THOMAS JEFFERSON
On Education...

In the 1818 Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia, Jefferson first described the purpose of primary and secondary education, which was to provide every citizen with the skills necessary to transact his own business and understand his civic rights and obligations. He then outlined the purpose of higher education, which he identified to be:

To form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend; To expound the principles and structure of government, ...and a sound spirit of legislation, which...shall leave us free to do whatever does not violate the equal rights of another; to harmonize and promote the interests of agriculture, manufactures and commerce...; to develop the reasoning faculties of our youth, enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals, and instill into them the precepts of virtue and order; to enlighten them with mathematical and physical sciences, which advance the arts and administer to the health, the subsistence and comforts of human life; and, generally, to form them to habits of reflection and correct action, rendering them examples of virtue to others and of happiness within themselves. These are the objects of that higher grade of education, the benefits and blessings of which the Legislature now propose to provide for the good and ornament of their country....

Encouraged, therefore, by the sentiments of the Legislature,...we present the following tabular statement of the branches of learning which we think should be taught in the University,...each of which are [sic] within the powers of a single professor:

  1. Languages, ancient...
  2. Languages, modern...
  3. Mathematics, pure:
  4. Physico-mathematics...(applied mathematics), astronomy, geography
  5. Physics, or natural philosophy, chemistry, mineralogy
  6. Botany, zoology
  7. Anatomy, medicine
  8. Government,...History
  9. Law, municipal
  10.  ...General Grammar, Ethics,...fine arts

Thomas Jefferson believed that the young nation's survival as an independent democracy absolutely depended upon its success in educating the people. His experiences in Europe as Minister to France (1784-1789) allowed Jefferson to draw direct comparisons between his new country and "the old world" of Europe. Writing from Paris in 1786 to George Wythe, his former law professor at the College of William and Mary, he described America's unique social and political setting and outlined the importance of public education to America's future.

. . . If all the sovereigns of Europe were to set themselves to work to emancipate the minds of their subjects from their present ignorance and prejudices . . . a thousand years would not place them on that high ground on which our common people are now setting out. [Our people] could not have been so fairly put into the hands of their own common sense, had they not been separated from their own parent stock and been kept from contamination, either from them, or the other people of the old world, by the intervention of so wide an ocean. To know the worth of this, one must see the want of it here. 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. If any body thinks that kings, nobles or priests are good conservators of the public happiness, send them here. It is the best school in the universe to cure them of that folly. ...Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils, 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. . . .1

Thomas Jefferson understood "that knowledge is power, that knowledge is safety, that knowledge is happiness."2 However, it is important to remember that in Thomas Jefferson's lifetime, there was no system of public education like we have today. Only the children of wealthy families could receive the tutoring required to attend a university. This limitation of educational opportunities meant that only the wealthier members of society could achieve positions of leadership. Jefferson felt strongly that the control of power by the wealthy posed a threat to America's democracy. This larger issue was a topic of heated debates chiefly between Jefferson--who felt that the government should be composed of the most virtuous and talented citizens, rich or poor--and Alexander Hamilton--who felt only the wealthy, and therefore educated, elite should rule on behalf of the common people. In a letter to John Adams written in 1813, Jefferson described how a public education system would contribute toward replacing "artificial aristocracy," or leadership based on wealth, for "a natural aristocracy" based on merit:

. . . I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. . . . There is also an artificial aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth without either virtue or talents; for with these it would belong to the first class. The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. And indeed, it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of society. . . .3

In the same letter, Jefferson described a public education bill he submitted in 1779:

And had another which I prepared been adopted by the legislature, our work would have been complete. It was a bill for the more general diffusion of learning. This proposed to divide every county into wards of five or six miles square, like your townships; to establish in each ward a free school for reading, writing and common arithmetic; to provide for the annual selection of the best subjects from these schools, who might receive, at the public expense, a higher degree of education at a district school; and from these district schools to select a certain number of the most promising subjects, to be completed at an university, where all the useful sciences should be taught. Worth and genius would thus have been sought out from every condition of life, and completely prepared by education for defeating the competition and birth for public trusts.

Although Jefferson's bill for a system of public education was not voted into law by the Virginia legislature, he remained committed to these ideas. In 1796, he submitted a similar bill, achieving only limited success. The legislature agreed only to the establishment of elementary schools, subject to each county's discretion. Jefferson lamented the fact that even this action was ineffective due to the funding provisions:

One provision of the bill was that the expenses of these schools should be borne by the inhabitants of the county, everyone in proportion to his general tax-rate. This would throw on wealth the education of the poor; and the justices, being generally of the more wealthy class, were unwilling to incur that burden, and I believe it was not suffered to commence in a single county.4

In a letter to Thaddeus Kosciusko from 1810, Jefferson expressed his continued hopes for a system of public education:

I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain its strength. 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be in reach of a central school in it.5

Additional years passed by before sufficient legislative interest in higher education allowed Jefferson to use his political skills to press, once again, for establishment of a public university in Virginia. On February 21, 1818, a year after the bill had been introduced, the Virginia Legislature finally passed the law to establish a public university. Recalling that 39 years had passed since the introduction of his first more comprehensive public education bill, Jefferson nonetheless celebrated the law establishing the university as "a bantling [baby] of forty years birth and nursing."6

Reading 1 was compiled from Bernard Mayo, ed., Jefferson Himself: The Personal Narrative of a Many-Sided American (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1942); Merrill D. Peterson, ed., The Portable Thomas Jefferson (New York: Penguin Books, 1975); and Andrew Lipscomb and Albert Bergh, editors, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 20 Volumes, (Washington, D.C.: 1903-1904).

1Andrew Lipscomb and Albert Bergh, editors, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 20 Volumes, (Washington, D.C.: 1903-1904), 5:396.
2Bernard Mayo, ed., Jefferson Himself: The Personal Narrative of a Many-Sided American (Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, 1942), 324.
3Lipscomb, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 13:399.
4Ibid., 1:70.
5Ibid., 12:369.
6Mayo, Jefferson Himself, 326.

Source: http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/92uva/92facts1.htm

Jefferson on the University of Virginia...

In a letter to Peter Carr, September 7, 1814

Dear sir, on the subject of the academy or college proposed to be established in our neighborhood, I promised the trustees that I would prepare for them a plan, adapted, in the first instance, to our slender funds, but susceptible of being enlarged, either by their own growth or by accession from other quarters.

I have long entertained the hope that this, our native State, would take up the subject of education, and make an establishment, either with or without incorporation into that of William and Mary, where every branch of science, deemed useful at this day, should be taught in its highest degree. With this view, I have lost no occasion of making myself acquainted with the organization of the best seminaries in other countries, and with the opinions of the most enlightened individuals, on the subject of the sciences worthy of a place in such an institution. In order to prepare what I have promised our trustees, I have lately revised these several plans with attention; and I am struck with the diversity of arrangement observable in them -- no two alike. Yet, I have no doubt that these several arrangements have been the subject of mature reflection, by wise and learned men, who, contemplating local circumstances, have adopted them to the conditions of the section of society for which they have been framed. I am strengthened in this conclusion by an examination of each separately, and a conviction that no one of them, if adopted without change, would be suited to the circumstances and pursuit of our country. The example they set, then, is authority for us to select from their different institutions the materials which are good for us, and, with them, to erect a structure, whose arrangement shall correspond with our own social condition, and shall admit of enlargement in proportion to the encouragement it may merit and receive. As I may not be able to attend the meetings of the trustees, I will make you the depository of my ideas on the subject, which may be corrected, as you proceed, by the better view of others, and adapted, from time to time, to the prospects which open upon us, and which cannot be specifically seen and provided for.

In the first place, we must ascertain with precision the object of our institution, by taking a survey of the general field of science, and marking out the portion we mean to occupy at first, and the ultimate extension of our views beyond that, should we be enabled to render it, in the end, as comprehensive as we would wish. …

The learned class may still be subdivided into two Sections:

1, Those who are destined for learned professions, as means of livelihood; and, 2, the wealthy, who, possessing independent fortunes, may aspire to share in conducting the affairs of the nation, or to live with usefulness and respect in the private ranks of life. Both of these Sections will require instruction in all the higher branches of science; the wealthy to qualify them for either public or private life; the professional Section will need those branches, especially, which are the basis of their future profession, and a general knowledge of the others, as auxiliary to that, and necessary to their standing and association with the scientific class. All the branches, then, of useful science, ought to be taught in the general schools, to a competent degree, in the first instance. These sciences may be arranged into three departments, not rigorously scientific, indeed, but sufficiently so for our purposes. These are, I. language; II. mathematics; III. philosophy. …

At the close of this course the students separate; the wealthy retiring, with a sufficient stock of knowledge, to improve themselves to any degree to which their views may lead them, and the professional Section to the professional schools, constituting the third grade of education, and teaching the particular sciences which the individuals of this section mean to pursue with more minuteness and detail than was within the scope of the general schools for the second grade of instruction. In these professional schools each science is to be taught in the highest degree it has yet attained. …