The short answer is that you have to - it is required by the state of Texas in order for you to get a degree from a public college or university. But I'll cover that in the next section.
Here I want to cover the role that education was supposed to play in a system of self government according to the framers of the U.S. Constitution. It was considered necessary. An uneducated electorate lacks the skills necessary to govern effectively, or more importantly, ensure that a tyranny does not slowly develop and impose itself upon the populace. This make happen if the popular, limited constitutional system is not upheld.
A commonly repeated quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin makes the point. Here's the story:
Benjamin Franklin: The source of this quotation is a journal kept by James McHenry (1753-1816) while he was a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention. On the page where McHenry records the events of the last day of the convention, September 18, 1787, he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” Then McHenry added: “The Lady here alluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philada.” The journal is at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.
A republic is a governing system based indirectly on the people. This is why it is called a system of self rule. Through their votes, the people have influence over how they are ruled. They can offer their consent to existing policy by keeping the same people in charge, or withdraw that consent by changing them.
A monarchy is based on the monarch. This applies to any system headed by an autocrat who has absolute power. Until the late 1680s, the British monarch claimed to rule by divine right. The people had no say in how they were ruled. They couldn't even judge the king - only God could do that. This isn't entirely true since different groups had sufficient power to push back against the monarch, but that often involved violence, like when the British Parliament had Charles the Firsts head chopped off.
These systems do not require an educated population. In fact, its best if the population remains uneducated, and certainly illiterate. Ideas can evolve and information spread in such a situation.
But a system of self-rule requires an educated ruling class. And in a system of self-rule - assuming broad participatory rights - we are all members of the ruling class, at least potentially. Which means we all have to be educated.
Later we will discuss the gradual expansion of suffrage - participatory rights - and note that early limits on suffrage were justified due to the limited access to education.
The following quote from Alexander Hamilton makes this clear. He did not care for the public's opinion about the recently signed constitution since he did not think most people were in a position to properly evaluate it:
Alexander Hamilton: For my part, I am not much attached to the majesty of the multitude, and therefore waive all pretensions (founded on such conduct), to their countenance. I consider them in general as very ill qualified to judge for themselves what government will best suit their peculiar situations; nor is this to be wondered at. The science of government is not easily understood. . . . men of good education and deep reflection, only, are judges of the form of a government; whether it is constituted on such principles as will restrain arbitrary power, on the one hand, and equal to the exclusion of corruption and the destruction of licentiousness on the other; whether the New Constitution, it adopted, will prove adequate to such desirable ends, time, the mother of events, will show. - Ceasar #2.
There are two aspects of this point. The first regards access to education - which was largely limited to the wealthy since there was no public education as we would recognize it today. Families who could afford private tutors, and did not need the labor of their children, were able to ensure they were educated. Those could not afford tutors were unable to do so. An understanding of "the science of government" was limited to this group of people.
Wealth also provided these people, once educated, the ability to apply that education to current circumstance. They had the leisure to follow and contribute to ongoing issues, especially those on a national and international scale. It took money to participate in many of the political events of the revolutionary period, such as the continental congresses.
In addition, the idea that one is not limited by the need to engage in wage labor meant that they had time to think about issues and not act rashly. While this ensured that political decisions were made intelligently, it also limited participation and gave the wealthy the ability to maintain power. This helps explain the efforts to keep certain populations relatively uneducated, in some cases make it illegal to educate them.
The following quote by one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, and the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court makes this point clearly.|
“Those who own the country ought to govern it.” - John Jay
- Who was John Jay anyway?
Nevertheless, expectations were that the United States would aggressively move westward, which required that educational opportunities be broadened in order to ensure adequate governance in the newly established territories and states.
Thomas Jefferson was a leading advocate of expanding access to public education, though may of his efforts were initially unsuccessful. This is the preamble to one of these attempts:
Thomas Jefferson: Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts, which history exhibiteth, that, possessed thereby of the experience of other ages and countries, they may be enabled to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes. - A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge.
Here he provides an idea about what an educated person should be able to do. The constitutional system separates the three major functions of government, and establishes a system of checks and balances to maintains that separation. But this can fail if the electorate is not aware of the mechanisms that ambitious people have used in the past to consolidate power.
We should not only understand what has happened in the past, but be able to access and interpret information about current events in order to determine whether such efforts are underway today. He would almost certainly suggest that these efforts are always underway.
As a final point, we should have access to information along with the literacy necessary to understand it.
The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them. - Liberty Fund
I know of no safe repository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. - Thomas Jefferson
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Texas:
Texas Declaration of Independence: [The Mexican Government] has failed to establish any public system of education, although possessed of almost boundless resources, (the public domain,) and although it is an axiom in political science, that unless a people are educated and enlightened, it is idle to expect the continuance of civil liberty, or the capacity for self government. - Texas State Library.
Texas Constitution. Article 7, Section 1 - A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.
All of these quotes suggest a relationship between an educated population and a population capable of self-government. Expansions in suffrage tended to be accompanied by expansions of educational opportunities. Conversely, restrictions in education helped solidify restrictions in suffrage, as well as access to the polls even if suffrage had been granted.
We explore this relationship in 2306 when we look at education policy, since education is primarily a power reserved to the states, but the national government has played a role in creating educational academies for the military and establishing land-grant universities on federal land.
Here are a few links that take us through the establishment of educational institutions in Texas and the United States. Not that the creation of these institutions on the state level includes the creation of independent school districts and community college districts.
- legal education.
- The Big Three.
- Some Colleges Have More Students From the Top 1 Percent Than the Bottom 60. Find Yours.
- Education in the Thirteen Colonies.
- Education during the slave period in the United States.
- History of the United States Military Academy.
- Morrill Land-Grant Acts.
- Vocational Education.
- Junior College Movement.
- High school movement.
- Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
