Records of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, II, 6-7.
[A General Court, May, 1642.][77]
This Court, taking into consideration the great neglect of many parents and masters in training up their children in learning and Labor and other impl[o]yments which may be proffitable to the common wealth, do hereupon order and decree, that in every towne the chosen men appointed for managing the prudentiall affayers of the same shall henceforth stand charged with the care of the redresse of this evill (so as they shalbee sufficiently punished by fines for the neglect thereof, upon presentment of the grand jury or other information or complaint in any Court ...) And for this end they ... shall have power to take account from time to time of all parents and masters, and of their children, concerning their calling and impl[o]yment of their children, especially of their ability to read and understand the principles of religion and the capitall lawes of this country, and to impose fines upon such as shall refuse to render such accounts to them ... and they shall have power, with consent of any Court ... to put forth [as] apprentices the children of such as they shall [find] not to be able and fitt to imploy and bring them up....
[Connecticut copied this law in 1642, and New Haven in 1644. The Connecticut preamble, like the one above, emphasizes the civic motive: "For as much as the good education of children is of singular behoof and benefit to any commonwealth ... it is therefore ordered," etc. Connecticut, too, was more specific as to the exact penalty for delinquent parents,—providing fines for the first two offenses, but the removal and apprenticing of the children for continued delinquency.
The Massachusetts law closed with a lengthy provision for elementary industrial training, the select men to provide materials and see that "children sett to keep cattle be set to some other imployment withall, as spinning ... knitting, weaving tape, etc."
Plainly, this law of 1642 assumed that each town had a school. The next law (b below) expressly provides such schools.]
b. A state System of Schools
Records of Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, II, 203