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Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Queries 14 AND 19, 146--49, 164--65 | 1784 |
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Another object of the revisal is, to diffuse
knowledge more generally through the mass of the people. This bill 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 chuse 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 any 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 geniusses will be raked from the rubbish annually,
and be instructed, at the public expence, 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 chuse, 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 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 expence.--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 entrusted 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 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 shewing 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 antient 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
misled 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 all 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. | |