The American experiment depended on citizens who could read, think about what they had read, and change their minds when the evidence required it. It made no promise of collective wisdom or civic harmony. It rested on something simpler: citizens had to be able to follow an argument. They needn’t be philosophers. But they have to hold a proposition in mind long enough to examine it. What are its premises? What facts support it? What would count against it?
The Founders understood the connection between education and liberty. In a 1787 letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson urged that “the education of the common people” be attended to “above all things,” because “on their good sense we may rely” for “the preservation of a due degree of liberty.” Massachusetts’s Constitution of 1780 likewise treated wisdom and knowledge “diffused generally among the body of the people” as essential to preserving rights and liberties. Government by the people becomes dangerous when the habits of judgment aren’t widely distributed.
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