Literacy in early America was at its highest until the responsibility for education was stolen from parents by the government. When nineteenth-century Massachusetts parents resisted new mandates to hand their children over to government schools, they were met swiftly with threats of violence. The long arm of the law won the battle by physically enforcing attendance, and literacy rates dropped like a rock after that. Where did education begin in the first place, and how did it end up on its downward trajectory of today?