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
βWe 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.
You don't teach morals and ethics and empathy and kindness in the schools. You teach that at home, and children learn by example.
In the universities, cheap, vulnerable labor means adjuncts and graduate students.
My alma mater was books, a good library.
Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover either for grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much-cherished aspect of academic freedom.
School days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn't take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.
Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves.
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