Today’s Schools Should Emulate The Education That Produced Abraham Lincoln

The Federalist ^ | Mar 14, 2019 | Stephen Shipp

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Last month marked the 210th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. To the professional educator, Lincoln is endlessly fascinating. His family followed the frontier, and his accomplishments came in spite of the limited time he spent in a schoolhouse, among them some of the finest examples of political rhetoric in the English language.

So how did he do it, and what can we learn from his example? The present mantra in secondary education is “college and career readiness.” Lincoln invites an uncomfortable question: Had Lincoln attended a school on the vanguard of the college and career readiness movement, would it have prepared him for future greatness? Would Lincoln have become Lincoln?

Lincoln’s selection of books is remarkable: Instead of “Captain Underpants” or “Twilight,” he read Aesop, Shakespeare, Plutarch, William Blackstone, and the Bible. Instead of test prep guides, he carefully studied schoolhouse textbooks in arithmetic and geometry. Instead of drafting a business plan and preparing a PowerPoint presentation, he studied collections of notable speeches and kept a copybook of poetry and learned lengthy passages by heart.

Our college and career-oriented education focuses more on technology than eloquence—more on the medium than quality. It would be difficult to do more. Our high school students are hamstrung. They do not master grammar in earlier grades, so they are uncertain of correctness. Logic classes are virtually unknown. Students scarcely encounter poetry. Plutarch is unknown. Shakespeare is read in snippets and with difficulty, if at all. Yet Lincoln depended on his powers of communication. Much hung in the balance.

So Lincoln again invites self-examination: Would our schools have prepared Lincoln to give us the Gettysburg Address or Second Inaugural? Do they aspire to?

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Along with the likes of George Washington and Harry Truman, Abraham Lincoln is one of nine Presidents who never attended college.

[marron]

At the time of the founding, you couldn’t get into college if you didn’t have Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. They had by the time they entered college a better education than moderns leaving college.

[Vaquero]

The people who weren’t allowed to vote on their own forced servitude was reason enough to split the state’s and possibly start a war. Whether Lincoln did any of what he did Constitutionally, is debatable

[JBW1949]

Today’s schools care nothing about education...They only care about indoctrination...

[antidemoncrat]

” Today’s Schools Should Emulate The Education That Produced Abraham Lincoln

Now they emulate the education that produced Hitler, Mao, Fidel..anyone but an American founding father or a constitutional conservative.

[marron]

For a solid education, I suggest 4 years in the Navy and a set of Harvard Classics ($300 from Ebay).

[Hieronymus]

You rather understate your case. People graduating from 8th grade in 1940, on average, had a better education than those leaving college now.

[amihow]

My grand father, born 1882, at age nine lost his father. He was destined to leave school in 4th grade,8 help raise and educate four younger brothers and help support his mother. All this on the Mexican border with the only university within 500 miles barely coming into existence.

As a young adult, he bought an Encyclopedia Britannica. He studied it and learned from it. He wrote poetry, he invented machines and built them from scratch. He became the master mechanic of a large mining corporation. He invested in the stock market. He educated 3 children through university.

In the early sixties, he tutored my husband in physics, chemistry biology and calculus.

I knew him well. He taught us how to be American, although he himself was foreign born.

I am proud to be his granddaughter. And ashamed of the rabble in our country.35

[Albion Wilde]

bump

[SandwicheGuy]

You rather understate your case. People graduating from 8th grade in 1940, on average, had a better education than those leaving college now.

So true and so sad. That's what our Department of Education has done.

[SandwicheGuy]

For a solid education, I suggest 4 years in the Navy and a set of Harvard Classics ($300 from Ebay).

So simple, so profound... And more effective than our whole Department of Education. Whatever should we do....?

[dila813]

In grade school we got to use a reproduction of a school book from a rural school that was in the area where Lincoln grew up and was very strong in math reading and writing, it had a lot more focus on this than our modern books had.

[Hammer45]

yes you are right