=Town Schools in Massachusetts.=--The third type of colonial school organization appeared first in Massachusetts. As compared with the _laissez faire_ and the parochial methods, governmental activity here prevailed. Accordingly, Massachusetts may be said to have inaugurated the first real system of public education in America. The character of the schools in this colony developed from its peculiar form of society and government. It was democratic, concentrated, and homogeneous, as compared with the cosmopolitan and sectarian social structure in the Middle colonies, or the class distinctions and scattered population of the South. While there were some servants and dependents in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and a distinction was made between ‘freemen’ and others, there were at no time rival elements that were unable to combine. The settlements were not a mere confederation, but the blending of all elements into a single organism, where the individuality of each was merged in a new social whole. This condition was a result of the radical ingrained religious conviction that every one was a child of God, capable of becoming a vital and useful member of society, and that the community was obligated to give him training to that end in the home, the church, and the school. [Sidenote: Acts of 1642] [Sidenote: and 1647.] Out of this Calvinistic attitude sprang a spirit of coöperation and helpfulness, a general participation of all townsmen in local government, and the Massachusetts type of school organization. Common schools seem to have been supported in most towns from the first by voluntary or compulsory subscriptions, and before the close of the first quarter of a century there had been established by the colony at large an educational system in which every citizen had a working share. Because of this inclusiveness and unity in matters theological, the schools, while religious and moral, could hardly be considered sectarian. The first educational act of the colony, passed in 1642, was similar to the old English apprenticeship law in its provision for industrial education, and, while it was broadened so as to include some literary elements and a rate to procure materials was established, no school is mentioned in it. But in 1647 each town of fifty families was required, under a penalty of £5, to maintain an elementary school (Fig. 22), and every one of a hundred families a (Latin) ‘grammar’ (Fig. 23) school. These schools might be supported in part by tuition fees, as well as by the town rate, and the obligation seems to have still rested on the parents to see that the children did ‘resort’ to the school, but the germs of the present common school system in the United States appear in the educational activity of the legislature in colonial Massachusetts. The ‘grammar’ schools were to prepare boys for Harvard College (Fig. 24), which had been founded in 1636. [Sidenote: County schools in Maryland.] [Sidenote: Parish schools in South Carolina.]