4 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2017
    1. Education, in like manner engrafts a new man on the native stock, & improves what in his nature was vicious & perverse, into qualities of virtue and social worth; and it cannot be but that each generation succeeding to the knowledge acquired by all those who preceded it, adding to it their own acquisitions & discoveries, and handing the mass down for successive & constant accumulation, must advance the knowledge & well-being of mankind

      This part of the gap report really highlights the importance public education was for Jefferson, especially to be calling it “vicious & perverse.”

    2. Spanish is highly interesting to us, as the language spoken by so great a portion of the inhabitants of our Continents

      What’s interesting is how prevalent this still is today. Spanish is a very popular language, and interesting to most people.

  2. Oct 2017
    1. General Grammar explains the construction of Language

      I wonder if Jefferson stressed grammar in order to have people get more involved with our government. To be able to write out documents, and understand, for example, the Statute of Religious Freedom, or the Constitution even. To me, this would make sense in order to keep up with the government that had just been set up a little over 40 years ago at this point.

    2. Education generates habits of application, order and the love of virtue

      Virtue is something that was really important to Jefferson - especially when it came to founding the United States’ Constitution in 1787. He argued for a smaller republic and higher education in order to prevent factions within the country, so seeing this in this report does not surprise me. He strove to preserve virtue as much as possible.