• The Puritans believed that the biggest threat to their colony was illiteracy: the inability to read.

• Why? Because if you cannot read, you cannot read the Bible, and that is your best weapon against the attacks of Satan, the "Old Deluder" who tries to delude people all day long.

• Therefore, in 1647, they proposed a law called "the Old Deluder Act." Here is the proposed language: 

It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures... it is therefore ordered by this Court and Authoritie therof; That every Township in this Jurisdiction, after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty Housholders, shall then 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

• What we have here is a proposal for the first public schools in history, paid for at the expense of the citizens collectively. This is NOT tuition. It is public school taxes. If a family could not afford to pay their share, they still could send their kids to the school, because it was so important that all kids, boys and girls, be able to read the bible.

DECISION: Assume you are a citizen of Massachusetts Bay prior to this Act being passed. Would you vote for it or not? Why?

Click here to find out what happened.

• The New England Primer was the first textbook used in American public schools.

• This is the book that taught very young children their alphabet. Look at the page teaching letters T-Z. Look particularly at the pictures and the sayings teaching T, X, and Y.