I am still alive. Just buried under a pile of homework deadlines. Did get to research on the Massachusetts School Law of 1647 and the Ole' Deluder Satan Act of 1642. Here's what I wrote: Its not cited, and most of it is from a bunch of books or websites. sooo...

I am going to speak today about two of the earliest education laws of our country. The Massachusetts School Law of 1642 and the Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647.
First, some background information regarding these two acts. In 1630, twelve years before these two laws were enacted, three thousand Puritans came to America and founded what became the state of Massachusetts. One of their priorities after building homes and churches was to, “advance Learning and Perpetuate it to Posterity.” So six years later in 1636, Mr. John Harvard established America’s first college which became Harvard.
Continuing with their pursuit of learning, the Puritans passed the Massachusetts School Law of 1642 which mandated that all parents teach their children to read. Five years later they passed the Old Deluder Satan Act of 1647 which called every town with at least 50 families to establish a school, and towns with at least 100 families to establish a school offering higher levels of education.
The purpose of the Ole Deluder Satan Act is explained in the title. The Puritans stated their main reason in their introduction,
“It being one chief point of the old deluder, Satan, to keep men from knowledge of the Scriptures ... it is therefore ordered that every township in this jurisdiction, after the Lord has increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall appoint one within this town to teach all such children as shall go to him to read and write.... Because it is good for the welfare of this country, that youth be educated, not only in good literature, but sound doctrine.”
They believed that Satan tried to keep people from reading the Bible and they wanted to avoid this by teaching their children to read.
There were two main kinds of schools: Dame Schools and grammar Schools. Children learned to read and write at Dame schools. Their textbook after learning the alphabet was the Bible and the Book of Psalms. In 1690, the New England Primer was printed and that became one of the textbooks used. These schools were often at a lady’s home. The Grammar schools were those ones built in a community with 100 or so and their purpose was to prepare the youth for college. Those called Latin Grammar schools taught Latin, Greek, memorization and discipline. Often it was a minister who would teach at these schools. Supplies were limited so they wrote with birch bark and lumps of lead. Eventually the children used the hornbook. It had the alphabet above with the Lord’s Prayer below.