Note 4 — Chapter I · The Period of Beginnings

“Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties; and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of the people, it shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them; ... especially public schools and grammar schools in towns; ...” Thorpe, Francis Newton, editor, The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters, and other Organic Laws of the States, Territories, Now or Heretofore Forming the United States of America. 7 v. (Government Printing Office, Washington, 1909), Vol. II, p. 1907. Similar statements were placed in the constitutions of neighboring New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine. Indiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Kansas and North Dakota have likewise pinned their faith to “knowledge and learning” as an agent for democratizing the government as well as for the encouragement of “the principles of humanity, industry, and morality.” Ibid., Vol. IV, p. 2487; Vol. II, pp. 1069, 1086; Vol. I, pp. 283, 322, 353; Vol. IV, p. 2080; p. 2212; Vol. VI, p. 3233; p. 3373; p. 3469; Vol. II, p. 1232; Vol. V, p. 2872. In constitutions adopted at a much later time the same purposes of education are often expressed. In 1789 a Massachusetts law charged “instructors of youth” that they should “take diligent care, and to exert their best endeavors to impress on the minds of children and youth committed to their care and instruction, the principles of piety, justice, and a sacred regard to truth, love to their country, humanity, and universal benevolence, sobriety, industry, and frugality, chastity, moderation and temperance, and those other virtues which are the ornament of human society, and the basis upon which the Republican Constitution is structured. And it shall be the duty of such instructors to endeavor to lead those under their care (as their ages and capacities will admit) into a particular understanding of the tendency of the above mentioned virtues, to preserve and perfect a Republican Constitution, and to secure the blessings of liberty, as well as to promote their future happiness; and the tendency of the opposite vices to slavery and ruin.” Statutes of Massachusetts, 1780-1807, sec. 4, Vol. I, pp. 470-471. On the statute books in 1823. Also Statutes, 1826, ch. 143, p. 180; also General Statutes, 1860, ch. 38, sec. 10, p. 216; also Public Statutes, 1882, ch. 44, sec. 16. This law became the source of many similar in character.