As previously promised, here is another in a planned string of posts based on Richard Brookhiser’s What Would the Founders Do?. In the section on education and media, Brookhiser discussed what leaders such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin had in mind when they advocated local or state systems of public education. For one thing, they did not seem to anticipate compulsory attendance or limiting taxpayer support only to government-run schools.
Jefferson was also specific, at least for most of his career, in arguing for public-sector involvement in schooling only at the primary- and grammar-school levels, assuming that higher education would be wholly funded with tuition and private contributions. His argument for a state role in education wasn’t economic but political:
?Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against [oppressive political and religious institutions], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles, who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.? The mess in France was very much on his mind at this point. Later, dissatisifed with private colleges, he advocated creation of the University of Virginia, though it was still the idea that it be primarily funded by users and donors.
As far as curriculum is concerned, both Jefferson and Franklin talked a lot about [throat is cleared] John Locke. Franklin was most keen on the centrality of history instruction. He quoted Locke: ?As nothing teaches, so nothing delights more than history.?
