Can Freedom and Ignorance Long Co-Exist

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --- Thomas Jefferson 

We're hearing a lot of people attack the proposal for making education available to all who would seek it by making that educational affordable. I happen to concur with Thomas Jefferson on this when in 1816 he says in a letter to Charles Yancey, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." 

He also believed that it was the duty of the state to make that education possible.  In 1787 he told James Madison that, "Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty."  

Jefferson placed the value of education above the value of wealth to the welfare of the nation.  In his autobiography he stated, "Instead of an aristocracy of wealth, of more harm and danger than benefit to society, to make an opening for the aristocracy of virtue and talent, which nature has wisely provided for the direction of the interests of society and scattered with equal hand through all its conditions, was deemed essential to a well-ordered republic." That he held teachers in highest regard is revealed in his words to Hugh White, "The reward of esteem, respect and gratitude [is] due to those who devote their time and efforts to render the youths of every successive age fit governors for the next."  

Jefferson often referred to education as enlightenment. He believed our republic was safe in the hands of the good sense of the common man provided the common man had in addition to his common sense an adequate education. "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government;... whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights." 

In his advise to Martin Luther King about the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on January 15 Lyndon Johnson said, “And if you can find the worst condition that you run into in Alabama, Mississippi or Louisiana or South Carolina . . . and if you just take that one illustration and get it on radio, get it on television, get it in the pulpits, get it in the meetings, get it everyplace you can. Pretty soon the fellow that didn’t do anything but drive a tractor will say, ‘Well, that’s not right, that’s not fair,’ and then that will help us on what we’re going to shove through [Congress] in the end.”

Those in power fear those who drive the Big Rigs, work the wheat fields, pump the oil, sweep the floors and all others of such ilk will become educated and with that education develop wisdom to see through the wool that has been pulled over their eyes by the high and the mighty. Power, whether by wealth, force or inheritance fears most that the common man will become educated enough to recognize what is right for the community and the nation. They fear he will get a firm grasp on truth and his common sense will move him to action. Perhaps a moral tea party or an economic Bunker Hill.

So, if you want to keep your grip on power deny the poor and common people access to education by pricing them out of the market. Someone has said, "When you have to rule by telling everyone there is a monster under the bed, the worst thing you can do is give them a flashlight to see if it is true."

We must find a way to place education within the grasp of all who desire it. Additionally we must do all within our power to awaken a desire for education in those who do not as yet see its value to both themselves, their liberty and their nation.