Today the Scottish Rite is called the College of Masonry. However, in the USA we had to work to institute public education.
After WW1 American Freemasonry began lobbying the Federal Government for federally funded public schools. In 1920 the Supreme Counsel Southern Jurisdiction USA, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite declared itself in favor of the creation of a Department of Education with a secretary in the cabinet.
The masonic historian Albert G. Mackey credited the Scottish Rite for the “passage of a federal education bill that embodied the principle of federal aid to the public schools in order to provide funds for the equalization of educational opportunities to the children of the nation.”
By Paul R. Swanson, 32 KCCH