an essay on national system of education in the United States.
He also provided one that was different than Jefferson on
the thoughts of what role women should play in society.
And what type of education they should have.
And so in the minds of someone like Rush, he thought that,
by their very nature, schools could be a remedy for
a number of the concerns that we have in society and life.
And so it was here, and to use one of his quotes he says,
our schools are learning, by producing one general and
uniform system of education, will render the people more homogeneous.
And thereby fit them more easily for uniform and peaceful government.
And essentially, what he's saying is that schools in their very essence,
in their very nature,
can transform us from the diversity that we see into one commonality.
That we truly can become an American,
rather than see ourselves as some modification of something other.
His views on women as well differed from Jefferson.
He firmly thought women should be educated beyond just those three years of
schooling.
But he didn't disagree with Jefferson in a sense that women should be educated
much more so for the private sphere than for the public sphere.
He had his concept called Republican Motherhood and
he very much wanted women to fit within that mold.
So women should be good mothers to their children.
And they should be good wives to their husbands.
But it wasn't something that would be deemed respectable for
them to go out into the public sphere and do something for themselves.
On their own terms to become the kind of citizen, to become the kind of producer of
knowledge that they wanted to be in a society.
There are number of historians who have laid out discourse and
discussion and offered good conversation on Rush's views about women and
his thoughts on female education.
And I provided a short video clip by Carol Berkin who can add some
additional clarification on this matter.
The last major revolutionary figure that we'll talk about is Noah Webster,
who also gave considerable thought about the formation of the United States.
Most of us are aware of his Spelling Book.
Its first publication date is in 1783.
But yet, here we see an essay of his in 1790,
just 15 years literally roughly speaking, after the Declaration of Independence.
And just a handful of years after the drafting and
ratification of the Constitution.
Where he has an essay, On the Education of Youth in America.
And it's here that Webster articulates his own rationale for
what schools should be providing.
He wants us to have something that is distinct in language,
distinct in history, distinct in behavior.
And distinct in practice from anything that was ever espoused or
created in Europe.
So it was here that Webster wanted to establish a way that we can begin to use
schools to ensure that children would become both patriotic and
have a strong sense of nationalism.
So whether you were attending a school in Massachusetts or you were attending school
in South Carolina or any new territory that would become a state,
it's here that these individuals will learn from a common curriculum.
They will learn from a common structure to ensure that they would
become a common people.
In this case, Americans.
And so you see him push and prod for
this establishment of education in the United States.
He never reached a point of saying that
education should be a fundamental right in the United States.
Only Jefferson raised that point in consideration.
And he probably did it most outspokenly in his six angle address to
the nation, which we now call in our inaugural addresses, in 1806.
And it was here that Jefferson actually calls for
constitutional amendment to establish a national system of public education.
But Webster is a very close second in this regard of arguing the utility of
having a national system of education to ensure that we've
produced a kind of citizen needed for the nation to progress.
