Jefferson on Education

Thomas Jefferson, noted author of the Declaration of independence, contributor to the Constitution, crafter of the Bill of Rights, Vice President, President, Statesman, architect, farmer and inventor was also the founding father of our public school education system.

Jefferson penciled out the public school system for the State of Virginia that eventually became the model for the country. He believed that the future health of our then fledgling Democracy was “depended upon the Education, Enlightenment and Participation of its people”.

Jefferson loved and honored the intellectual virtues and the intellectual life, but for him, as for them, the chief ends of education were never held to be exclusively intellectual. Indeed, in certain respects, intellectual development was, for Jefferson a chief means to still higher ends, those of moral and civic excellence.

In 1817 he published a collection of his writings that became know as, The General Diffusion of Knowledge, originally derived from a series of Bills in the Virginia Legislature, these writings are contained within a book entitled, Crusade Against Ignorance, by Columbia University, New York, 1961.

Below are a few choice quotes from Jefferson on Education.

A crusade against ignorance: establish and improve the law for educating the people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us from such evils, and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than a thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, nobles and priests who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.

The General Diffusion of Knowledge, 1817.

“I am now entirely absorbed in endeavors to effect the establishment of a general system of education in my native state, on the triple basis, 1. of elementary schools which shall give to the children of every citizen gratis, competent instruction in reading, writing, common arithmetic and general geography. 2. Collegiate institutions for ancient & modern languages, for higher instruction in arithmetic, geography and history, placing for these purposes a college within a day’s ride of every inhabitant of the State, and adding a provision for the full education at the public expense of select subjects from among the children of the poor. 3. A(n) University in which all the branches of science deemed useful at this day, shall be taught in their highest degree”.

In a letter to George Ticknor, 1817

The advancement of popular intelligence constitutes “the keystone of the arch of our government”,

In a letter to John Adams, 1813

 “I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness”.
In a letter to George Wythe, 1786

Part of the General Diffusion of Knowledge

“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."

Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia

Part of the General Diffusion of Knowledge

"Though [the people] may acquiesce, they cannot approve what they do not understand."

Thomas Jefferson: Opinion on apportionment Bill, 1792

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 to Charles Yancey

"No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity."

Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes

"Light and liberty go together."

Thomas Jefferson to Tench Coxe, 1795.

 "Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty."

Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787

"And say, finally, 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 requires 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 to James Madison, 1787.

"A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest."

Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell

"I feel... an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of mankind that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society: beggars and kings."

Thomas Jefferson: Reply to American Philosophical Society, 1808.