Dear Prof,
Well Prof I think our gentle debate is over, not only have you proven my point with your link it has also been a education for me to discover just how much Christianity has impacted on the education of this little island of ours.
Instead of as you put it "telling the masses to accept being grindingly poor" Christianity was at the forefront of education.
To end Professor, it is not very Christian to feel smug, but as I keep telling anyone who will listen, I am also very human 
Gonnagle.
I don't think you can have read the articles very carefully, which is understandable as there are 20 rather long and detailed chapters.
Yet with 20 chapters the first covers the entire period from Roman occupation of Britain through to 1500 and can effectively be summarised as follows:
1. The Romans had schools in Britain - e.g.
'And it seems reasonable to assume that the country eventually had a three-tier system of education similar to that of other Roman provinces: 'elementary learning (reading, writing, and arithmetic), grammar (correct composition and the study of literary texts), and rhetoric (the theory and practice of oratory)''2. The Romans left and education and schools vanished for centuries.
'Various gangs of Anglo-Saxon invaders showed no interest in preserving Roman civilisation and before long all that remained were the roads and monuments: 'whatever other institutions of Britain, if any, survived its conversion into England, churches and schools did not''3. from about 700 education was established, but was pretty well exclusively for the training or clergy.
'Most of the schools of the period, then, were connected with monasteries and cathedrals, and most of their pupils went on to become priests, monks or nuns.'4. By 1500 education was still extremely limited - effectively training of clergy and some other professions (e.g. lawyers, but the was linked to church law) and a tiny elite had educational opportunities. There was no proper education (rather than imparting skills) for the vast majority.
Why do I focus on this period - well because it represents about three quarters of the history of christian societies and the time when christianity was most powerful in Britain. So if these christian societies claimed to prioritise education they are either lying or were really, really shit at delivering on their priorities as there was effectively no education for virtually everyone.
There is a reason that the period from the Romans leaving to about 1500 is called the Dark Ages (characterised it as marked by economic, intellectual, and cultural decline).
Thereafter the history is one of fluctuating dominance of power by the church and where the church is most dominant education and intellectualism decline and when secular society gains greater prominence (e.g. Age of Enlightenment and over the past 150 years) education and intellectualism improve.
If you actually read the chapters on more recent history you will see an ongoing theme - churches want to control education, what is taught and what is learned (but latterly was to be paid to do so but fight tooth and nail to retain absolute control). Time and again the churches opposed and often completely blocked proposals to establish networks of secular schools that would have provided education to a much wider population.
