A Civic Education Outside the Schoolhouse

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Age of Jefferson

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University of Virginia

Age of Jefferson

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This course provides an overview of Thomas Jefferson's work and perspectives presented by the University of Virginia in partnership with Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Together, UVA and Monticello are recognized internationally as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Jefferson and Education

Founding the University of Virginia in 1819 was the most obvious example of Jefferson’s interest in education, but it was by no means the first time he considered the subject. Indeed, education was one of Jefferson’s constant preoccupations. In this session, we’ll discuss Jefferson’s ideas about education as they developed over the course of his life, from the ambitious plan for a state-supported system of schools outlined in his “Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge,” to his conclusion in the early nineteenth century that the other institutions of higher learning that existed in the United States just weren’t suited to forming the leaders of a free republic. Throughout the discussion, we’ll try to understand why Jefferson was so focused on education by asking what he believed was at stake if Americans failed in their duty to provide proper instruction for future generations.

A Civic Education Outside the Schoolhouse7:56

The University of Virginia13:43

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Professor Peter S. Onuf
Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor, Emeritus
Corcoran Department of History

So Peter, this possibility of individuals, even

individuals from poor backgrounds, rising up those levels of Jefferson's pyramid.

Is that why Jefferson expects people in communities to support this?

>> Yeah, and I think really naively,

because you have to ask from a perspective of the rubbish,

or the taxpayer, the same thing, what are they gonna get out of this?

What we get is public subsidy for somebody else, basically.

Well, we get these local schools.

And presumably we need these schools, but do we really?

Most people are literate anyway, that is most white Virginians are literate,

about 70%.

It could be better.

Anybody would acknowledge that.

But what happens, this bill fails and it's because of taxpayer resistance.

It's because well, we started with the idea, hey,

there's a revolution going [LAUGH] on.

He says, excuse me, you want us to take on these new burdens,

at the very time in which we're being mobilized and the militia and

the army and we're making the ultimate sacrifice.

This is too far, too much.

This going to break the old camel's back.

Jefferson knows if you can't sell it during war time it's going to be even

harder thereafter.

How are you gonna get people who are now suffering the burdens of debt

after the war and the government is starved for money.

And the people don't have I lot of surplus cash.

This has been a big blow to the American economy, and

the Virginia economy in particular.

This has not been a good war, it's been kind of stupid if you wanted to avoid

taxes and continue pursuing happiness in the vulgar sort of way of prosperity.

So, it's not surprising that the system doesn't fly.

In fact it's only after the Commonwealth of Virginia is thoroughly

destroyed during the Civil War but you really can build from the bottom up.

Maybe that's a nice way of thinking about education in Virginia, because not

everybody agreed with Jefferson, that we needed to start all over again.

>> Yeah. >> So, it's not surprising, but

I think what is surprising is interesting and

makes us think a little harder about the problem of Jefferson and education.

It is that this is not, at the end of the day, a great setback for Jefferson.

He will continue to say we need primary education.

>> Yeah, I was gonna ask about that because this is

the central part of his plan.

Primary education, it seems like.

>> It sounds like it would be, and therefore, what's going on?

Has he abandoned his solicitude for the people.

Does he not care about the rubbish.

>> They're just rubbish now.

>> No and so as he turned away, now he's just pursuing power and

the interests of Virginia and his fellow planters.

No, I think there are a couple of reasons why Jefferson is not so

concerned with schools as such.

One is his fundamental commitment has always been

civic to the health of the Commonwealth.

So there are different ways to approach this and

I think one is through constitutional reform, through politics.

And here, I think, is the most important thing,

is through the continuing political education of the people.

Through the party political press.

>> We're talking 1790s, early nineteenth century.

>> The 1790s really the formative period in the American republic.

Of course, the new Federalist administration has been kicked off.

George Washington is our president and what happens immediately, and

everybody's deeply upset about this, is rifts within the administration.

That increasingly move into the Legislature, the Congress and

out of doors so that we have something that we can call parties.

And parties are not a good on the face of it.

Because a part is not the whole.

Where is our patriotism, the patriotism is about the whole.

The whole Commonwealth, the whole nation.

But now we've been riven on those these fundamental

ideological foreign policy issues about Britain and France.

The French Revolution.

But the upside of that division is it means that there is a broad

awareness in the political public that the future of the republic is at risk.

It's as if you're continuing the Revolution by other means.

And the kind of political education that the war itself had given to the people.

It had alerted them to their liberties, and they were vigilant about their rights.

Well, when you're a supporter of Thomas Jefferson.

And you're afraid that Alexander Hamilton, who was the second

coming of the evil Minister Robert Walpole, has got Washington's ear.

And that he's going to establish something very much like an English style

monarchy right here in America.

Well, hey, you've got reasons to be concerned right.

I mean you're going to be alert, you're going to have to read,

because it's gonna be right there in the newspapers, the Aurora.

>> There's a lot of them now.

>> Yeah, they [SOUND] spread like mushrooms.

So think of education and socialization in a broader frame.

It's not just the little red school house that becomes iconic later on,

it's also, well, it's the political cockpit.

It's the struggle over the future of America that keeps people reading.

Those skills of literacy are enhanced that all that communication,

all that information flowing through the whole system.

And Jefferson says, I think we are actually,

in ways that I never could have anticipated we are through the print

public sphere, as we call it, we are educating the people.

He wouldn't see partisan polemics against the administration on behalf of

his political allies, as- >> Propaganda.

>> Propaganda, lies, distortions.

>> That's the truth.

>> It'ss absolutely the truth.

Later he tells William Dwayne, who's the editor of the Aurora in Philadelphia,

one of the great republican papers and one of my favorite quotations.

This is on the run up to the war of 1812 and

there are divisions in the Republican Party cuz it's bad enough that you've

got Federalists but the Republicans starting sniping at each other.

Well he says, the Republicans, they've got to come together, they've got to work

together, solidarity is important, because the Republicans are the nation.

Whoa, they are the people.

So that idea of a big R Republican in a way

is engrafted on the small r republican.

And there is a kind of political education in partisan politics.

And so when Jefferson proclaims himself the beneficiary of

this revolution of 1800, a phrase he uses much later to describe his election.

>> Right.

>> And rise to power in 1801 when he's inaugurated.

He believes that he has, and this is significant,

risen to power on the crest of a mighty wave of public opinion.

This is enlightened public opinion.

So, hey, we thought we needed schools to inculcate virtue.

Because remember the function of the schools was political civic education.

Learn from history about your rights.

Be vigilant, defend them.

And what we have is a massive school house that covers

the nation in the form of the Republican Party.

[MUSIC]

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