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Last Updated: Apr 23, 2007.

 

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"No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity."
- Thomas Jefferson, 1821

"It is highly interesting to our country, and it is the duty of its functionaries, to provide that every citizen in it should receive an education proportioned to the condition and pursuits of his life."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1814.

Education

Awareness of history, law, and government in the United States is severely lacking. Some people do possess a a keen understanding of how everything works, but these people are becoming an increasingly smaller minority of the general population. If the general population does no possess an understanding of the intricacies of how government works, it is inevitable that those with that understanding will be prone to use it to their own advantage against the interests of those who do not understand. Our public education system is setting up generation after generation of kids that will be incapable of self-government and carrying on the righteous tradition of other true American principles. Essentially, public schools are ensuring that socialistic systems will be forced to remain in place to take care of a population that was never educated about how to take care of itself. It is an integral part of our duty to educate both ourselves and our children in the pursuit of liberty and the preservation of the Republic.

"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1820.

The Solution

We must begin educating each other and, most importantly, our nation's young people about what this country is, its history, what it once stood for, and what it still has a chance to be. Our republic cannot be restored if the people are not well-informed. We are worthy of self-government, but we must make ourselves and our nation capable of it.



My Personal Experience

I am a product of our country's public education system. I can confidently say that I learned almost nothing about how my country works, what my duties are as a citizen, what laws I need to now, how our legal system works, or even the basics of personal finance (let alone government finance). I also learned almost nothing about the constitution, how it worked, or anything about the principles upon which our country was founded. Almost everything useful that I have learned has come from my own studies that I have undertaken for the purpose of understanding my country and world around me. The education I recieved simply did not seem to be one that was going to prepare me for the real world.

It was certainly not the fault of any of my teachers. Howland High School has some of the best teachers in the area, and many of them did the best they could. They had their hands tied, however, by the mandates of the state and the proficiency tests that we always had to be prepared for. I can say that I learned how to take tests, how to write a research paper, and how to factor a polynomial, but I can't say that I would have ever been taught how to do any problem solving, how to think for myself, or how to be a better person if I wasn't lucky enough to be able to take some "gifted" classes such as A.S.P.I.R.E. that I was offered (but that was primarily in middle school).

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