My, How Public Education
Has Changed
Ben
Franklin wrote to Dr. Samuel Johnson, first President of King’s College (now
“I
think with you, that nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to
form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue...I think also, general virtue is
more probably to be expected and obtained from the education of youth, than
from the exhortation of adult persons; bad habits and vices of the mind being,
like diseases of the body, more easily prevented than cured. I think, moreover,
that talents for the education of youth are the gift of God; and that he on
whom they are bestowed, whenever a way is opened for the use of them, is as
strongly called as if he heard a voice from heaven.”
President
Thomas Jefferson chaired the school board for the
“Most
young Americans...can read, write and cipher. Not more than four in a thousand
are unable to write legibly.... The Bible
is read; it is considered a duty to read it to the children; and in that form
of religion the sermons and liturgies in the language of the people tend to
increase and formulate ideas of responsibility.... In
education that the Americans of the
On
“Religion,
morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of
mankind, schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged.”
Dr.
Benjamin Rush was a signer of the Declaration
of Independence and surgeon general of the Continental Army, doctoring
wounded soldiers at the battles of
“I
proceed to inquire what mode of education we shall adopt so as to secure to the
state all of the advantages that are to be derived from the proper instruction
of the youth; and here I beg leave to remark that the only foundation for a
useful education in a republic is to be laid on the foundation of religion.
Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no
liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”
Noah
Webster was renown for publishing his 1828 Webster’s Dictionary. This 26-year
project contains 70,000 entries and standardized the spelling of the American
English language. He published a spelling book entitled Blue-backed Speller, which sold a million copies a year for over
one hundred years. In 1788, Noah Webster wrote an essay, On the Education of Youth in America:
“In
some countries the common people are not permitted to read the Bible at all. In ours, it is as common
as a newspaper and in schools is read with nearly the same degree of
respect.... My wish is not to see the Bible
excluded from schools but to see it used as a system of religion and morality.”
William
Holmes McGuffey, president of
“If
you can induce a community to doubt the genuineness and authenticity of the
Scriptures; to question the reality, and obligations of religion; to hesitate, undeciding, whether there be any thing as virtue and vice;
whether there be an eternal state of retribution beyond the grave; or whether
there exists any such being as God, you have broken down the barriers of moral
virtue, and hoisted the flood-gates of immorality and crime.”
Believe
it or not, public education pioneer Horace Mann, Secretary of Education in
“One
of the excellences of the Massachusetts system, is that children of all the
different denominations are brought together for instruction, where the Bible is allowed to speak for itself;
one place where the children can kneel at a common altar, and feel that they
have a common Father, and where the services of religion tend to create
brothers.”
In
1848, Howard Mann wrote:
“If I
were able to give but one parting word of advise to my own children...if
I were sinking beneath the wave, and had time to utter but one articulate
breath...that would be, ‘Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth.’”
My,
how public education has changed, where today the beliefs and values held so
highly by its founders are considered out of date.
William J.
(Bill) Federer is a nationally known speaker and
best-selling author on