Impact Of Thomas Jefferson On Education

Known as the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson has been a strong advocate for education of the American People. His involvement with this support is best known through his establishment of the University of Virginia in 1819. As part of his work during the late 17070s and early 1780s, he revised the laws of Virginia and established a bill that is known as one of his most important works on the subject of education: Bill 79, "A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge." As written in the document, Jefferson proposed a public education system that was tax-funded for 3 years for "all the free children, male and female”. In a 1786 letter to George Wythe, he stated that "the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people...no other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness" and that failing to provide public education would
Unfortunately, Congress never considered the amendment; but Jefferson did not surrender, and developed an alternative plan which consisted of education at the elementary, secondary, and university levels. Jefferson believed that the elementary level of education was more important and practical than university education because, he states, it is “safer to have the whole people respectfully enlightened than a few in a high state of science and many in ignorance as in Europe” (as cited in Peterson, 1960, p. 241). His six objectives for primary education in the American citizen consisted of:
1. “To give every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business;
2. To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts, and accounts, in