A Free Society Cannot Survive As A Republic Without a Broad Program of General Education

Proverbs 4:10-13 “Listen, my son, accept what I say and the years of your life will be many. I guide you in the way of wisdom and lead you along straight paths. When you walk, your steps will not be hampered; when you run, you will not stumble. Hold on to instruction, do not let it go; guard it well, for it is your life.”

Perhaps one of the most outstanding things that the colonists did in America that no other nation had tried to undertake was to educate the whole people. When you read the writings and gather the thoughts of the early colonists, you realize that they had a sense “of manifest destiny.” In other words, they believed that America played an important role in the unfolding of modern world history. Because of that, education was an important ingredient in this preparation.

Education started early in 1647 in Massachusetts when they passed a law requiring a community of 50 families or householders to set up a free grammar school to teach the Bible and the basics: reading, writing, arithmetic, ciphering, history, geography.

Also the law stated that every Township that contained 100 families was to set up a secondary school to prepare young people for attendance at Harvard.  John Adams said that the purpose of this program was to have “knowledge diffuse generally through the whole body of the people.” John Adams went on to say that this was so important that any Township that did not have a grammar school, or even a schoolmaster for a few months, would be subject to a heavy penalty. We see that they took education of the ‘whole people’ seriously. It is amazing to see today how in our educational system there has been a “dumbing down syndrome.” From our public schools we are graduating kids who can hardly read or write let alone have any understanding of history or even geography.

In the early days of our country it was rare to find a person who could not read or write. John Adams and the other Founding Fathers knew that without education liberty cannot be preserved.

The early colonists knew that local school boards were of utmost importance. Historian John Fisk made the comment that “the school committees were bodies of ‘great importance.’”

We must remember that all this was at the time when illiteracy was the common lot for most people in Europe. John Adams who lived in France said that out of the 24 million inhabitants of Europe only 500,000 could read and write.

In the early days of our Republic the intention was to have all children being able to read, write and do arithmetic not only so that they can be informed citizens, but able to continue on in their own diligent self-study. The Founding Fathers realized that by having the basics or the fundamentals one was able to continue their own study in many different areas of their choice, but without these fundamentals they would be handicapped.

When visiting America in 1831 Tocqueville “found that the American people will appear to be the most enlightened the world.” It is interesting that Tocqueville noted that the children were taught the doctrines and evidence of religion (this would be the Christian religion), the history of his country as well as the leading features of its Constitution. He went on to say that it would be almost impossible to find a person who would be ignorant of these things. If we look at the 300 million in the United States today – how many today can really read, write and even do simple mathematics; how many know our Constitution and the true history of our country? In the early days of the Republic it was unusual to find a person not familiar with these things, but today it would be rare to find someone who is acquainted with these things.

Tocqueville did say that as the settlers pushed West education did diminish, but he went on to say, “he wears the dress and speaks the language of cities; he is acquainted with the past, curious about the future, and ready for argument about the present; he is, in short, highly civilized being, who consents for a time to inhabit the backwoods, and who penetrates into the wilds of the New World with the Bible, and axe, and some newspapers.”

Arthur J. Stansberry published in 1828 what was known as “Catechism on the Constitution” that contains questions and answers regarding the Constitution and its principles taught to the children.

Daniel Webster said: “Whatever may be said to the contrary, a correct use of the English language is, at this day (1843) more general throughout the United States than it is throughout England herself.” In other words, what he was saying was that in the frontier as well as on the East Coast people spoke well. Many of these people attributed the eloquence to an extensive reading of the Bible. This was the case of Abraham Lincoln as seen in the Gettysburg address.

We cannot underestimate the cultural influence of the Bible in the early days of our founding. It provided strength to their moral standards as well as behavior, and wherever the Americans went the Bible came with them. The American Express ad that we so often see is, “Never leave home without it.” In the early days of our founding the settlers never left home without the Bible.

What do we have in our public schools today? Our schools have become so secularized that it is now forbidden to read the Bible. Our Founding Fathers would have looked upon this as a very serious mistake.

A Free People Should be Governed by Law and not by the Whims of Men

Proverbs 8:12-16 “I, wisdom, dwell together with prudence; I possess knowledge and discretion. To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech. Counsel and sound judgment are mine; I have understanding and power. By me kings reign and rulers make laws that are just; by me princes govern, and all nobles who rule on earth.”

Proverbs 14:12 “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.”

If we are not governed by law, then we will find that nothing is fixed and in such a society nothing is dependable. Everything will be in a state of flux.

Our Founding Fathers saw Law as “rule of action” that was binding on the ruler as it was upon the people themselves. They saw that this would give society stability and provide for people the ability to make plans for the future. It was John Locke who said: “Freedom of men under government is to have a standing rule to live by, common to everyone of that society, and made by the legislative power elected in it.”

Under this type of system, both for the present as well as future, a framework provided people a high degree of freedom from fear and therefore the freedom to act. The Founding Fathers realized that without the protection of the Law there can be no liberty. It is like John Locke said that if a society cannot provide a code of fixed and enforceable laws that he might as well have stayed in the jungle. John Adams agreed with this when he said: “No man will contend that a nation can be free that is not governed by fixed laws.”

Evidently Aristotle who said that “even the best of men in authority are liable to be corrupted by passion” disagreed with his mentor, Plato, who believed that people should be governed “by the few” who would rule according to scientific principles and make decisions on the spot to force the people to do what is good for them.

Isn’t this what we are seeing today with the dictatorships we have in the world? I mentioned before about the man I met in Denmark who after being gone for almost 20 years had come back to Denmark from Canada telling me that he was scared because he saw a government (socialism) that was telling him what was best for him. Isn’t this what we find today with the “progressives” in our own country, the elite who think that they know what is best for us? This is why we need to tie these people down with the restraints of our Constitution!

Like our Founding Fathers we need to realize that Law is not merely a code of negative restraints and prohibitions. They “considered Law to be a system of positive rules by which they could be assured of enjoying their rights and the protection of themselves, their families, and their property.” It is like the Ten Commandments that God gave us to protect us so that we can live a peaceful and prosperous life. But today in our society we have the removing of the Ten Commandments and also we have those who want to do away with the Constitution too. The result will be utter chaos.

One last thing that the Founding Fathers understood that people will have confidence in the law only to the extent that they can understand it and realize that it will have a permanence which will not continually be changed.

Thomas Jefferson resigned from Congress in 1776 to go back to Virginia and volunteer for the task of rewriting the state laws so that when independence came there would be a legal system that the people could understand and support. Perhaps this type of housecleaning is needed today to improve our own code of laws and regulations.

Strong Local Self-Government is the Keystone to Preserving Human Freedom

Proverbs 11:14 “A nation will fall when there is no direction, but with many advisers there is victory.”

We know from history that power automatically becomes more centralized and the purpose of our Constitution was to prevent that from happening. When power becomes more centralized we find that the freedom of the individual is destroyed because the decision-making is done by the officers in central government. We see this happening in our country even today with some of the laws that are being passed and the federal government giving executive orders to the states.

In Anglo-Saxon times the people took pride in their participation in decision-making process. We see the same example in ancient Israel where families were divided up into multiples of tens, 50s, hundreds, and thousands and where problems were solved on the local level.

Thomas Jefferson saw the advantage of the strong local Anglo-Saxon self-government. Historian Richard Frothingham pointed out the local self-government in ancient England with the division into burghs, counties, shires, etc. and where the inhabitants had a voice in managing their own affairs.

Although the crown stepped in and deprived the people of the power of local rule, when these people pulled away from the mother country and migrated to America the idea of local self-rule reappeared and began to frame the laws which were to protect the freedom of the individual and to provide a healthy local self-government. It was Thomas Jefferson who said: “The way to have a good and safe government is not the trusted all to one, but to be divided among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions he is competent to perform best.”

He went on to say: “The national government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and its foreign and federal relations; the state governments with the civil rights, laws, police, administration of what concerns the state generally.”

Tocqueville, in his book called Democracy said that in America it was local self-rule that started and then expanded into a wider rule. It was not the other way around where they had central power and then brought down to self-rule on the local level.

James Madison emphasized the necessity of all possible authority to be in the states with the people and that the Constitution would delegate to the federal government only that which involves the whole people as a nation.

Our Founding Fathers meant for the federal government to be small and inexpensive because of the limited problems which would be assigned to it. Thomas Jefferson saw the federal government reduced to only foreign concerns. How different it is today when we see how bloated our federal government is in trying to give us “cradle-to-grave” instructions and with less safety and security.

Perhaps we should heed the prophetic warning of historian John Fiske who said: “If the day should ever arrive (which God forbid) when the people of the different parts of our country shall allow the local affairs to be administered by prefects sent from Washington, and when the self-government of the states should have been so far lost as that of the departments of France, or even so closely limited as that of the counties of England – on that day the political career of the American people will have been robbed of its most interesting and valuable features, and the usefulness of this nation will be lamentably impaired.”

I think it is interesting to see how many states are suing the federal government. Why? Because of the encroachment of the federal government upon the States and going against the Constitution or law of the land.