WHO SAYS? controlling public education

In the mid 1920's America's public schools were chiefly a local responsibility. Some 162,800 local school districts were governed by locally elected lay people who raised the bulk of the revenue, enjoyed considerable autonomy and were very sensitive to local pressures. Today, as a consequence of state imposed consolidation, there are only 13,598 school districts whose local autonomy, control and sensitivity to local pressures have all shrunk dramatically. 

At the same time school funding shifted pretty strongly from the local to the state level — although, even now, the proportion varies from state to state. For instance, Vermont provides the most: 87% of the funding. While the smallest state share is provided by Utah: 58%. Most of the rest of the funding costs fall on local school districts. Although the federal government now provides 8%. 

Remember the old adage: "He who pays the piper calls the tune?" Well with state funding predominating, key decisions are now made at the state level. Local authorities are seldom even consulted. They simply are told what to do. They also are required to pick up some, sometimes all, of the tab. (It's a great temptation for state law-makers to enact one or another benefit then impose the costs of accomplishing it on local school boards.)

The dominance of state over local authority, plus increased federal involvement — especially since George W. Bush, the self-styled "Education President" — has rendered local parents and voters more and more powerless as they find themselves further and further removed from those who actually have power.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Another source of parental disempowerment is the increased number of students per school. In 1920 there were about 190,000 public schools k-12, with an average 100 students per school. In 2020 there were only 131,000 public schools. But they were serving an average 528 students. About five times more students per school than in 1920.  

As the size of the school student populations grew, individual differences became less and less important. The chances of a principal even knowing the name of every student in his or her school shrank to nearly zero. School authorities knowledge of individual parental concerns also shrank to nearly nothing. 

CATHOLIC v. MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS: an historical comparison

Many Americans believe that Muslim immigrants are undesirable. They think these foreigners frequently embrace deadly intolerance. Plus they are angry that these aliens are flooding into their country in scary numbers. Let's look at this historically.

In the mid to late 19th century Americans were frightened and angry because over five million Roman Catholics, mostly Irish, were flooding into their overwhelmingly Protestant nation. By 1860 the Catholic presence in America, once tiny, now exceeded the entire U.S. population just 70 years before. Their numbers were simply prodigious.

Another worry was that these particular immigrants were obedient to a foreign monarch —the Pope. He ruled over an authoritarian and anti-Protestant institution that an overwhelmingly Protestant-America found frightening. How could a people accustomed to such tyranny, learn to live in a democracy? 

Separatism was a third concern. The fear was that Catholics would band together and form a separate type of American altogether different from the mainstream. That they would become a divisive force that would further separate an already loosely coupled America into warring camps each regarding the other as intolerable.

In a short time the vast majority of Irish Catholic immigrants proved quite capable of embracing democracy and finding a place in America. But what about present-day Muslim immigrants? Will they, although very small in numbers, prove forever alien? Let’s compare. 

Unlike the Irish, Muslims do not pledge allegiance to a single autocratic institution. Nor do they pledge common obedience to the equivalent of a Pope. There isn’t even consensus among them about what is required to be a Muslim. In fact their faith is so fragmented that they sometimes fall to annihilating one another. Muslim 1 clearly is not Muslim 2. However, many Americans don't know that.

Moreover Muslim immigrants presently constitute a tiny fraction of the 19th and early 20th Century flood of Roman Catholics that immigrated to America. Presently the entire Muslim population of the United States constitutes less than 1% of the total. Moreover, fewer than 5% of all new immigrants entering are Muslims.

What about criminality? Not long ago some Somali-Americans systematically defrauded Minnesota out of billions of dollars. That massive fraud caused some Americans to link the criminality of these people to all Muslims. But immigrant Muslims have no corner on that. Some immigrant Irish became gangsters of the first magnitude. The Irish Mob (also known as the Irish Mafia), became one of the nation’s most notorious organized crime groups. And, of course, the actual Mafia is inextricably linked to Italian-Americans. So the Somali’s have no patent on immigrant criminality. Although their relatively small numbers in the total population made this massive crime especially conspicuous.

Unlike Irish immigrants, a comparative handful of Muslims have also proven to be fanatical terrorists. For instance, those who crashed passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And, of course, ISIS is guilty of horrendous crimes. Of course these perpetrators were foreign nationals. But right now terrorism is linked in many American’s minds with being Muslim. And when a situation is defined as true, it is true in its consequences.

We should also consider that many Americans see this nation as inextricably linked to Christianity. And that means that these same Americans see non-Christians as, ipso facto, un-American. Of course this view of America as a Christian nation is fostered by many fundamentalists and right wing politicians — often for selfish purposes. They baldly assert that America was founded as a Christian nation; and that this religion constitutes the very heart of America.

That is factually inaccurate. Many of America’s most influential founders, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine for instance, were deists or rationalists not Christians. These founders clearly preferred facts over beliefs and were determined to separate church from state. But many Americans don't know that. And what many Americans believe to be true, is true in its consequences. 

That means a sizable segment of American society opposes Muslim immigration on religious grounds. Including home-home grown converts, for that matter. Looking back, though, many Americans once thought of America as Protestant, not simply Christian. That is now behind us. But that doesn’t mean Muslims will attain, or even desire, the same degree of inclusion as Irish-American Catholics. We shall see.

 

LEARNING WHAT THEY LIVE: not what they're told

Years ago John Dewey tellingly observed that children "learn what they live." Teachers can gabble on and on about democracy, for instance. But if they run a despotic classroom, the kids learn to adjust to despotism. Possibly they even learn to need it. Dewey was precisely right. Children learn what they live.  

It's hard to overemphasize the importance of this "hidden curriculum." It is powerful, yet often overlooked. Lessons "taught" in this way can last a lifetime. The person who taught me the most about tyranny and abuse of power, for instance, was my fourth grade teacher, Miss Weast . (Behind her back we kids called her: "Miss Weast, the big fat beast.") Feared by all, this angry woman extorted compliance by means of threats and violence. A ruler across the knuckles of your out-stretched hand, for example. 

Eventually, she did go too far. She held a youngster against a hot steam radiator as punishment. His relatively minor burns did not get her fired, as you might expect. But she was transferred to another school. But not before she had unintentionally taught me about the abuse of power. I still remember that lesson even though it was many, many years ago. It remains vivid.

Here's another example. This one concerning some Catholic parish schools of the 1950's. In those days a nnumber of overworked and under appreciated nuns bullied, slapped and otherwise mistreated the children in their charge. This taught some unfortunate lessons. For instance, the little girl next door to me developed severe school phobia in consequence, even though she was never touched herself. I'm not sure what these nuns thought they were doing. Making 'better' Catholics, perhaps. But in this girl's case they taught her that the sermonizing about Christian love, mercy and forgiveness, was all talk. And she learned that it's not what people say, but what they do that counts. Valuable lessons, to be sure. But hardly part of the official curriculum.

Here's a final instance. It involves entirely different circumstance. As a professor of education I visited a lot of inner city schools. Most were chaotic. In some the turmoil was so bad that learning was nearly impossible and safety very doubtful. Evidently those in charge lacked the power and/or will to impose meaningful consequences for gross misbehavior.

What did youngsters learn while enduring this chaos? That bullies rule? That might makes right? That there is no point in even trying to learn? That the real world is not even close to what it's supposed to be? Take your pick. 

Do children learn what they live? Count on it.  

COMPULSORY EDUCATION: a colossal mistake?

Is compelling kids to go to school a colossal mistake?  That essential question remains oddly largely unaddressed. This is most peculiar, given the serious  school problems that unmotivated, disruptive, sometimes openly hostile, kids create when compelled to attend. They learn little waste prodigious amounts of taxpayer's money and disrupt the entire process. 

To learn, ya gotta wanna. And those who must be compelled to attend, generally don't wanna. They're the kids "graduating" from high school who still can barely read. Moreover, those requiring coercion are frequently truant. In fact truancy rates in many, perhaps most, inner-city schools, are comically high. 

Wouldn't it be far better if these "students" weren't there? Better for whom? Better for those who want to learn, certainly. And better for their teachers as well. But there seems to be little concern about the fate of the motivated kids, or their teachers,; both of whom pay an unacceptably high price for the disruptive presence of these others. The worry is typically about the disrupters. Those whose behavior causes serious problems, sometimes physical danger, for everyone around them.  

We waste enormous amounts of tax money continuing this process. The latest 2022-2023 data shows the average cost of "educating" a youngster in a U.S. public school is some $163,000.00. Now, imagine giving a child a gift worth about $13,600 per year for twelve or more years and have them refuse to open it, or possibly destroy it. Not just their own gift, mind you. They often ruin other's gifts as well by making it impossible for them to learn. This is what we've been doing, year after year, decade after decade, for well-over a century. 

When "students" are compelled, educators must at least try to force-feed them. Sure, some of unwilling kids can be coaxed to learn. But this coaxing is so time consuming and costly that it is impractical in a typical classroom. After all, our public schools are, for cost control purposes, run like factories. And factories run very poorly when the raw material is uncooperative, even hostile. Painstaking efforts to seduce uncooperative learners disrupts the production process and consumes vast quantities of scarce resources better used educating the willing. Nevertheless, we  pretend that compulsory education is working — or at least should be working. So we go on forcing kids to attend, then pretending they are learning.

Meanwhile legislators, safe in their capital offices, have stripped teachers of any ability to impose meaningful sanctions for misbehavior. So they can't even coerce a semblance of civilized behavior from the disruptive. Worse, a similarly emasculated school administration offers besieged teachers little or no help. Some of these administrators, out of self-regard, even side with the malefactors. So it goes, with turmoil and wastage rolling on and on. 

Folks worry that if we abandon compulsory education, menacing kids will be roaming the streets threatening the peace. That has some validity. Although a lot of disruptive, potentially dangerous kids aren't in school to begin with — especially when the weather is nice. But it is NOT  the school's proper businesses to conduct part-time incarceration. The school's distinctive function is to educate, not incarcerate. And it is way past time to face up to the fact that when educators try to do both, they oftenn do neither?

In Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District (2017) ruled that schools must provide educational services that are reasonably designed to enable students to make progress appropriate in light of their circumstances. But what counts as "reasonable design?" Suppose, for instance, a student is failing to make educational progress because his mother is a crack whore who is abusively neglectful and the absent father's identity is a multiple choice question? There are tens of thousands of kids facing similar situations in what passes for their home. And, of course, they are often among the kids who reject and disrupt the educational process. Is there any "reasonable design" possible for them, given available resources and a factory style setting? 

Let's take a fresh look at this and ask why we continue to spend billions upon billions of dollars every year trying to force-feed knowledge to kids who not only resist and resent it, but often also prevent their classmates from learning. Isn't it time to consider public education to be a privilege rather than a right?  After all, the public is providing these youngsters and their parent(s) with free expensivn services.

Of course day care is another largely unacknowledged function of public schooling. Teachers spend an average of 7 hours a day providing that service. Given a class of, say, 25, that means an elementary school teacher is providing day care 175 hours a day or 875 hours per week. That's 31,500 total hours of day care per school year. If the teacher were paid $15 an hour per child, he or she would have earned $472,500.00!

Ignoring the difficulties created by compelling attendance, school districts adopt truancy prevention programs. They are, in effect, encouraging the attendance of potential troublemakers. A major justification of these programs is that truancy breeds broader social problems. It's asserted, for instance, that 95% of juvenile offenders started as truants. We're told that truants are more likely to:

• join a gang running the risk of disease, injury or death; 
• use marijuana, alcohol and hard drugs; 
• become pregnant and drop out of school; 
• have low self-esteem, low aspirations, and educational failure; 
• be illiterate or have serious trouble reading; 
• engage in violent and criminal activities. 

But every one of these assertions suffers from the same fatal flaw. Just because these things correlate, does NOT mean the one causes the other. All juvenile offenders start out as babies, for instance. But does starting life as a baby cause a youngster to become a juvenile offender? Of course not. Correlation is NOT causation. 

Why assume, for instance, that gang membership begins with truancy? Isn't it more likely that gang membership encourages truancy?  The same applies to marijuana, alcohol and hard drug use. Sure, truants are more likely to engage in these behaviors. But why assume that it is truancy that causes them to do so? Are truants more likely to become pregnant and drop out of school? Sure they are; but is truancy the cause? 

As for low self-esteem, low aspirations, and educational failure, isn't it more likely that these things provoke truancy, rather than cause it?  The same applies to serious reading difficulties. And as for kids that engage in violence and criminal activities, don't blame truancy, blame lousy parenting, dysfunctional families, broken homes, poverty, violent neighborhoods, the illicit economic opportunities created by making certain intoxicants illegal, ad infinitum.

Truancy prevention stops being a problem if we quit compelling school attendance to begin with. We've grown used to kids rejecting, even actively destroying, the extremely expensive educational opportunities taxpayers provide. In fact, this sort of behavior is so commonplace in some schools that the educational process is largely a pretense. Teachers pretend to teach and administrators pretend to running a school. Meanwhile standardized testing proves that the whole thing has become a farce. Isn't it time to ask if this very expensive endeavor has failed and, instead, concentrate on effectively teaching those youngsters who are willing to at least try to learn?

 

ARE YOU SUFFICIENTLY SENSITIVE TO ADMINISTRATIVE INTENT?

I was an assistant professor aspiring to become associate; and had to prove my teaching, publications and service met the mark. My "course evaluations" were quite good. (Actually they were my customer satisfaction ratings — but it is unwise to call them that.) My publications also met muster. The problem was my "service."

 

In this institution, "service" was defined by service on college committees. Here I was drawing a blank. Despite regularly volunteering, in writing, mind you, for whatever committee slots were available, I received no assignments. 

Favored faculty, who often had been educated by the religious order running the school, got the great majority of the key committee assignments. They even garnered these coveted assignments when they hadn't filled out the requisite areas of interest form. In contrast, I filled mine out regularly. I indicated preferences, but even expressed willingness to serve on any committee, Nevertheless, I got zero assignments.

An absence of committee work would doubtless sink my prospects for promotion. So I decided to inquire into this situation. Assignments were made by our faculty senate's "Committee on Committees. It largely consisted of old boy faculty who were alums of the formerly all male school. Oddly, though, this committee was chaired by a woman. What distinctive qualities won her this position? It seemed to me there were two. First, she was a co-religionist. That seemed to be an unwritten qualification. Second, and of far greater importance, she demonstrated slavish servility to every administrative power holder. 

I requested an appointment with this woman, and was in no mood to genuflect. So I opened the meeting abruptly by boldly declaring that I had repeatedly volunteered for any committee assignment, but got nowhere. I noted other faculty had received one assignment after another. What, I asked, was going on? Her reply? It had somehow been determined that I was "insufficiently sensitive to administrative intent." 

Perturbed, I reminded this academic weather vain that my promotion was at stake. I told her that I had kept a careful record of all my futile efforts to volunteer and, as well, those who had received them instead. Then I suggested that if I failed to get promoted because of any alleged "lack of service," she and the other committee members might find themselves legally liable.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 I never again had any trouble getting committee assignments. And my promotion followed in due course.

Care to guess what subsequently became of this weather vane chair of the Committee on Committees? It wasn't long before she was appointed, perhaps "anointed" is a better word, Dean of Arts and Sciences. And once in this exalted office, she continued to manifest her finely-tuned sensitivity to administrative intent. Of course, the consequences of her newly-acquired influence frequently disadvantaged the very faculty whose interests she supposedly represented. Before she rise to power this gal was a professor of English, not meteorology. Nevertheless, she always knew which way the wind blew.

What can be learned from this story? 

1. That course evaluations actually measure customer satisfaction. 
2. That there are irreconcilable, though unmentionable, tensions between the interests of the administration and those of the faculty. 
3. That a surprising number of faculty are craven lick-spittles. 
4. That brown-nosing pays — at least in terms of promotion.
5. That one's alleged colleagues might not be collegial. 

What else, more generally, can be learned from this? That there are covert academic realities reminiscent of the often missing genitalia on human anatomical illustrations. Genitalia are obviously critical components of human anatomy. Nevertheless they frequently get “disappeared” on such illustrations. But mentioning their absence is risky.

Are there times to confront the academic equivalent of those anatomical illustrations, point to the blank crotch area and ask, “What the hell happened here?" Apparently there are. But when should one do that? Only when you have more to lose if you keep pretending you don't notice the absence. 

Pulling the sheet off these covert realities can produce a sobering effect on academic power holders when all else fails. It can cause them to stop and weigh potential costs and benefits before messing with you further. But remember, breaking the silence will forever change your status both with the power holders and your colleagues. For good or ill, neither will ever view you, or treat you, in the same way again. 

THE END OF IGNORANCE? sure, if you're politically correct

 "In the age of information, ignorance is a choice." Donald Miller

No one is ignorant, even flat wrong, in the world of the politically correct. They're just "differently informed." Folks who voted for Donald Trump because Barrack Obama is an African-born Muslim, for example, weren't block-heads, just "differently informed" by "alternative facts." When Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested a Rothschild-financed Jewish space laser might well be igniting those devastating wildfires in California, she too wasn't neither stunningly ignorant nor engaged in hate-mongering demagoguery. She too was merely "differently informed," by "alternative facts."

How deliciously nonjudgmental this is. No assertion is too ridiculous, too obviously laughable, to be rejected. It's just "differently informed." Informed by what? "By whatever authority some nincompoop happen to subscribe to. It's like being left instead of right handed. There's no fault involved, no personal responsibility, no right nor wrong. Just different, equally valid, conceptions of reality. 

The truly "woke" refuse to acknowledge that some sources of authority are far more reliable than others. They also deny that ignorance is often an achieved trait. Yes, of course, ignorance is acquired if you are mentally retarded. But not if you are a person of normal intelligence. For instance, someone of normal intelligence adamantly insists on the patently ridiculous idea that the condensation trails of planes flying at high altitude are actually "chemtrails" containing harmful substances being released by one or another villain for sinister purposes. This abysmal ignorance is achieved; and ultimately is the believer's responsibility.  

Normal individuals are wholly accountable for eagerly embracing puerile buncombe. But not from the politically correct point of view. Is this world there are no ignoramuses, no blockheads, no dimwits, no willful cretins. Not a one! In this fault free world if you insist the earth is a mere 6,000 years old, not the scientifically affirmed 4.6 billion, for example, you're not way, way, way off. You're not utterly wrong. You're just "differently informed." 

In this Alice in Wonderland world any and all sources are authoritative if you think them to be so. When born-again true believers adamantly insist that the earth is 6,000 years old, for instance, they are likely unknowingly relying on the cranky calculations of the late Bishop Ussher, a 17th Century Church of Ireland prelate. He was the fellow who famously added up all the generations of the Bible, cranked in every post-Biblical generation he could identify, and gravely concluded that creation took place at 6 pm, 23 October, 4004 BC. (He admitted a bit of uncertainty about the exact time of day.) Was he correct? No, he was as full of crap as a Christmas turkey. But not for those "differently informed."

Is the late Bishop's reckoning actually just as good, perhaps better, than several centuries of scientific investigation? Only if you maintain that several centuries of rigorous scientific investigation are inerior to the computations of a scientifically illiterate, faith-blinded, 17th century dogmatist. Yet in the wacky view of the most politically correct, any version of reality, however hare-brained, is just as good as any other. 

How far does this alternative reality take them? The most zealous end up in a world where truth and fact are totally inoperative. Where the scientific method is coequal with the crystal ball readings of store-front gypsies and the  self-enriching ramblings of flimflamming televangelists. Yet, In the world of the most politically correct, the earth is flat if you believe it to be so. 

What are the implications of this toxic "tolerance" for the processes and purposes of schooling? It is that their unhinged tolerance lays waste to both. With the search for truth abandoned, with knowledge a mere matter of opinion, with every viewpoint as good as every other, true education evaporates and a wishy washy indulgence takes over. This results in something like this: "Schoolin? Nobody needs no stinkin schoolin!"

INTERVIEW WITH THE DEAD: JEFFERSON ON EDUCATION — natural aristocracy and race

Interviewer: Mr. President, the rules for this interview require us to speak only about education.

Jefferson: Yes, and I welcome it. All my life I championed public education, because only an enlightened people can support a democracy. That is why I tried to establish universal male education in tax-supported schools.

Interviewer: I understand you wanted to use schooling to create a “natural American aristocracy.”

Jefferson: Yes, I much prefer a natural aristocracy based on brains and hard work to a pseudo-aristocracy based on wealth. I envisioned a selection process in which every free child would get three years of local free primary education. Families could pay for more. The academically talented few would move on to grammar schools free of charge. Parents willing and able to pay could send their children too. Then the best half of the grammar school class would have the opportunity to study for three more years at university at public expense.

Interviewer: Did you imagine these people rising to positions of leadership in the democracy?

Jefferson: Absolutely. That was the point of the graduated system —to rake the geniuses from the rubbish.

 Interviewer: Why do you think your idea failed?

Jefferson: It was ahead of its time — although the Virginia legislature did approve my tax-supported university idea.

 Interviewer: But what of their failure to support your basic education proposal?

Jefferson: Elementary education is more important than university education. It is safer to have the whole male population enlightened than only a select few, as in Europe. Their decision to raise the apex of the pyramid without the foundation was a big mistake.

 Interviewer: You mentioned schooling only the male population. Why?

Jefferson: Women should be confined to a more rarefied and less contentious domain than men; and are properly excluded from public affairs, No effort need be made to educate them in any way that is not useful in their place as wives and mothers. Their interests should be chiefly housekeeping and childbearing.

 Interviewer: I see. You also said you championed public schooling for every FREE child. I assume that means you excluded slaves?

Jefferson: Yes I did. In my experience, black people are in reason much inferior. I never knew of a black person capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid. But despite the imbecility of blacks and their general lack of foresight, I always favored their emancipation and thought such would eventually become a law in Virginia.

 Interviewer: Imbecility and general lack of foresight?

Jefferson: Yes, for example, though they receive blankets very thankfully on the commencement of winter, when the warm weather returns they frequently cast them off, without any thought as to what may become of them, wherever they happen to be at the time, and then not seldom lose them in the woods or fields from mere carelessness.

 Interviewer: But your own records show that you only allowed them a blanket every three years and your overseers often failed to deliver those.

Jefferson: Well, no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I myself entertain and express on the grade of understanding allotted them by nature.

 Interviewer: But you owned black men who learned to be skilled coopers, painters, smiths, glazers, gourmet cooks, and so forth. Some were even capable of building you a carriage and making real your house designs. In fact it was you who pioneered in the industrialization and diversification of slavery with your gristmill, textile mill, nailery, coopering shop, tin-smithing operation, and so forth. Your estate at Monticello was utterly dependent on this black talent.

Jefferson: Yes, thank you for reminding me of the many instances of respectable intelligence in that race of men. But learning a trade is different than managing one’s own life. In the 1770’s when the Quakers freed slaves the experiment failed miserably and it soon became obvious that they had set free a parcel of lazy, worthless, Negroes. Brought from their infancy without necessity for thought or forecast, negroes are by their habits rendered as incapable of children of taking care of themselves and raising young. In the meantime they are pests in society by their idleness, and the depredations to which this leads them. The march of emancipation takes time. Just abandoning persons whose habits have been formed in slavery is like abandoning children.

 Interviewer: Perhaps they simply were too valuable to be set free. Your own calculations reveal how financially essential slavery was for maintaining Monticello’s profitability. And that Quaker experiment you label a failure actually proved successful. What is more, while in Philadelphia, you must have observed its prosperous community of free black Americans who had clearly mastered literacy, marketable skills and independent living.

Jefferson: Well I heard the Quaker experiment was an abject failure. And I am still waiting to find a natural aristocrat among the men of this race. It is not their condition but nature which has made them inferior. They are equal to whites in memory, but in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.

 Interviewer: Do you recall, while you were Secretary of State, receiving a lengthy letter and a complex Almanac containing much astronomic data both written by a free black man named Benjamin Banneker? In the letter he tried to persuade you to stop publishing statements about the alleged inferiority of blacks, made a persuasive case for there being only one human family and scolded you and the other framers of the Declaration of Independence for hypocritically tolerating the “groaning captivity and cruel oppression” of his brethren.

Jefferson: Yes, I recall both, and frankly I think Banneker had help in developing the astronomical calculation for that almanac. So far as his letter is concerned, it shows him to have a mind of very common stature indeed.

 Interviewer: Let’s turn to the hundreds of black children you owned, worked, used as collateral and sold for profit over your lifetime. How were they educated?

Jefferson: Most of the boys worked at my forge learning to turn iron rods into nails.

 Interviewer: Yes, I read that the labor of the nail boys provided completely for the maintenance of your family.

Jefferson: It was a profitable enterprise.

 Interviewer: Were the boys returned to their mothers at the end of the day?

Jefferson: No. Those who worked at the forge lived there. Initially I housed my slaves without regard for family ties. Later I allowed families to live together, but only until the children were put to work.

 Interviewer: Was it difficult to teach children to forge nails?

Jefferson: Slaves of any age can often be a burden, and these boys were no exception. It took a stern hand to keep them in line. I recall my son-in-law complaining that the overseer was whipping the small ones. The 10, 11 and 12 year olds did not take kindly to beginning work an hour before dawn, so the overseer whipped them for truancy.

 Interviewer: When you learned of this, did you stop the whippings?

Jefferson: I abhor that sort of thing. But some people require vigor of discipline to make them do reasonable work. Besides the small ones had to be kept busy; and building their character required them to be policed. So far as the overseer is concerned, I could never find a man who fulfilled my purposes as well as that fellow. I recall him asking that his pay be based on nail production, and when I agreed production soared.

Interviewer: Were the nail boys taught to read and write?

Jefferson: No, they were taught to forge nails. But the most diligent could ultimately expect to be trained as artisans and not become common field slaves.

 Interviewer: What about the slave girls you owned? Were they taught?

Jefferson: Yes, from age 10 to 16 they learned to spin and weave; then most of them, the least skilled, would go into the ground.

 Interviewer: When you were a young man you championed emancipation. But as your estate became more elaborate, your lifestyle more opulent and your slaves more plentiful, your ardor for emancipation cooled. In fact, when you became secretary of state, vice president and twice president you not only failed to use your great authority try to end slavery, you actually promoted its establishment in the newly acquired Louisiana Territory. Was there a connection between your dimming enthusiasm for emancipation and the increasing weight slavery gave your pocketbook?

Jefferson: No, not at all. I favored emancipation all my life, but came to realize that it had to be very gradual in order to lessen the shock which an operation so fundamental could not fail to produce. Besides, American slaves were better fed and clothed than England’s workers and labored less.

 Interviewer: Throughout your lifetime you repeatedly expressed an abhorrence of race mixing. Yet Jeff Randolph, your grandson, reported that you had a parallel mixed race family living on the mountain. He also said you refused to comment on the resemblance between yourself and the Monticello slave children being brought up as house servants.

Jefferson: This interview is supposed to be about education; and I think we should bring it to a close.

 

Interviewer: Thank you Mr. President.

 

Jefferson’s actual quotes were used in the construction of this “interview.” While minor modifications were made to adapt them to fit this format, his thoughts and sentiments remain intact and as expressed. 

For a detailed treatment of Jefferson and his slaves see: Henry Wiencek. Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York (2012). 

For extensive bibliographies on Thomas Jefferson, race, and slavery, see “Thomas Jefferson and Slavery,” Monticello.org, The Thomas Jefferson Foundation.