Students of reading, writing and common arithmetick . . . Graecian [Greek], Roman, English and American history . . . should be rendered . . . worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens.
Interpretation
Jefferson emphasizes the importance of educating students to protect the rights and liberties of others.
In this quote, Thomas Jefferson highlights the crucial role of education in preparing individuals not merely for personal advancement but for the collective protection of societal rights and liberties. He advocates that students should be well-versed in essential subjects such as reading, writing, and history so that they may be equipped to uphold and safeguard the democratic values of their community.
In practice
A teacher could use this quote to inspire students about the importance of their education in supporting democracy.
The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them.
I, place economy among the first & most important republican virtues, & public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared
We must make our choice between economy and liberty or confusion and servitude...If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labor and in our amusements...if we can prevent the government from wasting the labor of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.
Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.
A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.
Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.
It's never enough to just tell people about some new insight. Rather, you have to get them to experience it a way that evokes its power and possibility. Instead of pouring knowledge into people's heads, you need to help them grind anew set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way.
School presents daily exercises in dis-association. It forces unwelcome associations on most of its prisoners. It sets petty, meaningless competitions in motion on a daily basis, pitting potential associates against one another in contests for praise and other worthless prizes.
If help and salvation are to come they can only come from the children, for the children are the makers of men.
There is a temperate zone in the mind, between luxurious indolence and exacting work; and it is to this region, just between laziness and labor, that summer reading belongs.
To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days.
Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.
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