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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