In the 1530s the leading reformers were optimistic that the schools they had established and their sermons would create a new generation of reformed believers. Visits to the countryside in the 1560s revealed that things had not changed much. Church attendance was poor, most laymen did not really understand the new ideas and whatever they learned as children they soon forgot as adults. Doctrinal quarrels, the absence of a concerted effort to support education and the lukewarm promotion of the reformed doctrines by local rulers, resulted in religious apathy and frequent changes of religion. Upper Palatinate peasants felt they had to bend like reeds in the wind.