In Walking in Darkness at Noonday I stated:
If Jesus Christ is the Author of the agency of man in the heavens, then His John the Baptist for the introduction and establishment of that doctrine in government on the earth was Thomas Jefferson (pg. 134).
I also made the case that compulsory secularized tax-payer funded public schools are the modern day vehicle for “education after the order of Nehor” (pg. 152) and that it is destructive of the agency of man.
Yet, Thomas Jefferson proposed to establish public education in America. How could this seeming contradiction be?
Jefferson was profoundly concerned with the safety and preservation of the Republic. He understood that there is no salvation in ignorance:
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be. The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves; nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe. (Letter to Col. Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816)
Accordingly, Jefferson considered an educated and informed citizenry to be fundamental to maintaining liberty and tried, at both the federal and state level (in Virginia) to assure the general availability of a basic education to all, thus
…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…to be chiefly historical. History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge 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 will 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…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. (Notes on the State of Virginia, Chapter 18, Epilogue: Securing the Republic)
In his State of the Union address on Dec. 2, 1806 Thomas Jefferson proposed that the federal government support education:
“Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canal, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of Federal powers…Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal…I suppose an amendment to the Constitution, by consent of the states, necessary, because the objects now recommended are not among those enumerated in the Constitution, and to which it permits the public moneys to be applied…The present consideration of a national establishment for education particularly is rendered proper by this circumstance also, that if Congress, approving the proposition, shall yet think it more eligible to found it on a donation of lands, they have it now in their power to endow it with those which will be among the earliest to produce the necessary income.”
In his Notes on the State of Virginia Jefferson proposed that such public education be targeted to benefit the poor only and only for two to three years, thus giving all citizens an opportunity to obtain a good basic education. Beyond this basic education, further educational opportunities would be offered to a limited few of the poor who excelled. But education was not to be compulsory, for, reasoned Jefferson:
“Is it a right or a duty in society to take care of their infant members in opposition to the will of the parent? How far does this right and duty extend? –to guard the life of the infant, his property, his instruction, his morals? . . . 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. . . What is proposed. . . is to remove the objection of expense, by offering education gratis, and to strengthen parental excitement by the disfranchisement of his child while uneducated. “ (The Elementary School Act of 1817, proposed legislation that Thomas Jefferson sent to Joseph C. Cabell on 9 September 1817 with an accompanying letter)
Repeating a theme from his State of the Union address quoted above, the education he proposed was to be directed by parents, not the government.
“But if it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the Governor and Council, the commissioners of the literary fund, or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience. Try the principle one step further and amend the bill so as to commit to the Governor and Council the management of all our farms, our mills, and merchants’ stores” (Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Cabell, Feb. 2, 1816).
From these quotes we may glean some fundamental principles of Jefferson’s ideas for public education.
- He favored publicly supported education only for the poor and only for two to three years with limited exceptions.
- At the federal level, he recognized that education was no part of the authority of the government and could only be addressed by an amendment to the Constitution.
- His proposal at the federal level called for funding by the donation of lands, not from taxes, to create an endowment to fund education.
- He believed that education should never be compulsory, and that
- Education should be directed by parents, never by the government at any level.
At the federal level, his proposal was not unlike the Perpetual Education Fund, which helps the poor with voluntary donations. His proposal to establish publicly funded education for the poor in the State of Virginia was to be funded by a tax of one cent on each citizen of the state, for:
…the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests & nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance (letter to George Wythe, August 13, 1786).
Thomas Jefferson’s determination to preserve the safety and viability of the American Republic by promoting a system of public education for those who could not otherwise afford an education was certainly not misplaced. Knowledge and truth are essential if liberty is to be preserved.
Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge: and their honourable men are famished, and their multitude dried up with thirst (Isaiah 5:13).
Further, knowledge, truth, and liberty are essential to eternal salvation:
It is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance” (D&C 131:6)
Jefferson was right about the value and importance of education. That said, the system of education he proposed in Virginia is still “education after the order of Nehor,” which is ultimately destructive of the agency of man. But you and I have the benefit of access to the Book of Mormon, to the pure doctrines of Jesus Christ, and to Walking in Darkness at Noonday from which to form our views. Thomas Jefferson did not. I’ll give him a pass on this.
Great article! I don’t see how the Saints, knowing that our homes, churches, and temples are the safe places of the last days, can continue to send their children, even at very young ages, out into the enemy camps to be educated. The public schools have done just what Jefferson feared — they have taken over parental authority. So, yes, a pass is appropriate; he surely must be wishing he had done more.
John, great article. I recently wrote an article which is a pre-cursor to this and I was planning to research a bit more and write an article along the lines of yours, but now I don’t have to. :) Thank you so much for saving me the time. Here’s a link to my article on why Karl Marx wanted free public education. If you see anything that needs corrected or an extra insight please let me know.
http://www.utahsrepublic.org/public-schools-democracy-and-the-destruction-of-private-property/
I also want to mention a new web project I haven’t announced publicly which you may be interested in. Check out http://www.AgencyBasedEducation.org and you may want to get a copy of Neil Flinders’ book “Teach the Children, an Agency Approach to Education.” It’s an awesome book and quite inexpensive on Amazon.com.
Thanks for the article. You are passionate if not misled. Evoking Jefferson in this manner amounts to interpretation void of application. Comparing public education to Nehor amounts to wresting the scriptures (Alma 13:20) and makes you Alma or Mormon I guess. I like your writing, but fear that it lacks objective reasoning. Consider this small idea. You are welcome to criticize it if you wish. We can’t teach the gospel if people can’t read. Modern public education is mandatory in name only. What percentage of the public is actually compelled to be educated? Less than 70% by some measures. It doesn’t sound that “mandatory” to me. Affording citizens the opportunity to learn and excel seems like promoting the work of the Lord.
You?
Mark, there’s a reason public education is called “compulsory education.” There’s a reason Karl Marx wrote free public education into one of his 10 planks of the Communist Manifesto and it wasn’t a noble reason. We have truancy laws that punish children and families if those children don’t attend school. We have court cases that tell parents once their child crosses the threshold of a school, the school is the sole determiner of what that child is going to receive for their education, including teachings that religious families find objectionable and immoral. Check out the video here (http://www.overruledmovie.com/). Why do we package children up by age and tell them to move through the system at the same pace as their age peers, logging seat time for 12-13 years, just to have a piece of paper that says they graduated in spite of how well they performed? There are serious questions to ask about public education. Senator Ted Kennedy’s office released a paper years ago that said the state’s literacy rate was 98% prior to compulsory education and after that it had dropped to 91% which is where it was in 1990 (http://www.naturalchild.org/guest/john_gatto.html). You are making a leap of logic by assuming only publicly educated children will know how to read and write and share the gospel. Privately schooled and home schooled children can do this as well. Jefferson also said this, “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.” We need to get government out of education and return control to the local parents who oversee their schools.