If you offered me a bar bet that a foundational American education law mentions “Satan” in its very first line, I’d bet against you. And I’d lose.
If you then bet me that this centuries-old law has something to teach us about modern education, I’d lose again. The law was real, and its lessons still resonate today.
In 1647, the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed the Old Deluder Satan Law, declaring that “it being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures…” communities had a responsibility to educate their children. Towns of a certain size had to hire teachers. Larger towns had to establish grammar schools. If they didn’t, they paid a fine.
Whether or not you share the Puritans’ theology, they understood something important: educating children was too important to leave entirely to chance.
What strikes me most about the law is where it placed responsibility. Just five years earlier, in 1642, the colony had passed a law putting the entire educational burden on parents and masters. It failed because it was nearly impossible to enforce. Realizing that relying solely on families didn’t work, the colony pivoted in 1647 to a shared model. Parents were still essential, but the community couldn’t simply shrug and say, “That’s the family’s job.” Society itself had an obligation to ensure children had access to an education.
That feels surprisingly relevant today. Across the political spectrum, we sometimes frame education as if responsibility belongs primarily to one group. Some argue that education is entirely a parental responsibility. Others talk as though protecting one particular system is the goal. The Old Deluder Satan Law points in a different direction. Parents, educators, communities, and governments all have responsibilities, and the objective isn’t protecting any particular system—it’s ensuring every child has access to an excellent education.
We’ve (mostly) traded debates about biblical literacy for debates about AI, workforce preparation, civic knowledge, and college readiness. Underneath those conversations, however, the same question remains: Who is responsible for making sure every child has access to a high quality education?
The answer, then as now, isn’t just parents or schools or government. It’s all of them. Responsibility is shared, but shared responsibility doesn’t mean diluted responsibility.
What’s also interesting is what the law didn’t do. It didn’t mandate compulsory school attendance or force every child into a single building. It focused on the outcome—literacy—and forced towns to make education available, while leaving families with flexibility in how they accessed it.
Today it seems that we’ve inverted that thinking. Too often, our debates begin with defending particular institutions instead of asking whether we’re actually fulfilling our obligation to educate children. District schools versus charter schools. Online versus brick-and-mortar. Public versus private. We spend enormous energy arguing about systems when the more important question is whether students have access to the learning opportunities they need.
The answer won’t look the same everywhere. A student in rural Colorado may need an online AP Physics course because there isn’t a local teacher. Another may thrive in a neighborhood elementary school. Another may need a microschool, an early college program, or a career and technical pathway. Over the course of a student’s education, several of those settings may each play an important role.
Whether we’re debating access, funding, online schools, microschools, ESAs, or AI, the first question shouldn’t be, “Which kind of school should win?” It should be, “How do we best fulfill our shared responsibility to educate this student?”
Does this sound like a message that should be obvious in 2026? If so, tell that to the legislatures in Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, and Tennessee. In those states and too many others, policymakers are arguing about school types and instructional modalities, not about meeting the needs of every student.
At the same time, swinging to the opposite extreme—treating education as a purely private transaction where parents’ views are all that matter—isn’t the answer either. We must support our existing systems because they educate millions of children every day, and they will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But that support cannot be unquestioned.
Education needs to continue to evolve because society, technology, the economy, and so much of the world is evolving rapidly. The specific threats have changed. Every generation has its own version of the “old deluder.” Few policymakers today are worried about Satan preventing children from reading Scripture—although some are rightly worried about social media keeping anyone from reading anything. In education, we’re more likely to worry about learning loss, misinformation, AI, or preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist.
The principle behind the law, however, has held up remarkably well. The Old Deluder Satan Law wasn’t just about Satan. It was about a community deciding that educating children was too important to leave entirely to individual families and too important to be limited to a single approach.
Nearly four centuries later, I’d still bet on that principle.