Closely connected with economic restructuring was a dramatic growth in population—this was the era of the first "vital revolution," during which populations in most Western European countries broke out of the constraints imposed by the system of peasant production and bounded upward at rates that in most places would only slow down toward the end of the nineteenth century. Finally, there were shifts in law, custom, and morality: The traditional moral economy and estate society was challenged by the new conditions. The emergent capitalist order demanded a new kind of labor force, indeed, a new human psyche. Schools, along with a variety of other institutions, could help to create it.
— Schooling in Western Europe by Mary Jo Maynes (Page 36)