Jefferson Warned Against Ignorance

Third President Thomas Jefferson didn’t live to see what some have called the intellectual deterioration of America--as represented by such diverse indicators as fading support for the public schools, mandatory grades of B or better for average students in prestigious universities, and the national fondness for cheap television programs.

But he worried about it, noting that, minus a sustained commitment to a “scheme of education,” the American democracy might not make it.

In our time, 200 years after Jefferson, the world’s basic problem is still ignorance--as caused, in part, by inadequate school funding: the area where financial contributions by America’s professional sports leagues would help the most.

With intensive education for all, most other problems would disintegrate or disappear, as Jefferson said.

The most serious human disputes, he observed, are in areas such as politics and religion, and, he said, the more knowledge that the common people have about either--or about anything--the more probable a common agreement.

What did Jefferson mean by education?

Not four years in college, necessarily. But he did insist on disciplined reading--”chiefly historical” reading, he said, with some philosophy and some poetry.

“History, by apprizing (young students) of the past, will enable them to judge of the future,” he wrote, warning that ignorance is the chief threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Jefferson’s study list is daunting.

To a student seeking particulars, he recommended, as a starter, Herodotus, Thucydides, Goldsmith’s history of Greece, Plato’s dialogues, Cicero’s philosophies, Gibbon, Shakespeare and, among other works, Milton’s “Paradise Lost.”

Perhaps the best educated American yet, Jefferson, who lived to be 83, wasn’t all study and no play. Two hours should be set aside each day for exercise, he said, suggesting a brisk 30-minute walk in the early morning and a hike of an hour and a half later in the day.

“Games played with a ball are too violent for the body,” he wrote a young friend. “There is no habit you will value so much as that of walking far without fatigue.”