The act stated: • the king (
James VI) has a special care and regard that: •
Protestantism be everywhere fostered and promoted. • everyone, especially the youth, be educated in civility, godliness, knowledge, and learning. • '
Inglis' be universally established, and
Gaelic be obliterated because it is a main cause for the barbarity and incivility of the people of the
Isles and Highlands. • therefore a school will be established in every parish, based on the resources of the parish, and such that: • it will be paid for by the parishioners. • it will be supervised by Church bishops. • letters will be published so that none can claim ignorance of these requirements. The act reflected the current status of the ongoing
Episcopalian-
Presbyterian power struggle by specifying school supervision by
bishops (as per the Episcopalian view; the Presbyterian view was supervision by
presbyteries). For the most part, the act was inspired by adherence to the principles of
Knox's
Book of Discipline. The objective that everyone, especially the youth, be educated is taken from the Preamble to the book, while the means of realising this objective (government establishment of Church-supervised schools) is also from that book. Those who were sympathetic towards Highland culture praised the objective of promoting universally available education, but noted that government efforts in the Isles and Highlands were anti-Gaelic and not pro-education. By itself, the act was not effective, as it provided no means of realisation. The act would be ratified by the Parliament's
Education Act 1633, which would also provide a method of realising the objective. The privy council act remained in effect into the nineteenth century as one of the principal statutes for the management of schools under
Scots Law. ==See also==