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Jaylen Pittman
The Age of Jefferson
Professor Winterer
9 July 2014
Jeffersonian “Equality” in Education
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), a man of great intellect and pedantry, held education in
the highest esteem: he saw it as the means by which to disband the chains of despotism through
an enlightened and engaged populace. Hence, Jefferson contended that both federal and state
governments were responsible for providing the public with educational opportunities. Contrary
to the popular misconception which proclaims him the flag bearer of freedom and equality,
however, Jefferson viewed said opportunities as unequal among races and gender. While
Jefferson believed knowledge was the panacea for the fledgling United States of his lifetime, he
created subpar standards of education for African Americans, Native Americans, and white
women. Jefferson, because of his statements and actions (or lack thereof) with regard to these
three minority groups, is actually explicitly dismissive of those subjugated to white male
dominance of the era.
On the whole, Thomas Jefferson had a stratified but disproportionate schema of
education for the subgroups of young America, since he preferred to grant certain groups of
Americans more or less privileges than others. As philosophy professor Mark Holowchak notes,
“Because Jefferson believed that persons were to be educated according to their needs, he
recognized different levels of education.”1 Were these different levels of education in some way
related to one’s occupational status, it could be supposed that Jefferson remained consistent with
1 Holowchak,Mark, Dutiful Correspondent: Philosophical Essays on Thomas Jefferson. Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield,2013. 254.

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his doctrine of manifold equality as espoused in his Declaration of Independence. Yet Jefferson
often characterized the needs of an individual with regard to what he considered natural
differences. Pertaining to slaves and free blacks, he maintained “that the blacks, whether
originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in
the endowments both of body and mind.”2 Though it may be noted that Jefferson based this
supposed natural inadequacy on his pious belief in rationalism and empiricism, this assertion is
refuted by his failure to conduct any rational and empirical study on his own black slaves at
Monticello. As John Chester Miller mentions, even though Jefferson made a habit of regarding
the United States as a great laboratory of the Enlightenment ideals of scrutinizing observation
and experimentation, he made no attempts to utilize the numerous slaves of his own farms to
measure their intellectualism.3 Consequently, with respect to African Americans, Jefferson’s
offers of education were scant, and the educational policies that he did advocate were incessantly
shackled to expatriation. In Query XIV of his Notes on the State of Virginia, for example,
Jefferson notes that black slaves should be educated only with the aim of relocating them back to
either Africa or the Caribbean: “they should be brought up, at the public expence [sic], to tillage,
arts or sciences, according to their geniuses, till the females should be eighteen, and the males
twenty-one years of age, when they should be colonized to such place as the circumstances of the
time should render most proper.”4 It is doubtful, however, that Jefferson truly espoused this
policy; for when given opportunities to establish or support institutions for the instruction of
African Americans, he failed to act.
2 Jefferson, Thomas. "Query XIV." In Notes on the State of Virginia. New York: Library of America, 1984. 270.
3 Miller,John Chester, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. New York: Free Press,1977. 255.
4 Jefferson, Thomas. "Query XIV." In Notes on the State of Virginia. New York: Library of America, 1984. 270.

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The incongruity between Jefferson’s policy in Notes and his lack of action amidst
opportunity reveals his true motives. After the death of General Thaddeus Kosciuszko in 1817,
for instance, when Jefferson was given the means by which to establish a plantation school,
Jefferson made no efforts in pursuit of black education, and ultimately used the funds for things
entirely unrelated to education.5 That Quakers attempted to establish black orphanage schools in
Richmond, Virginia is seldom mentioned in scholarship concerning Jefferson and slavery
because of his complete aversion to such aims6; nor is it often mentioned that in the last years of
Jefferson’s life, when Marquis de Lafayette urged him to establish education for blacks as the
first step toward their freedom from domestic despotism, Jefferson politely dismissed the
suggestion of his French ally7. To this end, some scholars such as Kenneth Burke claim that
Jefferson may be accused of administrative rhetoric, the process by which actions unperformed
are employed to evoke a particular message.8 As it seems with respect to this case, the
expatriation policy was but a façade employed to stagnate the attempts at establishing African
American education; perhaps, realizing the exorbitance and impracticability of expatriation,
Jefferson proposed the concept as a way of avoiding outright denial of education for blacks, of
which, to some extent, he was afraid.
Jefferson feared that education would somehow lead to mass insurrection among slaves
and slave masters. However, educated free blacks, subject to many of the same prejudices
despite their alleged freedom from subjugation, had essentially remained peaceful while raising
their pens rather than their fists against the rash depravities to which they were relegated. Two
5 Miller,John Chester, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. New York: Free Press,1977. 255.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.,273.
8 Golden, James L., and Alan L. Golden. Thomas Jefferson and the Rhetoric of Virtue. Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield,2002. 433.

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such blacks, astronomer and mathematician Benjamin Banneker and poet Phyllis Wheatley—
both of whom Jefferson could not help but to mention in his fourteenth query—proved stark
contradictions to Jefferson’s claim of innate inferiority. Phyllis Wheatley, for example, though
claimed a “Poetical Genius” by the Boston Gazette and a writer of “polished verse” by the great
philosophe Voltaire9, was denounced by Jefferson as merely an overly pious black unworthy of
poetical acclaim.10 As evidence mounded in advocacy of black acumen, Jefferson remained
convinced of the lowliness of African American intelligence. Even as proof was adduced of
black intelligence, Jefferson found some way to trivialize it :“We know he had spherical
trigonometry enough to make almanacs,” he acknowledged of Banneker. However, after this
concession, Jefferson diminished the importance of Banneker by deeming him “a mind of very
common stature indeed.” 11Thus, Jefferson presents not only his unwillingness to accept black
virtue, but also his natural disposition to African American intelligence—that until proved
otherwise by science, blacks are undeserving of the same education as whites due to their
congenital inability to comprehend the same intellectual material.
While Thomas Jefferson thought of blacks as intellectually unable to digest the same
information as whites and therefore unworthy of the same instruction, he thought that for Native
Americans, equal to whites in matters of morality and intellect, education was the bridge from
noble savagery to civilized sophistication—the means by which to transmute the Indians’ nature
from tawny to fair. To Jefferson, the Native Americans had evinced their intellectual merit, for
they had, he contended, “the existence of a germ in their minds which only wants cultivation,”12
9 Miller,John Chester, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. New York: Free Press,1977. 75.
10 Jefferson, Thomas. "Query XIV." In Notes on the State of Virginia. New York: Library of America, 1984. 267.
11 The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series,vol. 1, 4 March 1809 to 15 November 1809,ed. J. Jefferson
Looney. Princeton: Princeton University Press,2004.589.
12 Jefferson, Thomas. "Query XIV." In Notes on the State of Virginia. New York: Library of America, 1984. 266.

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as evident through their great creativity and oratorical skill applauded in the fourteenth
query.13Though superficial analysis of Thomas Jefferson’s admiration of the Native Americans
looks favorably upon Jefferson as a patron and advocate of the aboriginals’ education, deeper
inspection reveals his ulterior motives.
Indeed, Jefferson intended to educate the natives to promote Western culture among their
tribes; but this objective represents only one of two goals, for Jefferson also promoted education
as a means of exchanging Western cultivation for the preservation of his agrarian dream. In a
letter to Benjamin Hawkins concerning Indian civilization, for instance, Jefferson wrote, “I
consider the business of hunting as already become insufficient to furnish clothing and
subsistence to the Indians. The promotion of agriculture, therefore, and household manufacture,
are essential in their preservation . . . This will enable them to live on smaller portions of land.”14
Jefferson, whose idea of American virtue was rooted in the soils of the earth, greatly desired that
the Indians be taught the principles of agricultural micromanagement—that is, how to make
much from having little in terms of land. Consequently, he devised the ruse of ostensibly
teaching Native Americans to be better “Americans” through the inculcation of his own ideas of
civic virtue and agrarianism. In this way, Jefferson utilized education as a means not of
strengthening and cultivating the intellect of the Native Americans, but of propagandizing their
minds by endowing them with an “American” moral sensibility. In other words, Jefferson used
education in the form of propaganda to convince Native Americans of the superiority of
agrarianism as opposed to widespread hunting and foraging. This, however, proved unappealing
to Native Americans. As Holowchak notes, “To Jefferson’s mind, it was a gold-for-bronze
13 Ibid.
14 Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Hawkins,“Civilization of the Indians,”18 Feb., 1803,in Thomas Jefferson:
Writings. New York: Library of America, 1984.1115.

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exchange, with him offering the gold,” although “To the Indians’ mind, it was a gold-for-dung
exchange, with Jefferson offering the dung.”15 While Jefferson realized the Indians’ natural
aversion to his subterfuge, he consistently considered it within the power of the whites to teach
the natives how they should appreciate land. As he wrote further in his letter concerning Indian
civilization, for example, Jefferson was convinced of Hawkins’ “Power to promote among the
Indians a sense of the superior value of a little land, well cultivated, over a great deal,
unimproved, and to encourage them to make this estimate truly.”16 Yet when this plan of
exchange failed to come to fruition, Jefferson pursued the education of the Native Americans as
a means of assimilating them entirely into white society.
Bearing only the burden of a “backwards” civilization, the Native Americans, Jefferson
thought, should be taught the proper way of life in order to advance on the stadial ladder of
social development . As he wrote in Notes, Query VI, “Before we condemn the Indians of this
continent as wanting genius, we must consider that letters have not yet been introduced among
them.”17 Notwithstanding, Jefferson still desired the great expanse of land which the Indians
collectively possessed. To this end, he used education as a tool to fully integrate the natives into
white society, thereby creating one people, among whom land can and should be shared
proportionally, writing that “In truth, the ultimate point of rest & happiness for them is to let our
settlements and theirs meet and blend together, to intermix, and become one people… Surely it
will be better for them to be identified with us…”18 Yet instead of intermixing, Jefferson
espoused a type of extinction narrative: by subsuming the Native Americans through white
15 Holowchak,Mark, Dutiful Correspondent: Philosophical Essays on Thomas Jefferson. Lanham, Md.: Rowman &
Littlefield,2013. 230.
16 Ibid.
17 Jefferson, Thomas. "Query VI." In Notes on the State of Virginia. New York: Library of America, 1984. 189.
18Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Hawkins,“Civilization of the Indians,”18 Feb., 1803,in Thomas Jefferson: Writings.
New York: Library of America, 1984. 1115.

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refinement, he would delete the Native American identity. Before this could happen, however,
Jefferson needed to create a way of educating the Indians.
Thomas Jefferson believed that in order to create an upright and moral citizenry of the
Native Americans, the government should assume the responsibility of Indian education. Miller
states that according to Jefferson, “The function of the government was not to eradicate the
Indians but to eradicate the superstitious customs and attitudes which impeded their transition
from the [Lockean] state of Nature to civilized society.”19 Jefferson explicitly did not want
religious denominations or private societies to convert or teach the natives before they had been
instructed morally by the government, as he believed religious dogma would hamper the Indians’
dissolution from their superstitious sentiments. Rather, he encouraged edification by
anthropologists, who would teach them to read Aesop’s Fables.20 Other than such instruction,
however, Jefferson seldom mentions introducing the natives to more advanced forms of learning,
which is due to the duplicity of his reasons for educating the Indians. Although Jefferson
endorsed ample moral education of the Native Americans, he never went so far as to state that
they were worthy of studying the investigations of Euclid, the sonnets of Shakespeare, or the
philosophy of Descartes. Jefferson only advocated the basic and moral education of the Indians
due to his overarching desire for the land they possessed. Furthermore, he encouraged their
miscegenation with whites not only to suffocate the aspects of their culture unfit to societal
progression, but also to excuse the fact that Jefferson’s grandchildren had the blood of Native
Americans flowing through their veins. As Miller notes, “Jefferson was not a little proud of the
fact that both his daughters had married descendants of Pocahontas and that, in consequence,
19Miller,John Chester, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. New York: Free Press,1977. 72.
20 Ibid.

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royal Indian blood flowed in the veins of his grandchildren.”21 Thomas Jefferson’s policy of
Native American education was not actually for the natives’ benefit, but for Jefferson’s own self-
preservation and the preservation of his agrarian dream. The Indians themselves were but an
obstacle in the way of the westward expansion of American agriculture.
Despite their equal nature as whites and their lack of valuable lands as females, white
women were still disadvantaged by Jefferson’s concept of how they should be educated. Indeed,
many men during Jefferson’s lifetime were averse to the idea of equality among the sexes, and in
that regard it could be argued that Jefferson was simply keeping with the convention of his times.
However, Jefferson’s educational policy toward women was still comparatively incongruent with
respect to men of the Enlightenment. As Jon Kukla argues, “Jefferson’s indifference to female
education set him apart from more progressive Enlightenment contemporaries” such as
Immanuel Kant, Marquis de Condorcet, and Theodor Gottlieb von Hippel, among whom the idea
of gender equality had become quite popular.22 Some intellectuals, such as Dr. Benjamin Rush, a
friend and colleague of Jefferson’s, maintained that women in America, a place of liberty and
equality, should be allowed to pursue the same knowledge at the disposal of males.23
Nonetheless, Jefferson maintained that women were only entitled to a basic education congruent
with their primary role in American society—that of birthing and nursing children. “The
objective,” Miller notes, “Was to give them [women] enough education so that they could
educate their children in the rudiments.”24
21 Ibid,65.
22 Kukla,Jon, Mr. Jefferson’s Women. New York Alfred A. Knopf, 2007:175.
23 Ibid,173.
24 Miller,John Chester, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. New York: Free Press,1977. 182.

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What consisted of just enough education to render women able to “educate their children
in the rudiments?” According to Jefferson’s letter to Nathaniel Burwell concerning female
education, the most distinctive aspects of a female education were French (as it was the most
prevalent language among countries of the civilized world), dancing, drawing, music, and
“household economy.”25 This education, Jefferson argued, would render women able not only to
instruct their young in a virtuous manner, but also to bring honor to their parents: “Every
affectionate parent would be pleased to see his daughter qualified to participate with her
companions, and without awkwardness at least, in the circles of festivity, of which she
occasionally becomes a part.”26
Notably, Jefferson’s provision of education for women was one centered about
sociability, not intellectuality. To this end, he denounces popular modes of self-expression and
sophistication available to women during the nineteenth century, such as poetry and novel-
writing, deeming novels as a collective “mass of trash,” and asserting that “much poetry should
not be indulged.”27By instead acclaiming the performing and visual arts of dancing, music, and
drawing qualifications “not to be neglected in one who is to become a mother and an
instructor,”28 Jefferson coyly dismissed the possibility of women contributing to intellectual
realm through publications of poetry and prose, as the women of Europe had done. Further, by
understanding that women possessed enough intellectual capacity to influence the male-
dominated government and potentially subvert it, Jefferson came to fear advances in female
education in America. Thus, “from the influence of women upon politics, he apprehended every
25 Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Burwell,“Female Education,” 14 Mar., 1818,in Thomas Jefferson: Writings. New
York: Library of America, 1984. 1411-13.
26 Ibid,1412.
27 Ibid,1411-12.
28 Ibid.

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evil,” and consequently ensured that women be educated only enough to be good socialites and
instructors of their children29, not scholarly revolutionaries against the masculine centricity of the
American republic.
Thomas Jefferson was a man dedicated to the diffusion of knowledge and education.
However, how that education got disseminated among the lines of race and gender was greatly
disproportionate. With respect to African Americans, for example, Jefferson allowed his natural
disposition toward blacks as intellectually incompetent dictate his aversion to educating them.
Though generally more hopeful about the Indians’ acuity and capacity for education, Jefferson
only desired to edify them as a means by which to acquire native lands and divest the natives of
the mysticisms of their “backwards” culture. And while women were on the whole considerably
less debilitated or threatening to republicanism than both African Americans and Native
Americans, Jefferson nonetheless displayed an opposition to educating women to their full
intellectual capacity to maintain their subservience within the cult of domesticity. Common to all
three of these minority groups was Jefferson’s purposeful stagnation or denial of certain types of
instruction, which conveys his explicitly dismissive attitude toward each of these groups with
regards to both education and social hierarchy. Acknowledging the potential of education to
unfetter the shackles of tyranny and oppression, Thomas Jefferson never gave any of these three
minorities an education equal to that of a white male, as it could have resulted in the subversion
of the established order of white male dominance. Therefore, in the name of the self-preservation
of a white, masculine American republic, Jefferson held a stratified educational policy among
African Americans, Native Americans, and white women.
29 Miller,John Chester, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. New York: Free Press,1977. 180.

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Works Cited
Golden, James L., and Alan L. Golden. Thomas Jefferson and the Rhetoric of Virtue.
Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002.
Holowchak, Mark, Dutiful Correspondent: Philosophical Essays on Thomas Jefferson.
Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013.
Jefferson, Thomas, and J. Jefferson Looney. The Papers of Thomas
Jefferson, Retirement Series. vol. 1, 4 March 1809 to 15 November 1809
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. 589.
Jefferson, Thomas. "Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Hawkins." In Thomas Jefferson:
Writings, edited by Merrill D. Peterson, 1113-16. 2011 ed. New York, NY:
Library of America, 1984.
Jefferson, Thomas. “Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Burwell, ‘Female Education,’” In
Thomas Jefferson: Writings, edited by Merrill D. Peterson, 1411-13. 2011 ed.
New York, NY: Library of America, 1984.
Jefferson, Thomas. Query VI to Thomas Jefferson: Writings, edited by Merrill D.
Peterson, 150-99. 2011 ed. New York, NY: Library of America, 1984.
Jefferson, Thomas. Query XI to Thomas Jefferson: Writings, edited by Merrill D.
Peterson, 218-32. 2011 ed. New York, NY: Library of America, 1984.
Jefferson, Thomas. Query XIV to Thomas Jefferson: Writings, edited by Merrill D.
Peterson, 256-75. 2011 ed. New York, NY: Library of America, 1984.

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Kukla, Jon, Mr. Jefferson’s Women. New York Alfred A. Knopf, 2007: 175.
Miller, John Chester, The Wolf by the Ears: Thomas Jefferson and Slavery. New York:
Free Press, 1977.

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