Massachusetts School Law of 1647
Background: The Puritans were a very word-based group. They believed that every man was responsible to understand the
revelation of God as given in the Bible. After the Antinomian Controversy that Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson aroused,
the Puritans in Massachusetts decided they would start a college that would train ministers to stay on the straight and narrow.
For this reason, Harvard College became the first institution of higher learning in what would become British North America.
Also the 1st Corporation founded in America in 1636.
One of the more interesting pieces of legislation that the Massachusetts Bay colony passed was the "Old Deluder Satan Act"
(1647), which argued that "It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the
Scriptures," schools should be set up in the colony to teach children to read the Scriptures. Every town that had 50 families was
supposed to hire a teacher to teach children to read the Bible so that they could avoid the problems that the Old Deluder would
bring with an ignorance of God's revelation. Furthermore, every town with 100 families had to set up a "grammar school" (a
school that taught Latin) so that the boys in the town would be prepared for a university education, presumably at Harvard (the
only college in the colonies at that time) or back in the mother country.
One of the more interesting points of this legislation was the funding mechanism. There were two possible methods of
funding: 1) charge the parents of the students, and 2) public funding from all of the citizens. Some people argue that calls for
public funding of education in American society are rather new. That's not exactly the case, as this act declared. Individual
schooling was more common in the southern colonies because there were few towns, and only the children of the wealthy
planters were *0expected to get educated. New England became the more diverse economy, while the South languished
behind for much of US history.
From: Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (1853), II: 203
It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in
former times by keeping them in an unknown tongue, so in these latter times by persuading from the use of
tongues, that so that at least the true sense and meaning of the original might be clouded and corrupted with false
glosses of saint-seeming deceivers; and to the end that learning may not be buried in the grave of our forefathers,
in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting our endeavors.
It is therefore ordered that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to fifty
households shall forthwith appoint one within their town to teach all such children as shall resort to him to write
and read, whose wages shall be paid either by the parents or masters of such children, or by the inhabitants in
general, by way of supply, as the major part of those that order the prudentials of the town shall appoint; provided
those that send their children be not oppressed by paying much more than they can have them taught for in other
towns.
And it is further ordered, that when any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or
householders, they shall set up a grammar school, the master thereof being able to instruct youth so far as they
may be fitted for the university, provided that if any town neglect the performance hereof above one year that
every such town shall pay 5 pounds to the next school till they shall perform this order.
Questions:
1 What do you notice? (2)
2 What do YOU think about the difference between the North and South and their perspective of
“Free Schools”… what accounts for this difference? Remember the quote from the Va. Gov. “ I am
glad that we have no free schools or printing presses in Va.”, 1670’s… How does this effect Identity?