Description
Thomas Jefferson’s conviction that the health of the nation’s democracy would depend on the existence of an informed citizenry has been a cornerstone of our political culture since the inception of the American republic. Even today’s debates over education reform and the wish to be competitive in a technologically advanced, global economy are rooted in the concept that the education of rising generations is the most important to the nation’s future. In this book, Richard Brown traces the development of the ideal of an informed citizenry in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries and assesses its continuing influence and changing meaning. Even though the concept that had some antecedents in Europe, the full articulation of the ideal relationship between citizenship and knowledge came all over the era of the American Revolution. The founding fathers believed that the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press, religion, speech, and assembly would foster an informed citizenry. In step with Brown, most of the fundamental institutions of American democracy and society, including political parties, public education, the media, and even the postal system, have enjoyed wide government give a boost to precisely because they have got been identified as vital for the creation and maintenance of an informed populace.