar schools.<ref name=Bawcutt&Williams2006pp29-30>P. J. Bawcutt and J. H. Williams, ''A Companion to Medieval Scottish Poetry'' (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2006), {{ISBN|1-84384-096-0}}, pp. 29–30.</ref> The aims of a network of parish schools were taken up as part of the Protestant programme in the 16th century and a series of acts of the Privy Council and Parliament in [[School Establishment Act 1616|1616]], [[Education Act 1633|1633]], [[Education Act 1646|1646]] and 1696 attempted to support its development and finance.<ref>{{cite journal |title=School education prior to 1873 |journal=Scottish Archive Network |year=2010 |url=http://www.scan.org.uk/knowledgebase/topics/education_box1.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928100213/http://www.scan.org.uk/knowledgebase/topics/education_box1.htm |archive-date=28 September 2011 |url-status=dead }}</ref> By the late 17th century there was a largely complete network of parish schools in the Lowlands, but in the Highlands basic education was still lacking in many areas.<ref name=Anderson2003>R. Anderson, "The history of Scottish Education pre-1980", in T. G. K. Bryce and W. M. Humes, eds, ''Scottish Education: Post-Devolution'' (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2nd ed., 2003), {{ISBN|0-7486-1625-X}}, pp. 219–28.</ref> One of the effects of this extensive network of schools was the growth of the "democratic myth", which in the 19th century created the widespread belief that many a "lad of pairts" had been able to rise up through the system to take high office, and that literacy was much more widespread in Scotland than in neighbouring states, particularly England.<ref name="Anderson2003"/> Historians are now divided over whether the ability of boys who pursued this route to social advancement was any different than that in other comparable nations, because the education in some parish schools was basic and short, and attendance was not compulsory.<ref name=Devine2001p91-100>T. M. Devine. ''The Scottish Nation, 1700–2000'' (London: Penguin Books, 2001). {{ISBN|0-14-100234-4}}, pp. 91–100.</ref> Regardless of what the literacy rate actually was, it is clear that many Scottish students learned a useful form of visual literacy that allowed them to organise and remember information in a superior fashion.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Eddy|first=Matthew Daniel |url=https://www.academia.edu/1817033 |title=The Shape of Knowledge: Children and the Visual Culture of Literacy and Numeracy|journal=Science in Context |year=2013|volume=26|issue=2 |pages=215–45 |doi=10.1017/s0269889713000045|s2cid=147123263 }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Eddy|first1=Matthew Daniel|title=The Child Writer: Graphic Literacy and the Scottish Educational System, 1700–1820|journal=History of Education|date=2016|volume=45|issue=6|pages=695–718|url=https://www.academia.edu/23569976|doi=10.1080/0046760x.2016.1197971|s2cid=151785513}}</ref>

By the 17th century, Scotland had five universities, compared with England's two. After the disruption of the civil wars ([[Wars of the Three Kingdoms]]), [[Scotland under the Commonwealth|Commonwealth]] and purges at the [[Restoration (Scotland)|Restoration]], they recovered with a lecture-based curriculum that was able to embrace economics and science, offering a high quality liberal education to the sons of the nobility and gentry.<ref name=Anderson2003/> All saw the establishment or re-establishment of chairs of mathematics. Observatories were built at St. Andrews and at King's and Marischal colleges in Aberdeen. [[Robert Sibbald]] (1641–1722) was appointed as the first Professor of Medicine at Edinburgh, and he co-founded the [[Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh]] in 1681.<ref name=Devine2012p373>T. M. Devine. "The rise and fall of the Scottish Enlightenment", in T. M. Devine and J. Wormald, ''The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), {{ISBN|0-19-162433-0}}, p. 373.</ref> These developments helped the universities to become major centres of medical education and would put Scotland at the forefront of new thinking.<ref name=Anderson2003/> By the end of the century, the University of Edinburgh's Medical School was arguably one of the leading centres of science in Europe, boasting such names as the anatomist [[Alexander Monro (secundus)]], the chemists [[William Cullen]] and Joseph Black,<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Eddy|first1=M D|title=Useful Pictures: Joseph Black and the Graphic Culture of Experimentation|journal=In Robert G. W. Anderson (Ed.), Cradle of Chemistry: The Early Years of Chemistry at the University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2015)|pages=99–118|url=https://www.academia.edu/6346321}}</ref> and the [[natural historian]] [[John Walker (naturalist)|John Walker]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Eddy|first=Matthew Daniel|url=https://www.academia.edu/1112014 |title=The Language of Mineralogy: John Walker, Chemistry and the Edinburgh Medical School, 1750–1800|year=2008|publisher=Ashgate|access-date=2014-05-09}}</ref> By the 18th century, access to Scottish universities was probably more open than in contemporary England, Germany or France. Attendance was less expensive and the student body more socially representative.<ref>R. A. Houston, ''Scottish Literacy and the Scottish Identity: Illiteracy and Society in Scotland and Northern England, 1600–1800'' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), {{ISBN|0-521-89088-8}}, p. 245.</ref> In the eighteenth century Scotland reaped the intellectual benefits of this system.<ref name="HermanTwo">A. Herman, ''How the Scots Invented the Modern World'' (London: Crown Publishing Group, 2001), {{ISBN|0-609-80999-7}}.</ref>