Regard for education thus came to this country with the colonists,
though not all the colonies attached the same importance to it.

In the Home countries of the colonists, the schools had been
an adjunct to the churches. It was natural, therefore, that the
impetus for the establishment of schools in this country should
come from the church.

"One of the first provisions made by the Virginia company in their
settlement of Jamestown was to set aside land for the use of a college
to 'teach Indian children the rudiments of religion and the Latin
language,' and money was collected in England to establish a school
which should prepare children for this college. The failure of the
company a few years later defeated these plans."

"Twenty years after the landing at Plymouth, the Massachusetts
Colony ordained by law that every child should be taught to read
and write and understand the principles of religion and the capital
laws of the country. A little later in the same section, every township,
when it numbered fifty householders, was required to support a teacher,
and towns numbering a hundred householders, to establish a school to
teach Latin. These were rude pioneer experiments, for the conditions
which surrounded them were rude; their importance lay in the fact that
they gave education a first place in public interest and accustomed
people to think of education as a function of the community." [Footnote:
American Ideals, Character and Life--Hamilton Wright Mabie.]

From these feeble beginnings has come that greatest bulwark of the
Republic--the free school.