s, with the tradesmasters assuming responsibility for the education of children in their charge. In this regard, Knight cites the passage in 1641 in New Plymouth of "an act recognizing the principle of the English Poor Law of 1601, that the care of poor children was a public responsibility, and providing that they could be placed in families for proper maintenance, and presumably also for education" (100). This was a form of institutionalization inasmuch as the children affected would have been educated outside the home. The educational system in New England was further institutionalized in 1647 in Massachusetts Bay by the Old Deluder Satan Act, which Johanningmeier says "required that towns of fifty or more households appoint one of themselves to teach all children to read and write" and that those of 100 or more establish a college-prep grammar school. This derived from the Protestant (and therefore Puritan) belief in a literacy that would permit the faithful to read the bible. The name of the act derived from the belief that the illiterate person would not be able to protect himself, with scriptural knowledge, from Satan and all his works. Knight comments that this particular law reflected Calvinist zeal against the temptations of the devil in the world (106-107).
The prevailing attitude of laws such as these toward education was that it was compulsory and that its benefits would inure not necessarily to the benefit of the individual being educated but to the community. In this regard, Knight notes a 1671 act in New Plymouth that ordered public officials to exercise oversight on parents and masters charged with appropriate education of their natural children and those who were apprentices. Those who disregarded their duties in this connection were fined (101). As Johanningmeier says, however, in explaining this point, "education was compulsory but formal schooling was not . . . . Compulsory schooling as known in the cont...