History of Educational Systems Development in Capitalist US thread:

Colonial Period ( economic model - Mercantilism)

Mercantilism is an economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy.

It promotes imperialism, colonialism, tariffs and subsidies on traded goods to achieve that goal. For further read, please research merchantilism which is the one of early form of Capitalism although foundational concepts were developed from feudalism.

Therefore, for complete understanding of Capitalism today, I highly recommend starting your study from Roman Empire (Western and Eastern - Byzantine).

Education in the Thirteen Colonies during the 17th and 18th centuries varied considerably. Public school systems existed only in New England.

In the 18th Century, the Puritan emphasis on literacy largely influenced the significantly higher literacy rate (70 percent of men) of the Thirteen Colonies, mainly New England, in comparison to Britain (40 percent of men) and France (29 percent of men)

the Puritans in what is now Massachusetts required parents to teach their children to read and also required larger towns to have an elementary school, where children learned reading, writing, and religion.

In general, though, schooling was not required in the colonies, and only about 10% of colonial children, usually just the wealthiest, went to school, although others became apprentices (Urban, Jennings, & Wagoner, 2008).

How much education a child received depended on a person's social and family status. Families did most of the educating, and boys were favored.