I recently stumbled upon an Education News article about Thomas Jefferson's views on public education. It was certainly a very interesting read! Jefferson was certainly one of the greatest proponents of liberty in early American history and that holds true of his educational policy interests as well.Thomas Jefferson lobbied the Virginia General Assembly to implement publicly funded school. His efforts did not meet with success. His plan would have instated small primary grade schools, voluntary attendance, and federal funding of further education in private grammar school institutions for students whose parents were poor. The details of his plan stand in sharp contrast to our current educational system in the United States.
1. Jefferson advocated for voluntary attendance of schools and opposed forcing parents to make their children attend schools, he conceded that would be a rarity. In this way, he upheld the rights of parents to choose the how and when of educating their own children. Currently, each state has mandatory attendance laws regarding the education of children.
2. Jefferson believed that every child was entitled to three years of instruction in reading, writing, and arithmetic. He believed that this instruction should be delivered through history texts so that children could understand the experiences and times of other nations. Currently, children in public education receive much more than three years of instruction in these subjects. It is my personal observation much of the problems in public education arise after the primary grade subjects are mastered.
3. Jefferson agreed that only children who applied themselves well and achieved high marks in school, and whose parents could not afford to continue their education, were entitled to further publicly funded education at a private grammar school. Currently, all children regardless of drive, desire, or ability are provided a free public education. The result of this is public middle and high schools that are filled with failing and disruptive students who don't want to be there. Is it any wonder that there are increasing violence and discipline problems in our public high schools?
4. Jefferson's plan provided for bright academic children from poor families to receive a free public education through college. Students who did not continue to perform well academically did not continue to receive a free-publicly funded education. Currently, regardless of desire or ability level all students must meet the required standards by each state and obtain a high-school diploma. Federal aid and funding of college for students from disadvantaged backgrounds also currently is based solely on financial situations and does not take into account former school performance.
5 comments:
Interesting; I've never read a line-by-line examination of Jefferson's views on education like this. Compulsory schooling and a lack of parental involvement or concern sets us up for the exact situation we have: unmotivated students, poor behavior, a growing bureaucracy designed to spend more money to "fix" something that doesn't work, and so many other problems.
It is interesting to me to read this from someone who is a teacher... I'd like to hear more about your thoughts on public education!
I also find myself wondering what you plan to do educationally with any future children that God may give you? I'd love to read about that too! :)
Jess
Jess,
I tried to respond to the post connected to this link, but I must have did something wrong. Anywho....I am currently a 1st grade teacher in a public school. I am leaving to become a stay-at-home mom to my toddler as soon as possible. Me and my husband are starting 2 home-based businesses that will require little effort on my part. I hate my job. I know that's a strong word, but I do. I love the kids, but I hate the direction the public schools are taking. They are seriously trying to replace parenting. For one, the school day is too long; I believe this is to accomodate the 9-5 working schedule. We feed them all three meals (yes dinner is now required if a school has after-school programs). We do the field trips, including manys first trip to the library. We have to teach "morals and character." We have to have parties for holidays we may not personally celebrate. We have to do all the above and unimaginable testing. All of the above without being allowed to even discuss God or Jesus or pray with a child.Their real parents are never held accountable for their child's learning. I also despise the way the majority of the other teachers, and the female principal, sacrifice time with their own kids trying to look good and climb the ladder. Most have toddlers and school age kids, yet they come early, stay late, take work home, teach in after school programs and teach summer school! We are encouraged to work at home, as if don't have anything there that is as important. One year, my principal barely said 3 words to me the entire year, because I turned down her invitation to attend a 3 day, out-of-town conference. She called me at home, knowing I had a 2 month old and was still technically on maternity leave. Many other teacher moms jumped at that chance and any other she gives.
I could rant on and on, but I will say, I hate leaving my baby in someone else's care for 9 hours. It hurts my heart to watch him stand in the door watching me drive away! I plan on either homeschooling him or sending him to a Christian school. Public education will not be fixed, because God is never in the solution!
Mmm, thank you for sharing your heart. I'm sorry it's so awful. I'm praying that God will give you the desires of your heart and let you be home with your son and allow those educational alternatives to be used to teach and train him up to be a man of God.
Thanks for being so frank about your job. I would love to "guest host" a post from you, if you'd be willing, as an "insider's look at public education" or something like that. If you would be willing, it would be great to include the information you wrote here as well as any other insights/problems you see with public education.
There are a lot of young moms that come to my blog, with open hearts, looking for answers about their children's upbringing and I'd be so glad to be able to share this information with them.
If you're interested, shoot me an e-mail at makinghome@pobox.com If you don't have time, what with your job and a toddler, I totally understand! Either way, thanks for sharing your heart on these issues here.
Blessings!
Jess
Good for you I had heard about Jefferson's thoughts on public education and think it funny he never talked about taking God out of it as he was one of the lesser believers for lack of a better term. I also find it amusing that everyone talks about his separation of church and state and the only time he discussed it was to make it clear that the government would never interfere with the rights of the church.It is sad to me however that there will be one less Christian in the public school system for like our government I think Christians are shrinking away because of what it has been allowed to become.
I found your article interesting and agreed with many of the points you seemed to be making. I especially agree with the problem of schools replacing parenting; I would agree that this has happened and that it is a very negative development.
Your post seems to advocate an approach to education in which academically less-performing children would be eligible to receive only a brief publicly-funded education. The idea brings up at least a couple of questions that you might have already considered and be able to respond to:
(1) About education: Consider children who perform poorly during their brief "window of opportunity" due to temporary and adverse life circumstances. I am thinking of sick households in which parents are fighting, divorced, affected by addictions, etc. You can see that I am writing of situations which are beyond the control of the children. Suppose they find themselves in a healthier situation and able to learn at a later point in life? How would situations such as these be handled, if at all?
(2) Also about education. Now I have turned my thoughts to the health of the nation and the system of governance used in the US.
It could seem that education is important for the healthiest functioning of our society and for [comparatively] healthy government when using a system of "self-government" through republic/democracy.
What I'm getting at could be seen in the following example: I know some Christian missionaries who have taught water hygiene and water management to reduce disease. They have also taught how to operate businesses so that skilled people can offer their abilities to many others (sometimes several communities). The intended result is to foster an improvement in quality of life for the people who were served by these efforts; less disease, less suffering, etc.
Would our collective choices of governmental leadership, and our overall health and function as a society be impaired if there were to be a system-wide reduction in the level of education for most of our citizens?
(3) Regarding parenting, it seems that we now have a number of parents who themselves were "raised" ("parented") largely by the public school system and who seem to be poorly prepared to truly parent their kids. Any thoughts on how to help with that situation?
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