John brought up Jefferson so I had to reply. I’m not a great fan of the third president; I sort of pity the man, really, because he honestly didn’t seem to understand himself very well, or the havoc he wreaked among those who should have been able to rely on his loyalty. He did have a way with words, though, whether derivative or his own, and when he got it right, it sure came out nobly. One of my favorite discoveries was a passage I call “The Rockfish Gap Scope and Sequence”. In considering the form and function of the proposed University of Virginia, Jefferson outlined this view of the educational program which would lead to the college gates. For a public education, it’s a useful syllabus:
The objects of this primary education determine its character and limits.? These objects would be,
To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business;
To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing;
To improve, by reading, his morals and faculties;
To understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either;
To know his rights; To exercise with order and justice those he retains; To choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; And to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor, and judgment;
And in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed.
— Thomas Jefferson, “Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia, Meeting in Rockfish Gap, Virginia, to the State Legislature” (quoted in William Bennett’s Our Sacred Honor; the paragraphing is my own.)
