The Old Deluder, Educational Salvation, and the Limits of Distributive Justice

The first piece of educational legislation in the American colonies divides neatly into two parts: a local school funding policy that is familiar as the basis of current public school funding in the United States; and a preamble that identifies Satan as the enemy of the community and the justification for common schools. In this article, the author explores the relationship between a public enemy and public schools in the United States, demonstrating the continued influence of the Old Deluder Satan Act even as the relationship it proposes between access to schools and educational salvation has unraveled. While the Puritans based their distributive model of schooling on the formative power of the divine, the formative task of contemporary schooling remains dimly defined. In order to address the formative function of schooling, the author turns to Robbie McClintock's concept of ‘formative justice’ as a possible supplement to discussions of distribution.