With remarkable timing, here is a piece that discusses the connection between the provision of free education and literacy.

The Founders established restrictive voting qualifications based on property ownership, not on the attainment of any formal education, believing that the impulse to use the ballot box to redistribute wealth would be best avoided that way. Jefferson did believe in extending education instead, but we have had a lot of experience with that approach, and it doesn’t work very well. Voters who have been through public schools are at least as if not more likely than privately or home-schooled voters to favor the kinds of interventionist policies that we all deplore.