The new book ‘Unconventional Education and America’s Founding’ traces the pluralistic, self-led educations that prepared colonial learners to remake the world.

Debates over the purpose of education rarely stay rooted in educational principles. Researchers and publications, The Daily Economy included, often scrutinize test results, fight over funding formulas, blame this faction or the other, or argue there is too much or too little something in the classroom. All those questions matter. They also detract from a more fundamental one, especially in this American anniversary year.

What kind of public education did the American Founders believe a free republic required?

Unconventional Education and America’s Founding, edited by Nasiyah Isra-Ul at the Foundation for Economic Education, arrives at an opportune moment because it approaches that question historically, instead of politically. Putting aside whether homeschoolers should get tax credits or if public charters improve math scores, the book asks what an educated public meant to at least a few architects of the American experiment. 

True to its purpose, the text is available free of charge for individual enlightenment.

Contributed chapters are devoted to individual founding figures, with an emphasis on the educational development — very decidedly not the schooling — of John Adams, James Forten, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, Phillis Wheatley, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Mercy Otis Warren, Benjamin Banneker, and Abigail Adams and her children.

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