Thomas Jefferson as a Proponent of Universal, Knowledge-Intensive Education, With Assents from Frederick Douglas and Ida B. Wells-Barnett: the Imperative of Genuine Democracy

Thomas Jefferson, as a slaveholder and romancer on the sly with Sally Hemmings, incurs condemnation in the evaluation of those for whom historical context is never justification for transgressing moral absolutes.


But this towering intellect and force of nature brought the brilliance of Enlightenment ideals into the Declaration of Independence, positing tenets that James Madison then poured into the Constitution---  a document flexible enough to count slaves as three-fifths human in 1789 but then morally and judicially to amend that assignation to full humanity and citizenship in 1866;  and to provide for the passage of statutory law in 1964 and 1965 that reinforced the constitutional status that the Old South was subverting through the devices of the Black Codes and Jim Crow.


So, Jefferson was morally reprehensible by the standards of ethics evaluated absolutely without reference to the evolution of values in their journey across a temporal continuum.  But he unleashed ideas that ironically nurtured that journey and gave confidence to Frederick Douglas and Ida B. Wells Barnett, who endured the hateful decades of the post-Civil War era with a dignity that forecast a better day when the noblest ideals of the United States Constitution would be realized:


We may take heart that if human actions are not lawful,
the very laws so contravened are nevertheless noble and just.    


Frederick Douglass, 1882


Let us set about making the Law of the Land safe and secure
on every foot of American soil, a shield to the innocent---  to
the guilty, the instrument of justice swift and sure.


Ida B. Wells-Barnett, 1912
      
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As a republican, as a democratic, in the lower case sense of those words, Jefferson believed ardently in universal education, defined as the impartation of knowledge commonly held across economic class and the broad masses of American society.


This was true as conveyed in statements delivered in the midst of the American Revolution:


Laws will be wisely formed and honestly administered in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest;  whence it becomes expedient for promoting the public happiness that those persons whom nature has endowed with genius and virtue should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive and able to guard the sacred deposit of rights and liberties of their fellow citizens;  and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth, or accidental condition or circumstance.  But the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating at their own expense those of their children whom nature has fitly formed and disposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should b e sought for and educated at the common expense of all, than that the happiness of all should be confined to the weak or wicked."  (Thomas Jefferson:  Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779)


And it was true in the midst of his tenure as the 3rd President of the United States:


I feel an ardent desire to see knowledge so disseminated through the mass of [humankind] that it may, at length, reach even the extremes of society:  beggars and kings.  (Thomas Jefferson:  Reply to American Philosophical Society, 1808.




Jefferson's conviction in the importance of universal knowledge-intensive education gained expression just after his second term as President ended in early 1809: 


The reward of esteem, respect and gratitude is due to those who devote their time and effort to render the youths of every successive age fit governors for the next.  (Thomas Jefferson to Hugh L White and others, 1810)




Eight years later, Jefferson declared:


If the condition of [humankind] is to be progressively ameliorated, as we fondly hope and believe, education is to be the chief instrument in effecting it.  (Thomas Jefferson to M. A. Jullien, 1818)


A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest." (Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1818)




If the children are untaught, their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us much dearer in their consequences than it would have done in their correction by a good education.  (Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1818)






And Jefferson's very most passionate pronouncements on the importance of commonly held knowledge as dispensed by institutions of public education came during the last decade of his life:


I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves;  and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.  This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.  (Thomas Jefferson to William T. Jarvis, 1820)


We are now trusting to those who are against us in position and principle, to fashion to their own form the minds and education of our youth.  This canker is eating on the vitals of our existence, and if not arrested at once, will be beyond remedy.  (Thomas Jefferson to James Brekenridge, 1821)




I look to the diffusion of light and education as the resource most to be relied on for ameliorating the conditions, promoting the virtue and advancing the happiness of [humankind].  (Thomas Jefferson to Cornelius Camden Blatchly, 1822.)


Responding to the best in the lively brains of Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett,


>>>>>  let us fully convey in our words and deeds the letter and the spirit of our "noble and just" laws;


>>>>>  let us manifest that spirit "on every foot of American soil";


>>>>>  and let us not leave our children "untaught,"  so that "their ignorance and vices will in future life cost us" more than they or we should ever put ourselves in a position to pay;  let us instead "provide the correction by a good education."




Let us, that is, fulfill the purposes of a universal, knowledge-intensive, K-12 education:  the purposes of cultural enrichment, civic preparation, and professional satisfaction.

Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglas, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett would be so very pleased to see our polity filled with citizens endowed with such an education.