Most of our Founding Fathers, including Ben Franklin, Sam Adams,
George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, like
most average colonial Americans, spent few years, if any, in
formal grammar schools of the day, yet they knew how to read and
write well.
Most voluntary local grammar schools expected parents to teach
their children to read and write before they started school.
Most colonial parents apparently had no trouble teaching their
children these skills.
At least ten of our presidents were home-schooled. James
Madison’s mother taught him to read and write. John Quincy Adams
was educated at home until he was twelve years old. At age
fourteen, he entered Harvard. Abraham Lincoln, except for fifty
weeks in a grammar school, learned at home from books he
borrowed. He learned law by reading law books, and became an
apprentice to a practicing lawyer in Illinois.
Other great Americans were similarly educated. John Rutledge, a
chief justice of the Supreme Court, was taught at home by his
father until he was eleven years old. Patrick Henry, one our
great Founding Fathers and the governor of colonial Virginia,
learned English grammar, the Bible, history, French, Latin,
Greek, and the classics from his father.
Abigail Adams, Martha Washington, and Florence Nightingale were
all taught at home by their mothers or fathers. John Jay was one
of the authors of the Federalist Papers, a chief Justice of the
Supreme Court, and a governor of New York. His mother taught him
reading, grammar, and Latin before he was eight years old. John
Marshall, our first Supreme Court Chief Justice, was
home-schooled by his father until age fourteen. Robert E. Lee,
Thomas Stonewall Jackson, George Patton, and Douglas MacArthur
were also educated at home. Booker T. Washington, helped by his
mother, taught himself to read by using Noah Webster’s Blue Back
Speller.
Thomas Edison’s public school expelled him at age seven because
his teacher thought he was feeble-minded. Edison, one of our
greatest inventors, had only three months of formal schooling.
After leaving school, his mother taught him the basics at home
over the next three years. Under his mother’s care and
instruction, young Edison thrived.
If Thomas Edison was alive today as that child of seven, school
authorities would probably stick him in special- education
classes. Poor Thomas would waste his precious mind and be bored
to death until they released him from school at age sixteen.
So it turns out that many of the famous Americans our children
now read about in their dumbed-down public-school textbooks were
either homeschooled, never set foot in a government-controlled
public school, or thankfully only went to a public school for a
very short period of time.
Article Copyrighted © 2005 by Joel Turtel.
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