| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Cameron Addis. Jefferson's Vision for Education, 1760–1845. (History of Schools and Schooling, number 29.) New York: Peter Lang. 2003. Pp. 254. $29.95.
Cameron Addis's contribution to the enormous body of Jeffersoniana provides a synthesis and interpretation of the subject's life-long engagement with education. The book's title, however, is somewhat misleading: only the first chapter summarizes Thomas Jefferson's vision of education as a whole, while the bulk of the book describes in detail the founding of the University of Virginia. The last chapter recounts the first two decades of that institution and its lamentable departure from the founder's vision.	1
Education was inherently linked with Jefferson's vision of creating a decentralized, democratic society and advancing Enlightenment science. In both respects it drew him into conflict with his political and ideological nemesis, organized religion, and ultimately the two roles he envisioned for education conflicted with each other.	2
Jefferson's famous plan for a public system of education—the Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge—was introduced to the Virginia legislature in 1779 but repeatedly voted down. It proposed to offer every white male three years of publicly supported elementary schooling. Severe meritocratic selection after that would yield twenty geniuses each year, "raked from the rubbish" (p. 13), and only half of them would be selected to attend college. Jefferson paid lip service to this ideal throughout his life, and his suggestions helped to inspire the educational provisions of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787; but the plan had little chance of passage in a state dominated by an agrarian elite.	. . .

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