All classes this week are opening with a look at why education - and an educated public - has always been considered necessary to the preservation of a republic. At least this was a major concern of the nation's founders.
I know you have plenty to read already, but if you would like to dig further into this subject I recommend looking at the readings contained in the epilogue of The Founder's Constitution. It contain links to a variety of writing by the some of the founder's, much of it dwelling on the type of education that best increases the odds that enough people would have the education necessary - the civic virtue - to secure the republic.
Look through the introduction if you can. Here's a snippet:
Popular or republican government depended on virtue, but virtue understood in a special sense. Montesquieu took pains to make it clear that he was speaking of political virtue, the virtue not of the Christian but of "the political honest man," the man who loves the laws and is moved by that love. "Now, a government is like every thing else: to preserve it we must love it." Was such love possible in a world preoccupied with private wants and private pleasures, with manufactures, commerce, and luxury? Was such love possible in a world where people are all too well instructed in contradictory duties, where what we learn from our parents and teachers is "effaced" by what we learn from the world? Nowhere was "the whole power of education" more surely needed than in a republic, for nowhere did more depend on the presence of a public-spirited citizenry. Without such a citizenry--one able to preserve "the spirit of equality" without falling victim to the corruption of extreme democracy--no self-government was possible.
This whole paragraph is worth a discussion. It does suggest that getting you ready to be a participant in self-government should be a principle goal of the class. Look through the index for more.
