The Founding Father On Education

You might be surprised to know how much our founding fathers had to say on the topic of public education. They were strong believers in public education through both public schools and libraries. At LBCCS we went through all we could find that our founding fathers said on the subject and were very easily able to narrow them down into nine points. Here are the nine points and the quotes to back them up.

1. Public education is essential for the preservation of liberty.

“A native of America who cannot read and write is as rare... as a comet or an earthquake. It has been observed that we are all of us lawyers, divines, politicians, and philosophers... Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people... They have a right, and indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge—I mean, of the characters and conducts of their rulers.” John Adams, 1765

“Say... whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government, or information to the people. This last is the most certain and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it required no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.” Thomas Jefferson, 1787

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Thomas Jefferson, 1787

2.Education improves the human condition.

“The good education of youth has been esteemed by wise men in all ages as the surest foundation of the happiness both of private families and of commonwealths. Almost all governments have therefore made it a principal object of their attention, to establish and endow with proper revenues, such seminaries of learning as might supply the succeeding age with men qualified to serve the public with honor to themselves, and to their country.” Benjamin Franklin, 1749

“The idea of what is true merit should also be often presented to youth, explained and impressed on their minds, as consisting in an inclination joined with an ability to serve mankind, one's country, friends and family; which ability is (with the blessing of God) to be acquired or greatly increased by true learning; and should indeed be the great aim and end of all learning.” Benjamin Franklin, 1749

[referencing general public education] “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness.” Thomas Jefferson, 1786

“Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day. Although I do not, with some enthusiasts, believe that the human condition will ever advance to such a state of perfection as that there shall no longer be pain or vice in the world, yet I believe it susceptible of much improvement, and most of all in matters of government and religion; and that the diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is to be effected.” Thomas Jefferson, 1816

“I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the condition, promoting the virtue, and advancing the happiness of man.” Thomas Jefferson, 1822

3.Public education is vital to a Republic.

“Educations generally [is] one of the surest means of enlightening and giving just ways of thinking to our citizens.” George Washington, 1796

“Promote... as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.” George Washington, 1796

“A primary object... should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing on its legislature than to patronize a plan for communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?” George Washington, 1796

“Education is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.” Thomas Jefferson, 1820

4.Parents have final say.

“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.” Thomas Jefferson, 1817

5.Public schools should not replace private schools.

“It [should not] be proposed to take [the] ordinary branches [of education] out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal.” Thomas Jefferson, 1806

6.Public education should include reading, writing, arithmetic, history, fine arts, virtue/morality/religion and government studies.

“I think also that general virtue is more probably expected and obtained from the education of youth than from the exhortation of adult persons; bad habits and vices of the mind being, like diseases of the body, more easily prevented than cured.” Benjamin Franklin, 1750

“In the first will be taught reading, writing, common arithmetic, and general notions of geography. In the second, ancient and modern languages, geography fully, a higher degree of numerical arithmetic, mensuration, and the elementary principles of navigation. In the third, all the useful sciences in their highest degree. To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the colleges and university.” Thomas Jefferson, 1817

7.Public school management and funding should come from the county level.

“The expense of the elementary schools for every county is proposed to be levied on the wealth of the county, and all children rich and poor to be educated at these three years gratis.” Thomas Jefferson, 1817

8.Public taxes are a legitimate means of funding public schools.

“Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [of misgovernment], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.” Thomas Jefferson, 1786

“Laws will be wisely formed and administered in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the public happiness that those persons whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue should be rendered by liberal education worth to receive, and able to guard, the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens; and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth, or other accidental condition of circumstance; but the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating, at their own expense, those of their children whom nature hath fitly formed and siposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expense of all than that the happiness of all should be confined to the weak or wicked.” Thomas Jefferson, 1790

“If the legislature would add to the literary fund a perpetual tax of a cent a head on the population of the state, it would set agoing at once, and forever maintain, a system of primary or ward schools, and a university where might be taught, in it highest degree, every branch of science useful in our time and country...” Thomas Jefferson, 1816

9.Public schools are not mentioned in the US Constitution and are therefore not a responsibility of the federal government.

Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution lists the 18 specific powers of Congress. Public education is not on that list.

The 10th Amendment clearly states that any responsibility not specifically given to the Federal government in the Constitution is left to the state and local governments.