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COLONIAL SCHOOLS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
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HE early Massachusetts school laws decreed that any town neglecting to provide a schoolmaster should be subject to a penalty of ten pounds. In 1701 the General Court, after declaring that the observance of this decree was " shamefully neglected by divers towns, and the penalty thereof not required, tending greatly to the nourishment of ignorance and irreligion, whereof grievous complaint is made," doubled the penalty, and enjoined all justices of the peace and grand juries to vigilantly attend to the law's execution. As a result, at nearly every session of the court there were towns " presented " for not maintaining the schools required by law, especially the grammar schools. Many excuses were offered — sometimes poverty, sometimes inability to secure a teacher. The poverty was often very real, for the colony had passed through King Philip's War, 1675-78, on which it had spent more than half a million dollars. Besides the expense, there had been great loss of life, twelve out of the ninety towns had been utterly destroyed, and forty others had been the scene of fire and massacre. A number of communities were so reduced that their share in the colony tax was remitted.
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