Public Education and its Christian origins

I'm sure many a parent is outraged, or at very least concerned at the rulings of the activist judges in California, legislating from the bench, ruling that it is illegal for (uncertified) parents to educate their children. The government wants to program, er, sorry, educate our children as they know how. Clearly they know best for our children!

I ehard about it, and wanted to do some research as to the origis of public education, how it got its start. Would you believe that it began and came out of the Puritans in colonial New England? Yeah, and it was also strongly tied to the church in these colonies (i.e. respect for authority, honoring parents, personal humility, hard work ethic...) all the bad stuff like that.

The Puritans who founded New England were among the most highly educated persons in England, the leaders and ministers being mostly Cambridge University graduates. All of the original colonists, men and women, were able to read and write and were students of the Bible.

Even more important than formal training to read and write, however, was the totality of family, church, and political society in the formation of children's character, which was the original meaning of education. Education was conceived broadly as the transference to its children of a society's culture, the absolute essentiality for the survival of society, particularly for Puritans in the savage wilds of North America in the early 17th century.

for full article, see http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0906/0906puritanpubed.htm