26.George Washington: The Underground History of American
Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org
George
Washington
A good yardstick to measure how far modern schooling has
migrated from the education of the
past is George Washington's upbringing in the middle eighteenth century. Although Washington descended from
important families, his situation
wasn't quite the easeful life that suggests. The death of his father left
him, at eleven, without Ben
Franklin's best rudder, and the practice
of primogeniture, which vested virtually the entire inheritance in the first son (in order to stabilize
social class) compelled Washington
to either face the future as a ward of his brother, an unthinkable
alternative for George, or take destiny into his own hands as a boy.
You probably already know how that story
turned out, but since the course he pursued was nearly schoolless, its
curriculum is worth a closer look.
For the next few minutes imagine yourself at "school" with
Washington.
George Washington was no genius; we know
that from too many of his contemporaries to quibble. John Adams called him "too illiterate, too
unlearned, too unread for his station
and reputation." Jefferson, his fellow Virginian, declared he liked
to spend time "chiefly in
action, reading little." It was an age when everyone in Boston, even
shoeblacks, knew how to read and
count; it was a time when a working-class boy in a family of thirteen like Franklin couldn't remember when he
didn't know how to read.
As a teenager, Washington loved two
things: dancing and horseback riding. He pursued both with a passion that paid off handsomely when he became
president. Large in physical
stature, his appearance might have stigmatized him as awkward. Instead, he developed the agile strength of a
dancer and an equestrian, he was able to communicate grace through his commanding presence, elan that
counterpoised his large build at any
gathering. Thanks to his twin obsessions he met his responsibilities
with the bearing of a champion
athlete, which saved his life during the Revolution. In the midst of the fray,
a British sharpshooter drew a bead
on this target, but found himself unable to pull the trigger because Washington bore himself so magnificently!
George Mercer, a friend, described
Washington as a young man in the following way:
He is straight as an
Indian, measuring six feet, two inches in his stockings and weighing 175 pounds.... His frame is padded with
well developed muscles, indicating great
strength.
British military superiority, including
the best available war-making technology, would have made hash of a brainless commander in spite of his
admirable carriage, so we need to
analyze the curriculum which produced "America's Fabius," as he was
called. 1
Washington had no schooling until he was
eleven, no classroom confinement, no
blackboards. He arrived at school already knowing how to read, write,
and calculate about as well as the
average college student today. If that sounds outlandish, turn back to Franklin's curriculum and compare it
with the intellectual diet of a modern gifted and talented class. Full literacy wasn't unusual in the colonies
or early republic; many schools
wouldn't admit students who didn't know reading and counting because
few schoolmasters were willing to
waste time teaching what was so easy to learn. It was deemed a mark of depraved character if literacy hadn't been
attained by the matriculating
student. Even the many charity schools operated by churches, towns, and
philanthropic associations for the
poor would have been flabbergasted at the great hue and cry raised today about difficulties teaching
literacy. American experience proved the contrary.
In New England and
the Middle Atlantic Colonies, where reading was especially valued, literacy was universal. The printed
word was also valued in the South, where literacy was common, if not universal. In fact, it was general literacy
among all classes that spurred the explosive growth of colleges in
nineteenth-century America, where even ordinary folks hungered for advanced forms of learning.
Following George to
school at eleven to see what the schoolmaster had in store would reveal a skimpy menu of studies, yet
one with a curious gravity: geometry, trigonometry, and surveying. You might regard that as impossible or
consider it was only a dumbed-
down version of those things, some kid's game akin to the many
simulations one finds today in
schools for prosperous children — simulated city-building, simulated court
trials, simulated businesses —
virtual realities to bridge the gap between adult society and the immaturity of the young. But if George
didn't get the real thing, how do you account for his first job as official surveyor for Culpepper County,
Virginia, only 2,000 days after he
first hefted a surveyor's transit in school?
For the next three years, Washington
earned the equivalent of about $100,000 a year in today's purchasing power. It's probable his social
connections helped this fatherless boy
get the position, but in frontier society anyone would be crazy to give
a boy serious work unless he
actually could do it. Almost at once he began speculating in land; he
didn't need a futurist to tell him
which way the historical wind was blowing. By the age of twenty-one, he had leveraged his
knowledge and income into 2,500 acres of prime land in Frederick County, Virginia.
Washington had no father as a teenager,
and we know he was no genius, yet he learned geometry, trigonometry, and surveying when he would have
been a fifth or sixth grader in
our era. Ten years later he had prospered directly by his knowledge. His entire
life was a work of art in the
sense it was an artifice under his control. He even eventually freed his slaves without being coerced to do so.
Washington could easily have been the first king in America but he discouraged any thinking on that score,
and despite many critics, he was
so universally admired the seat of government was named after him while he
was still alive.
Washington attended school for exactly
two years. Besides the subjects mentioned, at twelve and thirteen (and later) he studied frequently used
legal forms like bills of
exchange, tobacco receipts, leases, and patents. From these forms, he
was asked to deduce the theory,
philosophy, and custom which produced them. By all accounts, this steeping in grown-up reality didn't
bore him at all. I had the same experience with Harlem kids 250 years later, following a similar procedure
in teaching them how to struggle
with complex income tax forms. Young people yearn for this kind of guided introduction to serious things, I
think. When that yearning is denied, schooling destroys their belief that justice governs human
affairs.
By his own choice, Washington put time
into learning deportment, how to be regarded a gentleman by other gentlemen; he copied a book of rules
which had been used at Jesuit
schools for over a century and with that, his observations, and what
advice he could secure, gathered
his own character. Here's rule 56 to let you see the flavor of the thing: "Associate yourself with men of
good Quality if you Esteem your own reputation." Sharp kid. No wonder he became president.
Washington also
studied geography and astronomy on his own, gaining a knowledge of regions, continents, oceans, and
heavens. In light of the casual judgment of his contemporaries that his intellect was of normal proportions,
you might be surprised to hear
that by eighteen he had devoured all the writings of Henry Fielding, Tobias
Smollett, and Daniel Defoe and
read regularly the famous and elegant Spectator. He also read Seneca's Morals, Julius Caesar's
Commentaries, and the major writing of other Roman generals like the historian Tacitus.
At sixteen the future president began
writing memos to himself about clothing design, not content to allow something so important to be left in the
hands of tradesmen. Years later he
became his own architect for the magnificent estate of Mt. Vernon. While still
in his twenties, he began to
experiment with domestic industry where he might avoid the vagaries of international finance in
things like cotton or tobacco. First he tried to grow hemp "for medicinal purposes," which didn't work
out; next he tried flax — that didn't
work either. At the age of thirty-one, he hit on wheat. In seven years
he had a little wheat business
with his own flour mills and hired agents to market his own brand of flour;
a little later he built fishing
boats: four years before the Declaration was written he was pulling in 9 million herring a year.
No public school in the United States is
set up to allow a George Washington to happen. Washingtons in the bud stage are screened, browbeaten, or
bribed to conform to a narrow
outlook on social truth. Boys like Andrew Carnegie who begged his mother
not to send him to school and was
well on his way to immortality and fortune at the age of thirteen, would be referred today for
psychological counseling; Thomas Edison would find himself in Special Ed until his peculiar genius had been
sufficiently tamed.
Anyone who reads can compare what the
American present does in isolating children from their natural sources of education, modeling them on a
niggardly last, to what the
American past proved about human capabilities. The effect of the forced
schooling institution's strange
accomplishment has been monumental. No wonder history has been outlawed.
6.
'Washington's critics dubbed him "Fabius" after the Roman general who
dogged Hannibal's march but avoided battle with the Carthaginian. Washington wore down British resolve by
eroding the general belief in their invincibility, something he had learned on
the Monongahela when Braddock's
force was routed. Eventually the French became convinced Washington was on the
winning side, and with their support America became a nation. But it was the strategy of Washington that
made a French-American alliance possible at all.
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