Nampa Classical Academy
Founders Views on Education
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
George Washington
Samuel Adams James Madison
Noah Webster
Benjamin Franklin
Thomas Pain
James Wilson
Back to Founders Quotes John Adams
1756 - Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law
"It should be your care, therefore, and mine, to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives" (Our Sacred Honor, Bennett, 253).
1765-Dissertation on Canon and Feudal Law
"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people, who have a right, from the frame of their nature, to knowledge, as their great Creator, who does nothing in vain, has given them understandings, and a desire to know; but besides this, they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge; I mean, of the characters and conduct of their rulers " (Our Sacred Honor, Bennett, 253).
1776 - Thoughts on Government
"Laws for the liberal education of the youth, especially of the lower class of the people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant" (The Works of John Adams, Charles Adams, ed., 199).
1776 - Thoughts on Government
"Wisdom and knowledge, as well as virtue, diffused generally among the body of the people, being necessary for the preservation of their rights and liberties, and as these depend on spreading the opportunities and advantages of education in the various parts of the country, and among the different orders of people, it shall be the duty of legislators and magistrates...to cherish the interest of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them" (The Works of John Adams, Charles Adams, ed., 259).
1787-Defenseof the Constitution
"Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom" (The Learning of Liberty, Prangle and Prangle [96]; original The Works of John Adams, C.F. Adams, ed., vol. 6 [168]).
Samuel Adams
1775-Letter to James Warren
"No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders" (Our Sacred Honor, Bennett 261).
Benjamin Franklin
1773-Poor Richard's Almanack
"A fine genius in his own country is like gold in the mine" (Franklin: Writings, Lemay, ed., Library of America [1188]).
1749-Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania
"The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both of private Families and of Common-wealths. Almost all Governments have therefore made it a principal Object of their Attention, to establish and endow with proper Revenues, such Seminaries of Learning, as might supply the succeeding Age with Men qualified to serve the Publick with Honour to themselves, and to their Country" (Franklin Collected Works, Lemay, ed., 324).
Thomas Jefferson
1787-Letter to Edward Carrington
"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them. If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, Judges, and Governors, shall all become wolves" (The Learning of Liberty, Prangle, 111).
1787-Letter to Edward Carrington
"Cherish, therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention. Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them" (Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America [880]).
1807-Letter to Joel Barlow
"People generally have more feeling for canals and roads than education. However, I hope we can advance them with equal pace" (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, ed., vol. 5 [521]).
1817-Letter to Jose Correa de Serra
"To all of which is added a selection from the elementary schools of subjects of the most promising genius, whose parents are too poor to give them further education, to be carried at the public expense through the college and university. The object is to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country, for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind, which, in proportion to our population, shall be double or treble of what it is in most countries" (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Washington, ed., vol. 7 [94-5]).
1818-Report of the Commissioners for the University of Virginia
"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" (Jefferson Writings, Peterson, ed., 459).
1820-Letter to Joseph C. Cabell
"The truth is that the want of common education with us is not from our poverty, but from the want of an orderly system. More money is now paid for the education of a part than would be paid for that of the whole if systematically arranged"(The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition, Lipscomb and Bergh, eds., vol. 15 [291]).
1820 - Letter to Joseph C. Cabell
"All the States but our own are sensible that knowledge is power" (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Ford, ed., vol. 12 [155]).
James Madison
1822 - Letter to W.T. Barry
"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives" (Letters and other Writings of James Madison, vol. 3 [276]).
1822 - Letter to W.T. Barry
"What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual & surest support" (Letters and other Writings of James Madison, vol. 3 [279])?
1826 - Letter to Littleton Dennis Teackle
"The best service that can be rendered to a Country, next to that of giving it liberty, is in diffusing the mental improvement equally essential to the preservation, and the enjoyment of the blessing" (Advice to My Country, Mattern ed. [42]; original Madison Papers in the Library of Congress).
Thomas Paine
1792 - Rights of Man, part 2
"A nation under a well regulated government, should permit none to remain uninstructed. It is monarchical and aristocratical government only that requires ignorance for its support" (Paine, Collected Writings).
George Washington
1790 - First Annual Message
"Knowledge is, in every country, the surest basis of public happiness" (George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. [469]).
1795 - Letter to the Commissioners of the District of Columbia
"[W]e ought to deprecate the hazard attending ardent and susceptible minds, from being too strongly, and too early prepossessed in favor of other political systems, before they are capable of appreciating their own" (Washington's Maxims, 75).
1796 - Farewell Address
"Promote then as an object of primary importance, Institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened" (George Washington: A Collection, W.B. Allen, ed. [522]).
Noah Webster
1790 - On Education of Youth in America
"It is an object of vast magnitude that systems of education should be adopted and pursued which may not only diffuse a knowledge of the sciences but may implant in the minds of the American youth the principles of virtue and of liberty and inspire them with just and liberal ideas of government and with an inviolable attachment to their own country" (The Learning of Liberty, Prangle and Prangle [126]; original Noah Webster: Schoolmaster to America, Harry Warfel [42]).
James Wilson
1790 - Of the Study of the Law in the United States
"Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge" (The Learning of Liberty, Prangle and Prangle [207]; original Selected Political Essays of James Wilson, Randolph Adams, ed. [189]).
