American History Assignment

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T H OM A S J E F F E R S ON

On Education (1785)

In the colonial American South, formal schooling was generally restricted to the children of well-to-do parents.

No public, tax-supported schools existed, and the children of most colonists rarely received more than a

perfunctory education, either at home or in makeshift local schools.

Throughout his life, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) passionately advocated not only for improvements in

education but for improved access to education. In particular, he developed a plan to establish a three-level, tax-

supported system of schooling that would make primary education available to all Virginians and an advanced

education accessible to talented students whose families could not afford the considerable expense of formal

schooling. A fair and equitable system of education, Jefferson firmly believed, was crucial to the survival of

republican government, for it was the only means by which a free people could guard their liberties. As he later

wrote, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never

will be.”

In 1778 Jefferson authored legislation to put his proposed system in place. Although he and his friend and

collaborator James Madison repeatedly introduced the bill into the Virginia legislature throughout the next

decade, it was defeated time and again by fiscal conservatives and religious zealots, who feared that the schools

would be either insufficiently pious or influenced by rival denominations. A fully funded system of public

education would not be implemented in Virginia until after the Civil War.

In the following document—an excerpt from Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson’s sole published book—he

lays forth the details of his educational plan.

From Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Boston: Lilly and Wait, 1832), 144–150, 153–156.

nother object of the revisal1 is, to diffuse knowledge more generally through the mass of the

people. This bill2 proposes to lay off every county into small districts of five or six miles square,

called hundreds, and in each of them to establish a school for teaching reading, writing and

arithmetic. The tutor to be supported by the hundred, and every person in it entitled to send their children

three years gratis, and as much longer as they please, paying for it. These schools to be under a visitor, who

is annually to choose the boy, of best genius in the school, of those whose parents are too poor to give

them further education, and to send him forward to one of the grammar schools, of which twenty are

proposed to be erected in different parts of the country, for teaching Greek, Latin, Geography and the

higher branches of numerical arithmetic. Of the boys thus sent in one year, trial is to be made at the

grammar schools one or two years, and the best genius of the whole selected, and continued six years, and

the residue dismissed. By this means twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish annually,

and be instructed at the public expense, so far as the grammar schools go. At the end of six years

instruction, one half are to be discontinued (from among whom the grammar schools will probably be

supplied with future masters); and the other half, who are to be chosen for the superiority of their parts

and disposition, are to be sent and continued three years in the study of such sciences as they shall choose,

at William and Mary college, the plan of which is proposed to be enlarged, as will be hereafter explained,

and extended to all the useful sciences. The ultimate result of the whole scheme of education would be the

teaching all the children of the state reading, writing, and common arithmetic: turning out ten annually, of

superior genius, well taught in Greek, Latin, Geography, and the higher branches of arithmetic: turning out

ten others annually, of still superior parts, who, to those branches of learning, shall have added such of the

sciences as their genius shall have led them to: the furnishing to the wealthier part of the people

convenient schools at which their children may be educated at their own expense. The general objects of

this law 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. Specific details were not proper for the law. These must be

the business of the visitors intrusted with its execution. The first stage of this education being the schools

of the hundreds, wherein the great mass of the people will receive their instruction, the principal

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foundations of future order will be laid here. Instead therefore of putting the Bible and Testament into the

hands of the children at an age when their judgments are not sufficiently matured for religious enquiries,

their memories may here be stored with the most useful facts from Grecian, Roman, European and

American history.—The first elements of morality too may be instilled into their minds; such as, when

further developed as their judgments advance in strength, may teach them how to work out their own

greatest happiness, by showing them that it does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has

placed them, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just

pursuits. Those whom either the wealth of their parents or the adoption of the state shall destine to higher

degrees of learning, will go on to the grammar schools, which constitute the next stage, there to be

instructed in the languages. The learning Greek and Latin, I am told, is going into disuse in Europe. I know

not what their manners and occupations may call for: but it would be very ill-judged in us to follow their

example in this instance. There is a certain period of life, say from eight to fifteen or sixteen years of age,

when the mind like the body is not yet firm enough for laborious and close operations. If applied to such, it

falls an early victim to premature exertion: exhibiting, indeed, at first, in these young and tender subjects,

the flattering appearance of their being men while they are yet children, but ending in reducing them to be

children when they should be men. The memory is then most susceptible and tenacious of impressions;

and the learning of languages being chiefly a work of memory, it seems precisely fitted to the powers of

this period, which is long enough too for acquiring the most useful languages ancient and modern. I do not

pretend that language is science. It is only an instrument for the attainment of science. But that time is not

lost which is employed in providing tools for future operation: more especially as in this case the books put

into the hands of the youth for this purpose may be such as will at the same time impress their minds with

useful facts and good principles. If this period be suffered to pass in idleness, the mind becomes lethargic

and impotent, as would the body it inhabits if unexercised during the same time. The sympathy between

body and mind during their rise, progress and decline, is too strict and obvious to endanger our being

missed while we reason from the one to the other. As soon as they are of sufficient age, it is supposed they

will be sent on from the grammar schools to the university, which constitutes our third and last stage, there

to study those sciences which may be adapted to their views. By that part of our plan which prescribes the

selection of the youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the state of those

talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use, if not

sought for and cultivated. But of the views of this law none is more important, none more legitimate, than

that of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. For this

purpose the reading in the first stage, where they will receive their whole education, is proposed, as has

been said, to be chiefly historical. History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the

future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of

the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume;

and knowing it, to defeat its views. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some

germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate

and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people

themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be

improved to a certain degree.—This indeed is not all that is necessary, though it be essentially necessary. An

amendment of our constitution must here come in aid of the public education. The influence over

government must be shared among all the people. If every individual which composes their mass

participates of the ultimate authority, the government will be safe; because the corrupting the whole mass

will exceed any private resources of wealth : and public ones cannot be provided but by levies on the

people. In this case every man would have to pay his own price. The government of Great Britain has been

corrupted, because but one man in ten has a right to vote for members of parliament. The sellers of the

government therefore get nine-tenths of their price clear. It has been thought that corruption is restrained

by confining the right of suffrage to a few of the wealthier of the people: but it would be more effectually

restrained by an extension of that right to such numbers as would bid defiance to the means of corruption.

Lastly, it is proposed, by a bill in this revisal, to begin a public library and gallery, by laying out a certain

sum annually in books, paintings, and statues.

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Study Questions

1.  What were the three stages of Jefferson’s proposed educational system? 2.  What would be taught at each level? What subjects did Jefferson specifically wish to be included and

excluded?

3.  What, according to Jefferson, would be the “ultimate result” of his proposed system? Why did Jefferson believe education to be so important in a democratic republic?

4.  Do you believe Jefferson’s proposed system of education was fair and equitable? Why or why not?