Thomas Jefferson on education: Part I

Way back in 2001, Time ran the cover story Is Homeschooling Good for America? It's a hideous piece, all in all. But there's one particular excerpt that I wanted to focus on, because it mentions Thomas Jefferson, and schooling proponents just love to cite Jefferson. Time made this claim:

Thomas Jefferson and the other early American crusaders for public education believed the schools would help sustain democracy by bringing everyone together to share values and learn a common history.

I've been reading some of what Jefferson actually said about public education, over at this compilation of Jefferson quotes, and I read him very differently. From what I've been reading, I'd call the above quote an outright lie.

For one thing, they're invoking Jefferson's authority as if he would have supported the current K-12 system we have now. In fact, his plan was to provide 12 weeks of school per year, for just 3 years-- less than 8% of the amount of schooling we require now. Secondly, based on what he thought students should be reading, it's clear that he didn't think schoolteachers would be teaching reading from scratch. You don't go from learning the alphabet to reading historical, legal, and philosophical texts in a mere 36 weeks. Clearly, Jefferson depended upon parents for at least introductory learning, and he had good reason to assume parents were up to the task. At the time of the American Revolution, roughly 90% of the population (excluding slaves) were literate. And very few of these people had ever attended a school.

Additionally, it might surprise those Time journalists to discover that Jefferson was explicitly against compulsory schooling:

It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father. (Note to Elementary School Act, 1817.)

He also defended individualized education:

The general objects are to provide an education adapted to the years, to the capacity, and the condition of every one, and directed to their freedom and happiness. (Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782.)

Reading all this, one can only imagine his horror at our current system of forced mass education. Yet Time has no problem citing Jefferson in defense of the current public schools and in criticism of home schooling, which I find dishonest.

In stating that Jefferson wanted us to learn "shared values and a common history," Time is falsely attributing to him the motivations of later public educators. Certainly, more recent proponents of public schools had such goals in mind, such as the early 19th century Prussians, who used schooling to assimilate the populations of their newly conquered territories. Later in the 19th century, America also used schools to assimilate immigrants and Native Americans, often with such violence that it is no exaggeration to say that schools were a means of cultural warfare. The robber barons who created public schooling as we know it in the early 20th century also had the intention of creating a uniform, conforming, docile populace, one steeped in "The American Dream" and the American creation myths of Columbus, Plymouth Rock, the Mayflower, etc. Even more recently, Canada and Australia used schools as cultural warfare against their aboriginal populations, well into the 1970s. Both Canada and Australia now face the possibility of tens of millions of dollars in reparations to minority families whom they tore apart, taking their children away to be "educated" in the ways of the white man.

This history provides the context for the phrase "to share values and learn a common history." It's a potentially fascist goal, and one with little to no respect for local differences or a truly pluralistic republic. It was not Jefferson's goal, and to say it was is almost slanderous. Thankfully, we know his goals, in his own words:

The objects of... primary education [which] determine its character and limits [are]: To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; to enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing; to improve, by reading, his morals and faculties; to understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; to know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains, to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment; and in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed. (Report for University of Virginia, 1818.)

To characterize that as the pursuance of "shared values" and "a common history" is to make something up out of whole cloth. A more accurate summary of the goals would be: 1) to know the law, one's rights and obligations; 2) to elect "delegates" (politicians) wisely and to demand fair representation, and 3) to run one's business intelligently. (I am reminded that, at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin, early American money was imprinted with the slogan "Mind Your Business". ) The requirements of the fledgling United States were that the common people, who had been entrusted with unprecedented rights and governmental participation, would know what they were doing; that the law would be respected; and that the economy should be strong. Pretty basic stuff, really.

Another quote characterized his goals thusly:

In the [elementary schools] will be taught reading, writing, common arithmetic, and general notions of geography. In the [district colleges], ancient and modern languages, geography fully, a higher degree of numerical arithmetic, mensuration, and the elementary principles of navigation. In the [university], all the useful sciences in their highest degree. (In correspondence to M. Correa de Serra, 1817.)

I'm not seeing history in here anywhere, except in that he did say once or twice that if students were going to improve their reading, they might as well read historical texts, as that taught them what might happen in the future. As a rule, if you couldn't prove a subject's practical utility, Jefferson would have said it should not be taught.

Jefferson's pragmatism shows up elsewhere. One of the reasons he championed publicly funded education was that, to put it simply, he wanted more trained scientific minds than any other nation, in order to close the gap of expertise which he felt existed between the United States and her more established competitors. He wrote:

The object [of my education bill was] to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind which in proportion to our population shall be the double or treble of what it is in most countries. (In correspondence to M. Correa de Serra, 1817.)

In other words, there were brilliant but destitute men who-- in England, Spain, or France-- would see their talents go to waste, but he intended to cultivate these talents and put them to use for the betterment of the country. Again, this was totally utilitarian, geared mostly (as I read it) toward the advancement of the hard sciences and technology. Jefferson had little tolerance for the teaching of the arts, conceding only that music was a respectable amusement for those who had an ear (but shouldn't be attempted by those who did not). He called fiction "a poison" and said it was dangerous to read most poetry. So as I say, I view him as a man of science, above all other intellectual pursuits.

In fact, Jefferson viewed the American experiment as the natural outcome of scientific and rational thought, and wrote that "Freedom is the first-born daughter of science" (correspondence to Francois d'Ivernois, 1795). He wrote that "Light and liberty go together," (correspondence to Tench Coxe, 1795), and by 'light' he was referencing the scientific and rational Enlightenment. The first American penny was illustrated with a sun with long rays, as well as a sundial-- another allusion.

I also mentioned technological advancement. It seems that Jefferson was against enforcing a well-rounded education, finding it preferable to allow students to pursue one particular vocation to the highest level of understanding possible:

I am not fully informed of the practices at Harvard, but there is one from which we shall certainly vary, although it has been copied, I believe, by nearly every college and academy in the United States. That is, the holding the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular vocations to which they are destined. We shall, on the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall choose to attend.... (In correspondence to George Ticknor, 1823.)

So, consider all this: Jefferson's dogged pragmatism, his emphasis on the practical sciences, his insistence on parental rights, his respect for individualized education, and his own stated goals for primary education. Does this sound like a man concerned with the soft (and softly fascist) goal of "shared values"? Where do these Time people get off, throwing around the ghost of Jefferson without comprehension or respect?

[Next post: Jefferson on the relative importance of schooling vs. a free press in insuring an educated populace.]