BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY
POLITICAL SCIENCE 400

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN JEFFERSONIAN EDUCATION AND PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY
BY
RACHEL WAGNER

PROVO, UTAH
APRIL 17, 2002
INTRODUCTION

Throughout his lifetime Thomas Jefferson emphasized the connection between education and a stable, participatory democracy.  With this connection, Jefferson reflects his more general doctrine on the nature of man and the ability of all people to understand and support Jeffersonian democracy.   In fact, when we combine Jefferson’s definition of democracy and his emphasis on education we create the core of his radical theory on the security of a strong participatory democracy. These theories uphold that a democratic government is not only founded through the will of the people but is also protected from tyranny by that will. 

Jefferson's views of democracy expanded the rights of the people to participate in democracy in ways that few, if any other thinker’s had ever allowed.  To justify this extension of rights, Jefferson’s various positions can be combined to create a logical argument that is based on five different premises, which together explain the connection between universal education and the ability of citizens to participate effectively in and actively protect government: First, all men and woman are inherently equal in the sense that each person at birth is granted a moral sense or compass that leads them to what is right and good.  Second, all people are unequal, in a different way, because some men and woman possess natural differences in virtuous behavior and talent.  Third, through education these differences in the amount of virtue a person expresses can either be increased, decreased or left constant.  Fourth, it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that every person has an equal opportunity to increase his or her natural tendencies towards virtuous behavior and other talents through education.  In sum, if all people begin life with moral sense and they also all have the opportunity to increase their virtuous behavior through education, then they can all be informed citizens; therefore, almost all people (barring the mentally ill and decrepit) can become eligible to participate effectively in a democracy.  

MORAL SENSE CREATES EQUALITY
            In a letter to his nephew Peter Carr, Thomas Jefferson defines the moral sense within human beings as a moral compass that allows us to make correct judgments in society:
He who has made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if he had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science … Man was destined for society.   His morality, therefore, was to be formed to this object.  He was endowed with a sense of right and wrong merely relative to this.  This sense is as much a part of his nature, as the sense of hearing, seeing, feeling; it is the true foundation of morality (Jefferson 1998, 398). 

Perhaps better understood as a conscience or a common sense understanding of morality, Jefferson believes that all people intuitively know what is right and wrong.  For Jefferson, it is this common knowledge or understanding that makes all people inherently equal.  Continuing on in the letter to Carr, Jefferson reiterates the universality of the moral sense: “State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor.  The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules” (ibid).   Through statements such as this, Jefferson makes it clear that all men and women are equally capable of making certain moral judgments.
However, it is important to understand that this mutual understanding or sense of what is morally correct among all citizens is a very minimal one because those things that the moral sense are encompass only the moral reasoning’s that are absolutely necessary for the survival of society.  Lord Henry Home Kames, an important philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment who influenced Jefferson, describes what becomes Jefferson’s equal moral sense as all people possessing the same degree of common sense morality, which they can either act on or ignore:
The practice of morality being necessary for the well-being of society, he [God] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of the brain (Jayne 1998, 80).

Just as Jefferson describes the maker of us all as a “pitiful bungler” if he had left out the moral sense in all men and woman, Kames says that God has placed it so “indelibly in our hearts” that we cannot deny it through the subtleties of the brain. The key contribution Kames adds—and Jefferson’s logic seems to support—is that the moral sense is what is necessary for the well being of society.
One problem with Jefferson’s theory of an innate moral sense is that it places no definite limit between the workings of the moral sense and the reasonings of mankind.  These differences, for Jefferson, are not necessary because the moral sense is so fundamental that all honest people will recognize what is right and wrong given a certain moral dilemma.  In the Notes on Virginia Jefferson reiterates the universality of the moral sense:
When arguing for ourselves, we lay down as a fundamental, that laws, to be just, must give a reciprocation of right; that, without this, they are mere arbitrary rules of conduct, founded in force, and not in conscience (Jefferson 1998, 242).

In other words, if law is not founded in conscience it is merely arbitrary.
            It is this innate moral sense, which is given to all men and women that makes Jefferson’s definition of the nature of man so egalitarian.  Each person, regardless of his or her station, is given a basic understanding of what is right and wrong. While the degree of understanding and perception of the moral sense can, for Jefferson, from person to person, there is a basic level of sense given to al people. This makes, for Jefferson, the basis of democratic government­­­­­—a legion of citizens that direct the affairs of the state towards that end which is intuitively right and good for the happiness of the people and the security of the state.  In his letter to George Ticknor on November 25, 1817 Jefferson elaborates on this point with his analysis of the negative effects of Bonaparte’s rule.  He says that not only is the expulsion of Bonaparte politically just, but secures justice to the heart of every man and woman under his unjust rule: “The penance he is now doing for all his atrocities must be soothing to every virtuous heart” (Jefferson 1998, 624).  For Jefferson, Bonaparte went against the moral sense that upheld his rule, and it was for this crime that he deserved the most punishment.  He continues on in the same letter:
...but indeed what sufferings can atone for his crimes against the liberties and happiness of the human race; for the miseries he has already inflicted on his own generation, and on those yet to come, on whom he has riveted the chains of despotism (Jefferson 1998, 624).

For Jefferson, Bonaparte’s true crime was ruling in a dictatorial fashion, which forced his views of the morality upon the people.  This disgust by Jefferson may seem ironic given his rather propagandish views on education and moral development.  However, Jefferson believed that his definition of what created the “happiness of the human race” was intuitively correct.  He felt that everyone’s moral sense would direct him or her towards what he felt was moral and good.  For example, the moral sense of people would naturally direct them to the truths he presents in his documents like the Declaration of Independence and The Notes on Virginia; therefore, for Bonaparte to inflict any other definition of happiness and justice aside from Jefferson’s upon the people was a great crime.

NATURAL INEQUALITIES IN VIRTUOUS BEHAVIOR AND TALENT
With our new understanding of equality through the moral sense, it may seem odd to approach the question of natural differences in one’s tendency towards both virtuous behaviors and certain talents.  At first it may seem that what is equal cannot be unequal.  The key to understanding the addition of differences to Jefferson’s definition of moral equality is what scholar Harold Hellenbrand describes as Jefferson’s belief in different capacities for correct moral or virtuous behavior with equal the possession of the moral sense (Hellenbrand 1990, 51).  For Jefferson, different people are given both different abilities or talents and understandings of their moral sensibilities at birth.  Jefferson is never really clear on why these differences exist.  It seems to be an accepted axiom to Jefferson that differences exist in both talent and propensities towards moral behavior. 
With the mere existence of these differences, Jefferson adds that whatever virtuous behavior and talent is given to a person, they, in conjunction with the state, are the ones responsible for exercising or illuminating those talents.  This need for expanding on natural gifts and abilities hangs on the Jeffersonian idea of every person having the ability to change their situation.  Hellenbrand summarizes this unique understanding of equality with differences in Jefferson’s moral thought:
Jefferson balanced his belief in an innate capacity to do good with an abiding conviction that moral behavior also had to be conditioned and practiced ... Although a sense, the moral spring needed exercise (Hellenbrand 1990, 51).

For Jefferson, each person has an innate desire (the moral sense) to do good things in their life.  The inequalities in society are then developed from two things: greater innate gifts from birth, and higher motivation to develop those talents.  As Hellenbrand implies, it is crucial for Jefferson that the differences in motivation between people become done away with by the careful and conditioned development of those natural talents.
            In fact, in a letter to Peter Carr on August 19, 1785 Jefferson tells Carr to “encourage all your virtuous dispositions and exercise them whenever an opportunity arises; being assured that they will gain strength by exercise, as a limb of the body does, and that exercise will make them habitual” (Jefferson 1998, 348).  So, for Jefferson the actual manifestation of both our moral sense and naturally appointed talents must be encouraged, exercised and increased whenever possible.  It is this ability to either add to our moral sensibilities and talents or leave them constant and unchanged that makes some people willing to exert the necessary effort for change, while others merely remain with their innate moral sense.  For some people this growth may require more effort than for others, as certain people naturally have more talents and more ability to express those talents than others.  Some individuals also find it easier than others to make manifest their innate moral sense through correct or virtuous behaviors. 
            Jefferson is even willing to admit that those whom he believes to be particularly disadvantaged at birth (mainly blacks, Indians and woman) have the ability to overcome their innate challenges through hard work and a sincere attempt to understand their innate moral sense.  While to this admittance may still ring of bigotry to the modern multi-cultural eye, Jefferson was actually quite modern in his stance on minority group’s possibilities of development.  The political theorist Richard K. Mathews elaborates on this point:
... Jefferson always believes in human development and education.  Consequently, he holds out the hypothesis that in time, cultivated in a friendly society, blacks can become fully equal to the other Americans. In 1775 he writes to the Marquis de Chastellux: “I believe the Indian then to be in body and mind equal to the white man.  I have supposed the black man, in his present state, might not be so.  But it would be hazardous to affirm that, equally cultivated for a few generations, he would not become so” (Mathews 1984, 70).

In regards to women, Jefferson is very clear about the importance and ability of women to develop their natural talents and understandings of morality.  While Jefferson was never willing to grant women an equal say in government, he was adamant that the women in his life never stop developing their talents and knowledge of correct virtuous behavior.  For example, in a letter to his daughter Martha, Jefferson shows frustration at his daughter’s unwillingness to magnify her knowledge of all things including virtuous behavior and talents.  He particularly mentions that his daughter’s lack of hard work and educational fortitude will not only hurt herself but the happiness of her entire nation:
You have promised me a more assiduous attention, and I have great confidence in what you promise.  It is your future happiness which interests me, and nothing can contribute more to it (moral rectitude always excepted) than the contracting a habit of industry and activity.  Of all the cankers of human happiness none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful a tooth as indolence (Jefferson 1998, 386-387).

This quotation implies that for Jefferson, the education of women is valuable to the whole country and later on in letters he makes it clear that his daughters have the abilities to learn almost any complex subject.  With these two thoughts on women, Jefferson creates a position that upholds both the possibility that women can master academia- as well as other challenges-and that society relies on the magnifying of female talents, whether academic or not, to be successful and strong.  
In fact, Jefferson even mentions that the only reason women are not given more power is that the political leaders (including himself) and the country as a whole are not prepared for their leadership.  Any restriction of female participation in government seems to have little to do with their inability to rise to the requirements of leadership.  While Jefferson never makes it completely clear why the American people and leaders are unprepared for female rule, he does make it clear that such a step would be an innovation, not a degradation.  In a letter to Albert Gallatin Jefferson makes this point clear by saying,  “The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared, nor am I” (Yarbrough 1998, 130).
            In the end, Jefferson’s final conclusions on human nature are that it is based on a foundation of moral sense, and the degree to which a person rises from that foundation depends on their gifts at birth and the amount of effort they are willing to exert to gain more knowledge.

EDUCATION AS THE KEY TO INCREASING NATURAL ABILITIES
            Though hard work is important in increasing our natural understanding of virtuous behavior and developing our individual talents, it is not the only influencing factor in strengthening, weakening or leaving constant the natural moral sense.  The other key for Jefferson is education.  Just as he demonstrates in the above letter to his daughter, Jefferson believes that every person had the ability to increase his or her knowledge and skill in any subject.  This leads us to the conclusion that the more a person is willing to become educated, the more he or she should be recognized for that education with positions of leadership.  This trend for leadership through education constitutes what Jefferson refers to as the natural aristocracy, which rules out of greater knowledge instead of higher birth.  The political scientist Ralph Ketcham elaborated on Jefferson’s natural aristocracy:
Instead of elaborate educational schemes for a few philosopher kings or a design for rearing Christian princes, or even national examinations to select future government officials, Jefferson had to devise plans both for the primary education of all participants in a self-governing society and for the higher education to qualify full time office-holders.  But his concern was always to ensure as much as possible that those who would be electing, discussing, consenting, legislating, and administrating in a self-governing society would be up to the task (Ketcham 1999, 281).

For Jefferson education helped to validate the rule of those that deserved to lead in a democracy.  This prerequisite of education became the same defense that was required for the justification of any stewardship or occupation in a society.  For example, a teacher could not fulfill his role as a teacher effectively unless he had the education required to be an adequate teacher. 
            Jefferson’s emphasis on the need for education may seem obvious to the modern eye; however, systematic and universalized education was not traditionally seen as necessary or valuable.  For instance, many of Jefferson’s predecessors did not see equality in each person’s ability to rise above their natural tendencies towards virtuous behavior through education.  Thinkers like John Locke saw equality in labor, and intelligence as a random or fated commodity.  This emphasis on labor is part of the reason why the original trilogy of rights in Locke is “life, liberty, and property” (Post 1986, 147).  Jefferson’s substitution of property with “pursuit of happiness” shows his fundamental change from a labor or work producing equality to the open education of morality—or the pursuit of happiness—being the main goal.  Education and happiness have such a direct connection to each other because it is only the fully developed man or woman that is the happy man, and it is only through education that a person can become fully developed.  David Post in his article Jeffersonian revisions of Locke: Education, property-rights, and liberty describes the change that resulted from Jefferson’s new emphasis on education:

Educators were assigned a new responsibility in the republic, and they felt a special mission.  Enlightened, literate citizens were seen to benefit society as well as themselves, and their participation was thought at least as important as that of property owners.  Therefore education was conceived to be a public task (Post 1986, 153).

For example, in early America the ability of each person to become educated changed life dramatically. Each citizen was seen as valuable for their knowledge instead of their labor.  For Jefferson, this allows each person to rise to his or her highest potential and it gives society the ability to select those people who are especially blessed and particularly dedicated to the education of those blessings to rule in the natural aristocracy. 

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GOVERNMENT TO PROVIDE EDUCATION
            With education becoming such a pivotal way for natural inequalities to be either recognized or diminished, it becomes key for Jefferson that a democratic government do all it can to support education. This support is required for several reasons: first, the natural aristocracy needs to be recognized by the government.  Second, universal education lets everyone begin on equal footing.  Third, it allows the government to restrict and enforce the type of education and subsequent growth that occurs within their state. 
Jefferson’s educational scheme requires all students to attend a standardized elementary or primary school.  After this initial stage, less talented children are filtered out.  Following elementary school, the students who have been deemed particularly astute academically would be allowed to enter secondary education and then the truly select move on to higher education.  It is by this process of education that Jefferson selects those who will rule or officiate over a variety of fields of study.  However, this rule will not be a problem for the society, according to Jefferson, because the other educated citizens will recognize the superior training and expertise of the ruler.  In fact, through their elections the people will actively support the rulers or leaders in question.  In a letter to George Wythe, Jefferson reiterates the sure footing which education provides for the people, the society and the selection of leaders:
I think that by far the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised, for the preservation of freedom and happiness.  If anybody thinks that kings, nobles or priests are good conservators of the public happiness, send him here [Paris].  It is the best school in the universe to cure him of that folly.  He will see here...that these descriptions of men are an abandoned confederacy against the happiness of the mass of the people (Jefferson 1998, 366). 

Some might be surprised that Jefferson’s vision of universal education only went so far as the elementary level.  One initial reason is a lack of interest on the part of some students for higher education.  The elementary education, which Jefferson lays forth, provides a student with a wide range of those skills that are required to survive as a citizen in America.  These skills will then be determined by the state to ensure that every person is indoctrinated with certain civic philosophies approved by the government, so that each citizen will become the type of participant in democracy that the government seeks.   In his report on the commissioners appointed to fix the site of the University of Virginia Jefferson describes the practical benefits of a basic education to all people:
They [the legislator] are sensible that the advantages of well-directed education, moral, political and economical, are truly above all estimate.  Education generates habits of application, or order, and the love of virtue; and controls, by the force of habit, and innate obliquities in our moral organization (Honeywell 1964, 251)

Jefferson makes the point that in addition to gaining a great deal from a basic education, for some people the basic knowledge of virtuous behavior, reading, math, science etc. are all they need to be happy in life.  Allen Jayne describes the feelings of Jefferson towards the simple, yet happy life:

Describing a friend who was “the happiest man in the universe,” Jefferson mentioned that he lived “in a very small house, with a table” and “half a dozen chairs,” manifesting “an utter neglect of the costly apparatus of life.”  Yet the man was an ascetic; he was committed to pleasure and had the ability to attain it because “every incident in life he so takes as to render it a source of pleasure.”... The thrust of Jefferson’s comments was that although his friend could have lived in a better material surroundings, he had made a rational decision to forgo some immediate materialistic or frivolous pleasures...Clearly, Jefferson admired a man who had rationally determined what would give him the greatest happiness in life and lived according to that determination (Jayne 1998, 133-134).

For Jefferson, if a man was happy with modeling the life of a man with a more simple education, then that was not a sign of laziness.  In fact, it was a notion of simplicity to be admired.  We can now conclude that if Jefferson supports the type of life available from a simple education, then he would also support the simple education.
            There is one more reason why Jefferson thought that every person should have an elementary level education.  Through a systematic education of basic principles, Jefferson had the ability to make sure that each citizen was made aware of their moral sense, and the subsequent rights and obligations, which that knowledge implied. In the Notes on Virginia Jefferson explains how universal education should be used to infiltrate certain doctrines into the minds of children:
The first state of this education ... wherein the great mass of the people will receive their instruction, the principal foundations of future order will be laid here ... Their memories may be stored with the most useful facts from Grecian, Roman, European and American history.  The first elements of morality too may be instilled in their minds; such as, when further developed as their judgments advance in strength, may teach them how to work out their own greatest happiness, by shewing that it does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed them, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits (Jefferson 1998, 244-245). 
           
Through universal education Jefferson seeks to instill in all men and women the essence of the American dream, or the belief that no matter what his or her natural station they can become something.  This is a beneficial belief to the pursuit of happiness within the individual but it also supports the security and maintenance of a government.  If a people believe that their government allows them to pursue their greatest degree of happiness, then they are going to support that government. 

EDUCATED CITIZENS SUPPORT A PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY
            Once we have discovered that the people are more likely to support a Jeffersonian democracy if they are educated, we still have to answer two more questions- why does this support matter and what version of democracy does this support create? The answers to both questions emphasizes Jefferson’s unique definition of democracy, and shows how education allows all people to participate in democracy effectively and equally.
            For Jefferson, the success of democracy could not be removed from the support, approval and admiration of the people.  Unlike some who feared the chaotic power of the masses, Jefferson embraced it as the only power that had a just claim to decide how government should be run.  The scholar James Oaks describes this encompassing vision of popular support within Jeffersonian democracy beginning with Jefferson’s comparison of the light of technology to the light of true populist government:
The light which has been shed on mankind by the art of printing has eminently changed the condition of the world.”  The “American mind is already too much opened,” he explained in 1799, “and while the art of printing can never be lost.  To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.”  The fortunes of freedom were therefore linked, in Jefferson’s mind, to society’s capacity to produce and reproduce the accumulated wisdom of the ages (Oaks 1999, 187).

Just as the printing press forever changed the condition of mankind, so has the new vision of political power as lying within the people.  In fact, it is up to the people to protect the “fortunes of freedom” or, in other words, the Jeffersonian state.  It the people’s work or participation in the state that makes knowledge accumulate and the state secure. So, it is the civic action of citizens that help to support the Jeffersonian state and the freedoms that go along with it.  Jefferson even goes so far as to say that it is a virtue, which all true believers would be “martyred for” (Oaks 1999, 187).  More important than the cost per citizen for a participatory government, however, is the emphasis that Jefferson places on the key role of education in supporting this participatory democracy.  Oaks says that the two are linked in a bind that upholds this newfound light of freedom.
            The key to remember in analyzing the relationship between democracy and participation is the unique education, which is described above.  Remember that all citizens are to receive an equal education, which is based on a conviction that all people need to understand and operate their innate moral sense and develop their natural talents.  In addition, universal education allows for the infiltration of extreme devotion to the freedoms allowed the people of America.  Through this universal education we create a body of people that is equally prepared to uphold the freedoms granted from a participatory government.  In reverse, the maintenance of the participatory democracy is directly connected to the states success in educating the people on the innate nature of these freedoms.
            Jefferson favored using any method possible to ensure that the people understood the responsibilities, which they possessed as members of his ideal republic.  He supported numerous educational, library, and university level pieces of legislation.  Jefferson encouraged any method by which the knowledge of moral sense could be preserved in the minds of the people. Even the encouragement of public forums was useful to Jefferson because it encouraged an open debate among the people, which forced all involved to ponder on the nature of their democracy.  Suzanne W. Morse in her article Ward republics shows how Jefferson actively supports the transformation of America into tiny ward republics that could be monitored on a local level: 
They reflect Jefferson’s belief that if American democracy was to survive, let alone flourish, its citizens must be educated, must be willing to question and challenge the system, and must have a place for even the most ordinary citizens among them to practice the art of citizenship...He knew that without the habit and practice of deliberation, Americans might retreat and isolate themselves from each other to such an extent that there is little common action or thought (Morse 1999, 269).

Like Morse says, Jefferson saw that keeping the citizens informed about the freedoms they enjoyed was the key to maintaining the level of participatory democracy that he sought after.

CRITIQUE OF JEFFERSONIAN THOUGHT
            Some people may view Jefferson’s thought as archaic or irrelevant to modern-day America.  One could argue against Jefferson by saying that we currently have a broader spectrum of rights to participate in government than ever before and a wider spread system of public education than during his day, yet it does not appear that this has helped our government become any more participatory.  With minimal voting percentages throughout the country, people are becoming less connected with government than ever before despite their participation in universalized government.  However, it seems that Jefferson would look at this trend and see in it a failure by the government to make the connection between education and a responsibility of each individual to participate effectively in government.  He would conclude that the government has failed to instruct citizens in their moral sense because if they were aware of this unique understanding of morality they would be less willing to throw it away.  Jefferson had envisioned a microscopically monitored educational system with specific moral principles taught, and education today has lost a great deal of the consistency that Jefferson would have implemented. 

CONCLUSION
            Understanding Jefferson’s connection between a participatory democracy and the universal education of its’ citizens is a multi-layered argument.  Jefferson’s first premise lies in his theory of an innate moral sense, which makes all men and woman inherently equal.  This is the case even for once socially disadvantaged peoples such as women, Indians and slaves.  Once this moral sense is understood, then the differences in society are explained by the natural inequalities, which exist from birth.  These inequalities can take many forms including moral perceptiveness and academic talents.  To the natural inequalities is added the Jeffersonian belief that any deficiencies in a human being can be overcome by education with hard work.  It is then up to the government to ensure that this education takes place, and that it is effective in implementing those skills, which allow all people to effectively participate in government.  It is crucial for Jefferson that the government take control of this education because that gives the government the ability to define and encourage what Jefferson believes to the basic level of citizenship and knowledge.  If anyone else had the power to educate, there may not be the same democratic support infiltrated within the citizens.  Finally, the citizens that have become educated are then able to fully support a high level of participatory government, divided into microscopic wards and maintained through the energy and convictions of the people.  While not all people see the modern-day connection between education and a greater participatory government, Jefferson believes that it is the best way for a society to be run.

WORKS CITED

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Morse, Suzanne W. 1999. Ward republics: The wisest invention for self-government in
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Oaks, James. 1999. Why slaves can’t read: The political significance of Jefferson’s
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Post, David M. 1986. Jeffersonian revisions of Locke: Education, property-rights and
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