ABSTRACT
Where more advanced education was concerned parents had, of course, to decide whether it should take place within or outside the home, but the Puritan theoreticians are curiously silent on this point. A real need for such heroic sacrifice could hardly have arisen in a well-organized Puritan family theocracy, but even the Puritan family theocracy was ready to bow to tradition. The religious instruction of the child had to begin at as early an age as possible, and in this particular the Puritan method of education did not greatly differ from that employed by the secular world. In view of the improvement in the position of women under Puritanism this may seem surprising. It is certainly worth noting that Luther too demands a weekly catechizing of children by the father, but actually this appears to have been a practice that was common to all Christians and went back to the Middle Ages.
