Few political rivalries in American history can match the ongoing disagreement between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Adams believed a strong federal government was essential to hold the young nation together. Jefferson believed that concentrating power in Washington was about as appealing as handing your teenage child the family credit card and hoping for restraint. Adams trusted centralized authority; Jefferson trusted states and local communities. If cable news had existed in 1787, the two men would have been regular guests on opposing channels. Yet despite their differences, they found remarkable common ground on one issue: education. They both understood that democracy cannot survive if its people are uninformed, unwilling to think critically, or unable to distinguish good judgment from the latest popular opinion. On that point, the Founders were remarkably united.
Both Adams and Jefferson believed that democracy could survive only if its citizens were educated. More importantly, they embraced a definition of education that extended far beyond reading, writing, and arithmetic. To them, knowledge and virtue were inseparable partners. An educated citizen needed facts, certainly, but also judgment, integrity, responsibility, and a commitment to the common good. In their view, producing knowledgeable scoundrels was not an educational victory. It was merely a more sophisticated problem.
As American society evolved, schools gradually became experts at measuring knowledge while leaving much of character development to churches, families, and community organizations. For generations, that arrangement functioned reasonably well. Today, however, many of those institutions play a smaller role in young people’s lives, while social media has eagerly volunteered to fill the gap—with mixed results. If Adams and Jefferson were alive today, they would likely disagree about taxes, regulations, and the proper size of government, but they would almost certainly agree that schools should once again educate students in both knowledge and virtue. As George Washington wisely observed, “Without virtue and without integrity, the finest talents and most brilliant accomplishments can never gain the respect or esteem of mankind.”
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From our first posting:
“As parents and teachers, we need to reclaim our traditional role as influencers of our children – not by shouting louder than the influencers our children discover online, but by stressing ideas that are more important than fancy shoes and snappy TikTok tunes. We need to emphasize traits that everyone agrees children will honor. We need to convince our children that the people who are most important to them have a better understanding of what it takes to be successful in life.”
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