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Lesson Plan: Mainz (Printing Press)

Blog Post | Education & Literacy

Lesson Plan: Mainz (Printing Press)

In this lesson, students will learn about the city of Mainz, Germany and the man responsible for Europe’s rapid adoption of the printing press, Johannes Gutenberg.

You can find a PDF of this lesson plan here.

Lesson Overview

Featured article: Centers of Progress, Pt. 15: Mainz (Printing Press) by Chelsea Follett

In this lesson, students will learn about the city of Mainz, Germany, and the man responsible for Europe’s rapid adoption of the printing press, Johannes Gutenberg.

The story is surprising because, as Follett writes, “almost all of the Centers of Progress have contributed to progress during ages of relative peace and prosperity, but in Mainz, that was not the case. Instead, the city’s instability became a catalyst for change. The city’s economic and political turmoil drove many craftsmen into exile from the city, including Gutenberg’s printing apprentices, thus spreading the knowledge of the art of printing throughout the European continent with incredible speed.”

Warm-up

  • Watch this short video called “Printing 101.”
    In partners, small groups, or as a whole class, have students respond to the following questions:
    • Where do the terms ‘uppercase’ and ‘lowercase’ come from?
    • How many people were needed to set the type and operate the printing press?
    • In what ways was the printing press, as demonstrated in the video, revolutionary compared to earlier methods of producing books?
    • What were some of the consequences of the invention and dissemination of printing press technology?
  • What do you know about the geography of Mainz, Germany? Could you find it on a map? In small groups, ask students to research Mainz’s geography by answering the following questions. Ask one group to share their answers with the whole class.
    • In what region of Germany is Mainz located? What are some nearby cities?
    • How big is the population of Mainz?
    • Mainz is located on which major river? How do you think that river influenced the city’s development?
    • What is the climate of Mainz like?

Questions for reading, writing, and discussion

Read the article, and then answer the following questions:

  • The Latin alphabet was brought to Mainz (and to the rest of Western Europe) by the Roman Empire during classical antiquity. The article says that the Latin writing system “likely bolstered the eventual success of the printing press.” Make an educated guess. What characteristics of the Latin script do you think made it a successful vehicle for printing many centuries after the Roman Empire had disappeared?
  • Why was Mainz politically important during the Middle Ages? Be specific. What role did the leaders of Mainz play within the Holy Roman Empire beginning in the 800s C.E.?
  • Which two socioeconomic groups in Mainz were in conflict during almost all of Gutenberg’s lifetime? What were the underlying causes of this conflict? Cite at least two reasons for the turmoil – one economic and one political.
  • What were some of the results of the unrest in Mainz in the 1400s? Write at least three outcomes of the social breakdown that occurred there during Gutenberg’s life.
  • Gutenberg had a dual identity as both an aristocrat and a commoner. His ambiguous social status made his life unstable. As a result, Gutenberg learned a trade to make a living. What was the trade he learned? Make a prediction. What was the connection between Gutenberg’s trade and his later success as a printer?
  • Although printing and movable type had been invented in China several centuries before Gutenberg, the technology did not spread widely. What linguistic feature of written Chinese most likely hindered the spread of printing in East Asia? How was the Latin alphabet different from the Chinese writing system? Why was the Latin system more easily adapted to printing?
  • How did Mainz’s political chaos during the 1450s and 1460s contribute to the dissemination of printing technology throughout Europe?
  • What were the long-term impacts of the adoption of the printing press in Europe? Complete the chart below.
How did the printing press affect this historical development?
The Protestant Reformation
The Scientific Revolution
The Enlightenment
18th-Century Revolutions (American, French, and Haitian)

Extension Activity/Homework

Write a Counterfactual Narrative

Seemingly insignificant decisions can have huge impacts on your life. Gutenberg learned metalworking as a young man to earn a living. His knowledge of how to precisely craft small pieces of metal allowed him to create the movable type later used in his printing press.

Imagine if Gutenberg had decided to take up another trade instead of metalworking. There were several options available to a young man in his region at the time, including masonry (working with stone), jewelry-making, wine dealing, glassblowing, carpentry, textile weaving, and painting.

In a short essay, write a narrative of Gutenberg’s life in which he pursues an alternate career. In your account, Gutenberg may invent a printing press, or he may not. Use your imagination, incorporate historical details, and make your piece memorable.

Hold a Debate

The Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson says that the explosion of content now available through social media, podcasts, and YouTube constitutes another “Gutenberg Revolution.” Watch the clip of Dr. Peterson on Joe Rogan’s podcast here. Do you agree with Dr. Peterson?

Hold a class debate on this question: “How is the democratization of information gathering and dissemination through social media, podcasts, and YouTube similar or different to the revolution sparked by Gutenberg’s printing press?”

To prepare, have students answer the following essential questions:

  • Do you believe that social media platforms and podcasts represent a revolution in how we gather and share knowledge? Why or why not?
  • What are some similarities between Gutenberg’s printing technology and the new social media platforms we have developed?
  • How are printing and social media/podcasting different from the traditional media they replaced?
  • Which groups were empowered by the advent of Gutenberg’s printing technology? Which groups were weakened? Which groups are benefiting from social media? Which are being harmed?
  • How is social media and online video impacting the following areas of society: education, politics, religion, and scientific discovery? How are those changes different from or the same as those that were brought on by the printing press in the 1500s and 1600s?

Write a ‘Butterfly Effect’ Essay

The Butterfly Effect is defined as a property of chaotic systems (such as the atmosphere) by which small changes in initial conditions can lead to large-scale and unpredictable variation in the future state of the system. Describe some things that came about because of Gutenberg’s development of the printing press. Can you trace the causes and effects of those events? Write an essay in which you describe five to seven subsequent historical events that came about because of Gutenberg’s development of the printing press in Mainz and its rapid spread through Europe. Keep the events within 300 years of the invention. That is, the last event should occur about the year 1800 C.E. Each event should be linked in a chain. Try your best to come up with intriguing or unexpected connections that you think will surprise your teacher and classmates.

Bloomberg | Communications

Audible to Start Generating AI Voice Replicas of Select Narrators

“Amazon.com Inc.’s Audible will begin inviting a select group of US-based audiobook narrators to train artificial intelligence on their voices, the clones of which can then be used to make audiobook recordings. The effort, which kicks off this week, is designed to add more audiobooks to the service, quickly and cheaply — and to welcome traditional narrators into the evolving world of audiobook automation which, to date, many have regarded warily.”

From Bloomberg.

Blog Post | Women's Empowerment

The Glory Days of Women’s Culture in China

The decline of Chinese women’s literary culture reminds us that progress is not irreversible.

Summary: Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, women’s rights and freedom of expression in China have faced severe repression, with censorship stifling discourse on gender and punishing outspoken female writers. Periods of greater political liberty saw flourishing women’s literature that challenged traditional roles and highlighted women’s ambition. Despite the current crackdown, the resilience of female writers persists through underground literary communities.


For women’s rights activists in China, the 2020s seem to be the worst time ever. Under Xi’s presidency, censorship of public opinions has peaked, including that of writings about gender equality. Journalist Huang Xueqin, who published investigations on #MeToo cases, for example, was incarcerated for “subversion.”

Literature also has suffered a bigger setback.  Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) outlawed any negative commentary on its legitimacy, writers have had to sacrifice their artistry for safety. Those who hold on to their commitment to the arts are banished from the publication world. Yan Geling, one of the most famous Chinese female writers of the 21st century, was banned from all press for critiquing Xi’s treatment of women.

However, the environment for female writers in China has not always been oppressive. Rather, the extent of women’s cultural contributions has always been negatively correlated with the governmental control of individual liberty.

The first surge of women’s writing in modern China was during the 1920–30s, when the nation was under the governance of the Nationalist Party of China (NPC). Despite the wartime turmoil and the infamously corrupt NPC government, society at the time was highly liberal. At the turn of the century, the traditional academic community was replaced by a new generation of intellectuals, most of whom had received Western education. In 1915, these young scholars started the New Cultural Movement. The movement fought against feudalism and advocated for democracy, liberalism, individual freedom, and equality for women. By the 1920s, Chinese society had incubated a myriad of liberal writers, artists, and academics, including some of the most important female literati in modern China, such as Zhang Eileen, Ding Ling, and Xiao Hong. Be it Zhang’s Love in a Fallen City, Ding’s Diary of Miss Sophie, or Xiao’s The Field of Life and Death, their works thematized the experiences of “new women.” Though clenched between the lingering feudalist customs and the transitioning new era, they continued to pursue independence and freedom.

The liberal environment did not survive, as what followed was the establishment of Communist China and, subsequently, the 10-year Cultural Revolution—a time when the government, rather than the people, defined how an individual should think and feel.

Donned the “Stinky Ninth Class,” the literati were considered “spiritually unclean.” During the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art, Mao Zedong announced that all works of art and literature must extol the Communist regime and serve only the interests of the workers, peasants, and soldiers. Literature, once the epitome of free speech, became a vessel for CCP propaganda.

The female writers, who had thrived in early 20th-century China, were deprived of their voices. Many were tortured to death by the Red Guards; those who survived had to relocate abroad. Ding, for example, was banished to the northern deserts, and Zhang immigrated to the United States. Slogans popularized by the government such as “whatever men can do, women can do too” ostensibly supported gender equality but, in truth, constituted an attempt to masculinize women. This propaganda masked the government’s rejection of women as an independent gender that had its unique history and needs.

The turning point occurred when Deng Xiaoping took over the presidency and introduced the “Reform and Opening Up” policies in the 1980s. He reinstated a significant degree of economic and political liberty by allowing foreign investment. Meanwhile, he ended Mao’s state surveillance and class struggle propaganda and, until the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, supported free speech.

The transformed political environment revived literature. The public’s suppressed yearning to express themselves in the previous 10 years burst forth in the form of a literary mania. Writers and poets, who used to be despised by all, were idolized. Thousands of people swarmed into auditoriums to attend poetry readings, and when they ended, rushed to the stage in tears and hugged the poets; some even kneeled and kissed the poets’ shoes. As a result, the female writers were able to rebuild their community and eventually channeled the “Golden Age” of women’s writing. Poets such as Shu Ting and Zhai Yongming and writers like Wang Anyi and Zong Pu, through avant-garde writing styles, told stories of modern women’s tenacity amid the political turmoil and the trials they underwent trying to obtain equality in a new time. They presented to society an image of women being strong-willed and ambitious, overturning the traditional perception of them as weak and dependent.

Though the current illiberalism in China is restricting women’s freedom to express themselves, the resilience that persisted through a history of constant changes and frequent catastrophes has grown stronger. An “underground” literary community came into being. Women organized off-the-books writing groups, book clubs, and literature societies, where they admired women’s writings over the past century. Women’s literary culture might be declining in China, a good reminder that progress is not irreversible, but as long as the predecessor’ legacy is still cherished, it will persevere.

Our World in Data | Literacy

Two Centuries Ago, Only 1 in 10 Adults Could Read. Today, It’s Almost 9 in 10

“In 1820, only 1 in 10 people over the age of 15 could read. Today, the corresponding global literacy rate — the share of adults aged 15 and older who can read and write — is 87%. That means more than 5 billion people can read and write today, compared to fewer than 100 million two centuries ago.”

From Our World in Data.

Blog Post | Economic Growth

The Human Meaning of Economic Growth

Misunderstandings of the relationship between wealth and flourishing have obscured the anti-​human implications of slowing growth rates.

Summary: Economic growth has been a driving force behind the dramatic improvements in human wellbeing over the past few centuries. This growth has resulted from the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and capitalism. Criticisms of growth stem in large part from misunderstandings of the relationship between economics and human values.


Why is the world as prosperous a place as it is? And why isn’t it much more prosperous? These questions are broad enough to admit countless answers, but as good an answer as any is the economic growth rate.

You might have heard that economic growth is overrated, that it’s a fine idea, but unsustainable, or even that it’s entirely counterproductive because it puts profits above people and the economy above the planet. These narratives have been widespread in recent years. They’re also based on a fundamental misconception of the nature of wealth and what a growing economy means for humanity.

Properly conceived, wealth is the actualization of human values in the real world. Economic growth is the upward trajectory of human achievement. The forms of prosperity that most of humanity strives for, such as health, knowledge, pleasure, safety, professional and personal freedom, and so many others, were vastly scarcer throughout most of human history—and would be orders of magnitude more abundant today if economic policies had been slightly different. That is the power of economic growth, and it is within our power to influence the world of future generations for better or worse.

The History of Economic Growth

Virtually everywhere and always throughout human history, economic growth was nonexistent. While pockets of momentary economic progress took place in certain instances, the overall trend was one of perpetual stagnation. But just a few hundred years ago, with the advent of the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, and capitalism, that all began to change.

When the conceptual tools of science became widely applied to create the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution, they brought an unprecedented optimism about the capacity for investment in new discoveries and inventions to reliably uncover useful knowledge of the natural world. This change inspired the broad transformation of mere wealth (resources hidden away in vaults and treasure chests) into capital (resources invested in new inventions and discoveries).

By the time Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx wrote their Communist Manifesto in 1848, the optimism of investment had already transformed Western Europe. As Engels and Marx saw it, “The bourgeoisie [capitalist class], during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-​navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?”

Marx and Engels misunderstand the complex reasons for increased productivity (attributing it to untapped “social labour”) but the quotation is significant because, despite their sympathy for state centralization of the economy, they could not ignore the success of capitalism.

While no year before 1700 saw a gross world product of more than $643 billion (in international inflation-​adjusted 2011 dollars), by 1820 global GDP reached 1 trillion. By 1940 the number had passed 7 trillion, and by 2015 it had passed 108 trillion.

Contrary to the popular misconception that capitalism has made the rich richer and the poor poorer, this new wealth contributed to growing the economies of every world region while outpacing population growth. While the world’s extreme poor have become wealthier so too have all other economic classes.

What’s So Great about Growth?

A growing economy isn’t about stacks of paper money getting taller, or digits being added to the spreadsheets of bank ledgers. These things may be indicators of growth, but the growth itself is composed of goods and services becoming more abundant. Farms and factories producing more and better consumption goods; engineers creating better machines and materials; clean water reaching more communities; sick people receiving better healthcare; scientists running more experiments, poets writing more poems, education becoming more broadly accessible; and for whatever other forms of value people choose to exchange their savings and labor.

Gross domestic product or GDP (called gross world product or world GDP when applied at the global level) is an imperfect but useful and widely employed measure of economic growth, and its reflection in the real world takes such forms as rising life expectancy, nutrition, literacy, safety from natural disaster, and virtually every other measure of human flourishing. This is because, at the most fundamental level, “economic growth” means the transformation and rearrangement of the physical environment into more useful forms that people value more.

The live graph shows the growth in global life expectancy at birth from 1770 to 2021 for Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and the world.

Before the year 1820, human life expectancy had always been approximately 30-35 years. But with the great decline in poverty and rise of capital investment in technology and medicine, global life expectancy has roughly doubled in every geographic region in the last century. Similar trends have occurred in global nourishmentinfant survivalliteracy, access to clean water, and countless other crucial indicators of wellbeing. While these trends are bound to take the occasional momentary downturn because of life’s uncertainties and hardships, the unidirectional accumulation of technological and scientific knowledge since the Age of Enlightenment gives the forward march of progress an asymmetric advantage. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns resulted in a brief and tragic decline in life expectancy, but the number has since risen to an all-​time high of 73.36 years as of 2023.

What is the direct causal connection between economic growth and these improvements to human wellbeing? Consider the example of deaths by natural disaster, which have fallen in the last century from about 26.5 per 100,000 people to 0.51 per 100,000 people. More wealth means buildings can be constructed from stronger materials and better climate controls. And when those protections aren’t enough, a wealthier community can afford better infrastructure such as roads and vehicles to efficiently get sick or injured people to the hospital. When those injured end up in the hospital, a wealthier society’s medical facilities will be equipped with more advanced equipment, cleaner sanitation, and better-​trained doctors that will provide higher quality medical attention. These are just a few examples of how wealth allows humans to transform their world into a more hospitable place to live and face the inevitable challenges of life.

The benefits of economic growth go far beyond the maximization of health and safety for their own sake. If what you value in life is the contemplation of great art, the exaltation of your favorite deity, or time spent with your loved ones, wealth is what awards you the freedom to sustainably pursue those values rather than tilling the fields for 16 hours per day and dying in your 30s. Wealth is what provides you access to an ever-​improving share of the world’s culture by increasing the abundance and accessibility of printed, recorded, and digital materials. Wealth is what provides you with the leisure time and transportation technology to travel the world and experience distant wonders, remote holy sites, and people whose personal or professional significance to you would otherwise dwell beyond your reach.

As the Harvard University cognitive scientist Steven Pinker demonstrates in his popular book Enlightenment Now, “Though it’s easy to sneer at national income as a shallow and materialistic measure, it correlates with every indicator of human flourishing, as we will repeatedly see in the chapters to come.”

The Long-​Term Future of Growth

Human psychology is ill-​equipped to comprehend large numbers, especially as they relate to the profound numerical implications of exponentiation. If it sounds insignificant when politicians and journalists refer to a 1 percent or 2 percent increase or decrease in the annual growth rate, then like most people, you’re being deceived by a quirk of human intuition. While small changes to the economic growth rate may not have noticeable effects in the short term, their long- term implications are absolutely astonishing.

Economist Tyler Cowen has pointed out in a Foreign Affairs article, “In the medium to long term, even small changes in growth rates have significant consequences for living standards. An economy that grows at one percent doubles its average income approximately every 70 years, whereas an economy that grows at three percent doubles its average income about every 23 years—which, over time, makes a big difference in people’s lives.” In his book Stubborn Attachments, Cowen offers a thought experiment to illustrate the real-​world implications of such “small changes” to the growth rate: “Redo U.S. history, but assume the country’s economy had grown one percentage point less each year between 1870 and 1990. In that scenario, the United States of 1990 would be no richer than the Mexico of 1990.”

Cowen gave the negative scenario in which the growth rate was 1 percent slower. US Citizens would have drastically shorter lifespans, less education, less healthcare, less safety from violence, more susceptibility to disease and natural disaster, fewer career choices, and so on. Now imagine the opposite scenario, in which US economic policy had just 1 additional percentage point of growth each year. The average American today would in all probability be living much longer, having much nicer housing, choosing from far more career opportunities, and enjoying more advanced technology.

Just imagine your income doubling, and what you could do for yourself, your family, or the charity of your choice with all that extra wealth. Something along those lines could have happened to most Americans. But instead, growth has been significantly slowed in the United States because taxes and regulations have constantly disincentivized and disallowed new innovations.

At the margins, many dying of preventable diseases could have been cured, many who spiraled into homelessness could have accessed the employment opportunities or mental health treatment they needed, and so on. While economic fortune seems like a luxury to those who already enjoy material comfort, there are always many at the margin for whom the health of the economy is the difference between life and death.

These are among the reasons that Harvard University economist Gregory Mankiw concludes in his commonly used college textbookMacroeconomics, that, “Long-​run economic growth is the single most important determinant of the economic well-​being of a nation’s citizens. Everything else that macroeconomists study — unemployment, inflation, trade deficits, and so on — pales in comparison.”

When we think of the future our children or grandchildren will live in, depending on our choices between even slightly more or less restrictive economic policies today, we could be plausibly looking at a future of widespread and affordable space travel, life-​changing education and remote work opportunities in the metaverse, new sustainable energy innovations, a biotechnological revolution in the human capacity for medical and psychological flourishing, genome projects and conservation investments to revive extinct and protect endangered species, and countless other improvements to the human condition. Or we could be looking at a drawn-​out stagnation in poverty alleviation, technological advancement, and environmental progress. The difference may well hinge on what looks today like a tiny change in the rate of compounding growth.

At the broadest level, more wealth in the hands of the human species represents a greater capacity of humans to chart their course through life and into the future in accordance with their values. Like all profound and far-​reaching forms of change, economic growth has a wide range of consequences, some intended and others unintended, many desirable and many others undesirable. But it is not a random process. It is directed by the choices of individuals, and allocated by their drive to devote more resources and more investment into those things they view as worthwhile. Ever since the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution, the investment in human values has been on balance a positive sum game, in which one group’s gains do not have to come in the form of another group’s losses. This is demonstrated by the upward trends in human flourishing since the global rise in exponential economic growth. Indeed, it is intrinsic to the fundamental difference between a growing and a shrinking or stagnant economy: In a growing economy, everyone can win.

This article was published at Libertarianism.org on 11/17/2023.