provided a link to www.JeffersonLeadership.com is included.
Category Archives: Education
Thomas Jefferson on establishing a public library
… every year there shall be paid out of the treasury the sum of two thousand pounds, to be laid out in such books and maps as may be proper to be preserved in a public library … at the town of Richmond.
The two houses of Assembly shall appoint three persons of learning and of attention to literary matters, to be visiters [Webster’s 7th Collegiate: “one that makes formal visits of inspection”] … to receive the annual sums before mentioned, and therewith to Procure such books and maps as aforesaid, and shall superintend the preservation thereof … Whensoever a keeper shall be found necessary they shall appoint such keeper, from time to time, at their will, on such annual salary (not exceeding one hundred pounds) as they shall think reasonable.
If during the time of war the importation of books and maps shall be hazardous … the visiters shall place the annual sums … in the treasury until fit occasions shall occur of employing them.
It shall not be lawful for the said keeper, or the visiters themselves, or any other person to remove any book or map out of the said library …but the same shall be made useful … within the said library, without fee or reward …
The visiters shall annually settle their accounts with the Auditors and leave with them the vouchers for the expenditure of the monies put into their hands.
From the Report of the Revisors, 1779
Taken from Padover’s The Complete Jefferson, P. 1054 – 1055
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
Jefferson spent the Revolutionary War years helping revise Virginia’s statutes. Promoting an educated citizenry was one of his passions. The entire statute was less than 400 words and fit on one page of paper. Its key provisions:
1. The Legislature shall fund a public library with 2,000 pounds per year. (A search of multiple web sites gave me no clear idea how many dollars that was in 1779 or an equivalent value in 2012.)
2. A board of three visiters (Jefferson’s spelling), learned and literary men, shall govern all aspects of the library.
3. A librarian may be appointed, whose maximum salary shall be no more than 5% of the annual budget.
4. During wartime, the annual appropriation may be escrowed until the money could be safely spent.
5. This was not a lending library. All books and maps were to be used on-site only, without expense to the user.
6. The visiters were responsible for an annual accounting of library funds.
Jefferson’s proposal was not adopted.
What other ideas does Thomas Jefferson have
for the benefit of your audience?
Invite him to speak and find out!
Call Patrick Lee, 573-657-2739
Thomas Jefferson on the purposes of a university, Part 2
… the Commissioners were first to consider at what point it was understood that university education should commence? … And this brings us to the … higher branches of education, of which the Legislature require the development; those, for example, which are …
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, the gratification and happiness of their fellow-citizens, of the parent especially, and his progeny, on which all his affections are concentrated.
Report of the Commissioners of the University of Virginia, Aug. 4, 1818
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
The previous post (4-27-12) gave the first three purposes of a university education, drawn from this report. Today’s post gives the final three, to:
4. Develop critical thinking, for intellectual and moral growth and understanding
5. Learn the sciences which promote the arts and contribute to human comfort
6. Form habits which make them good examples to others and bring happiness to themselves
These six objects will
– Benefit the country generally
– Please its citizens, promoting happyness and health
– Be a particular blessing to the parents and their children
Thomas Jefferson has a purpose for everything,
even your audience! Invite him to speak.
Call Patrick Lee, 573-657-2739
Thomas Jefferson on the purposes of a university, Part 1
… the Commissioners were first to consider at what point it was understood that university education should commence? … And this brings us to the … higher branches of education, of which the Legislature require the development; those, for example, which are,
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, the laws which regulate the intercourse of nations, those formed municipally for our own government, and a sound spirit of legislation, which, banishing all arbitrary and unnecessary restraint on individual action, 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, and by well informed views of political economy to give a free scope to the public industry; …
Report of the Commissioners of the University of Virginia, Aug. 4, 1818
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
Jefferson wrote the report of these 21 commissioners, who met Aug. 1-4, 1818, at Rockfish Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Commission had been charged by the Legislature to prepare detailed guidelines for a new public university.
The duties of the Commission were to recommend:
- A location (Charlottesville was chosen over Staunton and Lexington.)
- A design for the grounds. (The original design is still very much in evidence.)
- The curricula
- Qualifications of the professors
In-between the first two and last two was an explanation of the purposes of the University, our focus in this post and the next. These first three purposes could be summarized:
1. To prepare leaders on whom the public can depend
2. To promote principles of sound government and an understanding of laws which
– Govern international relations
– Are necessary for local government
– Protect individuals from unnecessary or arbitrary restraint
– Leave individuals free to do whatever they wish, provided they don’t
infringe on another’s equal rights.
3. To promote a free market economy, based on balanced interests of agriculture,
manufacture and commerce.
Monday’s post (April 30) will detail the remaining three purposes.
Thomas Jefferson has a purpose for everything,
even your audience! Invite him to speak.
Call Patrick Lee, 573-657-2739
Thomas Jefferson on the value of history
I want to make history interesting and relevant to you. Am I succeeding?
History, by apprising the people 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.
Notes on Virginia, 1782, 3736
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
These words are part of the closing challenge in every presentation I make as Thomas Jefferson. He recognized that human nature does not change. Lessons learned from the past can not only guide the present, they can protect the future.
He was particularly averse to human ambition, the desire of a few to gain authority over the many. He hated the idea that the few … the wealthy, well-born, or those already entrenched in power … were somehow superior to the masses. Reading history would help one recognize ambition, no matter how it presented itself. Once recognized, it could be defeated.
As part of that closing challenge, I pair this thought with another written decades later in 1816 to Charles Yancey, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
Thomas Jefferson on reading novels
Read any good books lately?
A great obstacle to good education is the ordinate passion prevalent for novels, and the time lost in that reading which should be instructively employed. When this poison infects the mind, it destroys its tone and revolts it against wholesome reading. Reason and fact, plain and unadorned, are rejected. Nothing can engage attention unless dressed in all the figments of fancy, and nothing so bedecked comes amiss. The result is a bloated imagination, sickly judgment, and disgust towards all the real businesses of life.
Thomas Jefferson to N. Burwell, 1818, 2390
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
On the surface, this one is bound to rankle readers of fiction. This is undoubtedly what Jefferson meant by “novels,” fiction rather than fact. He was all about facts, and had no room for fiction that did not inspire the reader to something greater. These novels would have been ones for entertainment only, with no redeeming characteristics.
This letter was written when Jefferson was 75. A more complete view comes from a letter he wrote in 1771, at age 28, to Robert Skipworth (2994): “…the entertainments of fiction are useful as well as pleasant … But wherein is its utility? … I answer everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue.”
Later in this excerpt, Jefferson praises a certain kind of fiction over nonfiction: “We are, therefore, wisely framed to be as warmly interested for a fictitious as for a real personage. The field of imagination is thus laid open to our use and lessons may be formed to illustrate and carry home to the heart every moral rule of life. Thus a lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics and divinity that ever were written. This is my idea of well written Romance, of Tragedy, Comedy and Epic poetry.”
Perhaps as an old man, Jefferson was dismayed with a preoccupation with fiction that only entertained and served no greater purpose.
Invite Thomas Jefferson to share his wisdom with your audience.
Call Patrick Lee, 573-657-2739
Thomas Jefferson on education in general, Part 1
Do you longer for better, broader education?
… I hope our successors will turn their attention to the advantages of education. I mean of education on the broad scale, and not that of the petty academies, as they call themselves, which are started up in every neighborhood … I hope the necessity will at length be seen of establishing institutions here, as in Europe, where every branch of science useful at this day, may be taught in its highest degree.
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1814, 2397
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
Thirty-five years before this letter, Jefferson drafted an education plan for Virginia. Its main provisions:
- Primary schools within walking distance of every child in the state.
- Three years of primary school education for all (white) boys AND girls at public expense.
- 20 regional grammar schools for more advanced education.
- Post-primary scholarships for the brightest but financially poorest male students.
- Advanced education through the grammar schools for children whose parents had the means to pay for it.
- Post-grammar school scholarships for the smartest financially-deprived students.
Jefferson’s plan was never adopted. Throughout the rest of his life, he lobbied for expanded quality public education for all ages. He saw an educated citizenry as the first line of defense in preserving America’s republican principles of freedom and equality.
Learn firsthand of Mr. Jefferson’s dreams for a well-educated citizenry!
Call Patrick Lee, 573-657-2739
Thomas Jefferson on four ways to defeat aristocracy
How would you have removed “privilege” from American society in 1780?
I considered four of these bills [of the Revised Code of Virginia] … as forming a system by which every fibre would be eradicated of ancient or future aristocracy; and a foundation laid for a government truly republican.
- The repeal of the laws of entail would prevent the accumulation and perpetuation of wealth, in select families …
- The abolition of primogeniture, and equal partition of inheritances removed the feudal and unnatural distinctions which made one member of every family rich, and all the rest poor …
- The restoration of the rights of conscience relieved the people from taxation for the support of a religion not theirs; for the Establishment was truly of the religion of the rich, the dissenting sects being entirely composed of the less wealthy people …
- the bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government …
All this would be effected without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen.
Thomas Jefferson’s Autobiography, 1821, 479
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
As a revisor of statutes in Virginia in the late 1770s, Jefferson envisioned laws “truly republican,” ones that would remove artificial distinctions between individuals, facilitate a society of opportunity, and secure a government chosen by a well-educated citizenry
A summary of these four points:
1. Repeal laws of entail, which dictated how family estates could be passed on
2. Abolish primogeniture, which allowed the firstborn to receive the entire inheritance
3. Eliminate state-supported religion
4. Public funding of a general education for all free children, leading to a well-informed citizenry
Thomas Jefferson on botany at the University of Virginia
Will you have this much vision for the future when you’re 83?
It is time to think of the introduction of the school of Botany into our institution. [University of Virginia] …
1. Our first operation must be the selection of a piece of ground of proper soil and site, suppose of about six acres … we are to regard the circumstances of soil, water, and distance …
2. Enclose the ground with a serpentine brick wall seven feet high. This would take about 80,000 bricks and cost $800, and it must depend on our finances whether they will afford that immediately, or allow us, for awhile, but enclosure of posts and rails.
3. Form all the hill sides into level terraces of convenient breadth, curving with the hill, and the level ground into beds and alleys.
4. Make out a list of the plants thought necessary and sufficient for botanical purposes, and of the trees we propose to introduce, and take measures in time for procuring them … The trees I should propose would be exotics of distinguished usefulness, and accommodated to our climate …
Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Emmett, 1826, 929
Patrick Lee’s Explanation
Jefferson labored for a dozen years to create the University of Virginia. He raised the political and financial support, surveyed the grounds, designed the buildings and supervised the laying of cornerstones. He developed the curricula. recruited the professors and served as its rector (in today’s terms, president) when the University opened in 1824.
Two years later and just months before his death, Jefferson envisioned adding a botany school and described its scope.
