Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Headline: Massachusetts requires schooling

I'm on a mailing list from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, which includes "Mass Moments," interesting daily stories from the past.  Here are excerpts from today's:

On this day in 1642, Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the first law in the New World requiring that children be taught to read and write. The English Puritans who founded Massachusetts believed that the well-being of individuals, along with the success of the colony, depended on a people literate enough to read both the Bible and the laws of the land. Concerned that parents were ignoring the first law, in 1647 Massachusetts passed another one requiring that all towns establish and maintain public schools. It would be many years before these schools were open to all children. Only in the mid-nineteenth century was universal free public schooling guaranteed – in time, made compulsory — for Massachusetts children.

Five years later, disturbed by what it perceived as persistent parental negligence, the General Court passed a more comprehensive law, the first to require that towns provide schools (although in practice the law was generally applied only to free, male, white children). All towns with 50 or more families were obligated to hire a schoolmaster to teach children to read and write. In towns of 100 or more families, the schoolmaster (who was usually a recent Harvard College graduate) had to be able to teach Latin as well. Responsibility for education was shifting from the family to the town.

The 1647 law eventually led to the establishment of publicly funded district schools in all Massachusetts towns. The schools were distributed around the town, so that no child had to travel more than a mile or two. The curriculum was basic — reading, writing, and arithmetic. In larger towns, a young man whose family could afford to forego his labor might attend a grammar school and, if he hoped to enter the ministry, Harvard College.

Public did not necessarily mean free. The law did not specify that towns had to pay the full cost. During the colonial period, many Massachusetts towns required students to cover part of the cost by paying tuition, supplying wood for the schoolhouse, or lodging for the schoolmaster.

Nor did public mean universal. At no point in the colonial period were parents required to send their children to school, and many poor children had to be satisfied with whatever education they received at home. Also, not all towns allowed girls to enroll in publicly-supported schools. Girls and very young children whose parents could afford the fees attended what were called "Dame Schools," where a local woman taught reading, writing, and sometimes domestic arts in her home. 

When John Adams drafted the Massachusetts Constitution in 1780, he included provisions that guaranteed public education to all citizens. In 1789 Massachusetts was the first state in the nation to pass a comprehensive education law. In updating the colony's 1647 law, the legislature required all teachers in grammar schools to "provide satisfactory evidence" that they had received a formal education in a college or university and, equally important, were of good moral character. Even women who taught neighborhood dame schools were to be certified by the selectmen.

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