Even Edmund Burke, in his "Speech on Conciliation . . . ." before the British Parliament in 1775, made the following observation about education in America and its effect on their ability to understand liberty, as well as their ability to stave off threats to their liberty, or, as he put it, "snuff the approach of tyrany in every tainted breeze.":
"me, Sir, to add another circumstance in our colonies, which contributes no mean part towards the growth and effect of this untractable spirit. I mean their education. In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study. The profession itself is numerous and powerful; and in most provinces it takes the lead. The greater number of the deputies sent to the congress were lawyers. But all who read, and most do read, endeavour to obtain some smattering in that science. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in no branch of his business, after tracts of popular devotion, were so many books as those on the law exported to the plantations. The colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own use. I hear that they have sold nearly as many of Blackstone's Commentaries in America as in England. General Gage marks out this disposition very particularly in a letter on your table. He states, that all the people in his government are lawyers, or smatterers in law; and that in Boston they have been enabled, by successful chicane, wholly to evade many parts of one of your capital penal constitutions. The smartness of debate will say, that this knowledge ought to teach them more clearly the rights of legislature, their obligations to obedience, and the penalties of rebellion. All this is mighty well. But my honourable and learned friend on the floor, who condescends to mark what I say for animadversion, will disdain that ground. He has heard, as well as I, that when great honours and great emoluments do not win over this knowledge to the service of the state, it is a formidable adversary to government. If the spirit be not tamed and broken by these happy methods, it is stubborn and litigious. Abeunt studia in mores. This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries,the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze."
Perhaps the kind of "educated electorate" America's Founders envisioned would understand that the consequence of deficits and debt is slavery, oppression, and tyranny. Perhaps such an electorate would recognize tyranny masked as a promise to "redistribute the wealth" of others who have earned it to cronies, union big wigs, and assorted other voting blocks in order to assure power for the person making such promises.
When the Founders envisioned education they likely had their **own** educations in mind: homeschooling, private tutoring as needed, one room schools organized by parents, and dame schools in the homes of neighbors.
For the older children they likely expected apprenticeships in the early teens, and home based academies that prepared the brightest ( who could afford it) for entrance into college, again, as young teens.
Our Founding Fathers would be **appalled** to see our nation's children attending compulsory, socialist-modeled, collectivist managed, godless, prison-like, and voter mob owned government schooling. Children who attend these schools learn to be comfortable with:
voter mob compulsion.
socialism
collectivist control of their lives, deaths, and even their thoughts,
godlessness
prison-like social institutions