When looking at other thinkers of that time it is easy to see that education was something that people needed, but did not attain. In Martin Luther's, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, He speaks of the way the Catholic Church cleverly surrounds them. In society the Church helped the people to be illiterate. The Church needed the people uneducated in order to control them, if the people could not read and interpret the bible, they could not be leaders, or question authority(337-353). John Calvin has similar points of view. In his address, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin feels the people should live above the law and have a conscience that does not observe the law(359). This is probably due to the fact that some of the laws were unjust and he urges the uneducated to rise above them and act accordingly. When people are uneducated, they cannot question laws, and are told to follow them blindly or go to hell, then they do. The idea of being educate is indirectly explored in Hobbes and Locke. In the Leviathan, Hobbes writes, that the first thing men seek is reason(Knoebel 33). In order to seek reason one must be educated. Reason comes from critical thinking and that can only be brought on by education. In Of Civil Government, Locke explores the idea of the people appointing the government, the very idea of the king coming from the people's choice and not God, says that the people must be educated (Knoebel 78-79). .
The Utopia, also deals with the making and abiding with and by civil laws. In the Utopia, there are laws regarding everything. To keep civility there were laws for working, playing, traveling, and even free time(More 266). This is a refection of the time in a very direct way. In the time of More, there were no laws made to protect civility unless they in some way benefitted the "powers at be." Most laws political and religious were made to scare the people into a box and keep them from ever questioning and moving up in society.