<P> In 1852, Massachusetts was the first U.S. state to pass a contemporary universal public education law . In particular, the Massachusetts General Court required every town to create and operate a grammar school . Fines were imposed on parents who did not send their children to school, and the government took the power to take children away from their parents and apprentice them to others if government officials decided that the parents were "unfit to have the children educated properly". </P> <P> The spread of compulsory attendance in the Massachusetts tradition throughout the U.S., especially for Native Americans, has been credited to General Richard Henry Pratt . Pratt used techniques developed on Native Americans in a prisoner of war camp in Fort Marion, Augustine, Florida, to force demographic minorities across America into government schools . His prototype was the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania . </P> <P> In 1918, Mississippi was the last state to enact a compulsory attendance law . </P> <P> In 1922 an attempt was made by the voters of Oregon to enact the Oregon Compulsory Education Act, which would require all children between the ages of 8 and 16 to attend State School . Only leaving exceptions for mentally or physically unfit children, exceeding a certain living distance from a state school, or having written consent from a county superintendent to receive private instruction . The law was passed by popular vote but was later ruled unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, determining that "a child is not a mere creature of the state". This case settled the dispute about whether or not private schools had the right to do business and educate within the United States . </P>

When did it become illegal to not go to school