Massachusetts School Law of 1642
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Massachusetts became one of the earliest colonies to implement mandatory form of education for children including children who were servants in 1642. Schooling did not necessarily involve a building with a paid professor but rather was the responsibility of the parents or masters to educate the students for the purpose of being able to read the laws passed by the Commonwealth. Along with secular laws the students were expected to learn religious studies.[1]
Students would have to prove their literacy to a board of governors. Any parents or masters who were lazy or failed to properly educate their young faced a fine up to 20 shillings[2], equivalent to 1 British pound[3]. In 2005 pounds that roughly amounts to 122.18 British pounds[4]. Converted into January 20, 2007 dollars it is approximately $243.379.
This law would give future life to the Old Deluder Satan Act, Otherwise known as the Massachusetts Education law of 1647.
The law in its entirety reads:
Forasmuch as the good education of children is of singular behoof and benefit to any Common-wealth; and wheras many parents & masters are too indulgent and negligent of their duty in that kinde. It is therfore ordered that the Select men of everie town, in the severall precincts and quarters where they dwell, shall have a vigilant eye over their brethren & neighbours, to see, first that none of them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their families as not to indeavour to teach by themselves or others, their children & apprentices so much learning as may inable them perfectly to read the english tongue, & knowledge of the Capital Lawes: upon penaltie of twentie shillings for each neglect therin. Also that all masters of families doe once a week (at the least) catechize their children and servants in the grounds & principles of Religion, & if any be unable to doe so much: that then at the least they procure such children or apprentices to learn some short orthodox catechism without book, that they may be able to answer unto the questions that shall be propounded to them out of such catechism by their parents or masters or any of the Select men when they shall call them to a tryall of what they have learned of this kinde. And further that all parents and masters do breed & bring up their children & apprentices in some honest lawful calling, labour or imployment, either in husbandry, or some other trade profitable for themselves, and the Common-wealth if they will not or cannot train them up in learning to fit them for higher imployments. And if any of the Select men after admonition by them given to such masters of families shal finde them still negligent of their dutie in the particulars aforementioned, wherby children and servants become rude, stubborn & unruly; the said Select men with the help of two Magistrates, or the next County court for that Shire, shall take such children or apprentices from them & place them with some masters for years (boyes till they come to twenty one, and girls eighteen years of age compleat) which will more strictly look unto, and force them to submit unto government according to the rules of this order, if by fair means and former instructions they will not be drawn into it. [5]
