A little over 100 years ago, compulsory government education was regarded as revolutionary, and was often resisted by force. Massachusetts was the first state to implement compulsory attendance laws. Barnstable County, Massachusetts was the last county to "fall,'' and the militia was called in to force the children into the newly created government schools at gunpoint.
"Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted - sometimes with guns - by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880's when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard."