Public Schools: The Keystone of Democracy
In his eighth and final annual address (now known as the State of the Union), George Washington had a clear message for Congress: “The common education … of our youth from every quarter well deserves attention…. In a republic what species of knowledge can be equally important and what duty more pressing on its legislature than to patronize a plan for communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?” Put plainly: There is no issue more important than ensuring our next generation is well educated and prepared to lead our nation.
Let’s dive into the history of education in America to explore what our forebears thought about public education and why they worked so hard to ensure every student has access to a free, common school system.
In his eighth and final annual address (now known as the State of the Union), George Washington had a clear message for Congress: “The common education … of our youth from every quarter well deserves attention…. In a republic what species of knowledge can be equally important and what duty more pressing on its legislature than to patronize a plan for communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?” Put plainly: There is no issue more important than ensuring our next generation is well educated and prepared to lead our nation.
Let’s dive into the history of education in America to explore what our forebears thought about public education and why they worked so hard to ensure every student has access to a free, common school system.
The Founding Fathers’ Greatest Invention
As America’s founders laid the framework for our country, a plan for general education was never far from their mind. Public education was not an afterthought of the revolution – it was a core ideal of our Founders. They maintained that a well educated population was the only means of ensuring America’s future. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, bitter political rivals on opposite ends of America’s first political parties, agreed on the need for a public education system. While fighting to earn independence from Britain, both future presidents pushed for public education in their newly formed states.
In Virginia, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison worked together to advocate for “A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge.” In the preface, Jefferson cautioned that the most effective way to protect the new nation from tyranny was to create a general education system that “should be sought for and educated at the common expence [sic] of all” in a manner that was “without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance.” Jefferson was very clear that public education must be a shared expense available to all Americans regardless of background. 
Meanwhile, John Adams was penning the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780, what is now the oldest functioning constitution in the world. It also included the first of many “public education” clauses that would become ubiquitous in America. This clause stated simply that “it shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish … public schools.”
The right to an education continued to spread among the fledgling American states. The Continental Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance of 1785, which required new towns in the Northwest Territory to reserve a central plot of land for a school and put aside a third of land to fund public education. This was a clear statement on the role that schools should play in society: the center of every community.
While the Constitutional Convention was forging the document now foundational to our democracy, the Continental Congress continued work on another foundational aspect of our political system: public education. The Northwest Ordinances of 1787, passed at the very same time the Founders drafted the constitution, stated that “being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.” The Michigan Constitution quotes this clause verbatim – another early precursor to the public education clauses present in every state constitution today.
The First Public Schools in America
Unfortunately, it would take half a century for the promise of public, accessible, free education to become a tenuous and somewhat short-lived reality. While there was sporadic public funding for education, especially across the former Northwest Territory, land was not valuable enough at the time to fully fund public education.
The first common schools with formal curriculum, trained teachers, and full public funding did not arrive in the North until the 1830s, and by the start of the Civil War had barely penetrated the South. In 1830, only about 55% of students aged 5 to 14 attended a public school.
While well-off, white Americans in urban centers were able to access private schooling options, poor and rural Americans were not. This disparity was even more clear for Black Americans, who had essentially no access to public education. In most Southern slave states, it was a crime for a slave to read or write. As the Civil War began, slaves who fled to Union states quickly set about educating themselves by any means possible. Frederick Douglass, who escaped from slavery as a young adult, was surreptitiously taught to read and write by one of his white overseers, and immediately recognized learning as the pathway to freedom.
This desire for education quickly formalized into a push for Congress to take action. During Reconstruction, Congress required Southern states to include the right to education in their rewritten constitutions. Every state admitted to the Union after Reconstruction would include the right to education in their constitution, and every state that did not already include this guarantee would amend their constitutions.
By 1878, more than 75% of American students were enrolled in a public school. The political strife and upheaval of the 1900s – including Jim Crow laws and the backlash to integrated schools – denied many Black Americans the dream of public education. Read more in our blog on the Racist Roots of Vouchers, which covers the rise of segregation academies and white flight in the post-Brown v. Board of Education South.
Public Education In Arizona
“The first duty of the legislators of a free state is to make, as far as lies in their power, education as free to all its citizens as the air they breathe. A system of common schools is the grand foundation upon which the whole superstructure should rest.”
– John N. Goodwin, the first governor of the Arizona Territory, in his inaugural 1864 speech to the Territorial Legislature
Prior to statehood, territorial Governor Anton P. K. Safford advocated for an institution to train teachers to work in the territory’s public schools. Local citizens donated private land and fundraised in order to establish the Territorial Normal School at Tempe in 1885, the home to what would later become Arizona State University’s Tempe campus.
When Arizona became a state in 1912, like the 47 states before it, Arizona enshrined the right to a free, general and uniform public education system in our state constitution. The chronic underfunding of Arizona’s public education system that began in the early 2000s and the rise of privatization via recently expanded ESA vouchers is jeopardizing the “grand foundation” upon which Arizona’s founders believed our state should rest.
“The university and all other state educational institutions shall be open to students of both sexes, and the instruction furnished shall be as nearly free as possible. The legislature shall provide for a system of common schools by which a free school shall be established and maintained in every school district…”
The Fight for Public Schools is the Fight for Democracy
To conclude, we will leave you with these wise words from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education…. To prepare each citizen to choose wisely and to enable him to choose freely are paramount functions of the schools in a democracy.” FDR, Message for American Education Week, 1938
For Arizona to fully realize the American dream, we must have quality, fully-funded and accessible public schools in every neighborhood for everyone, regardless of income, race, status or background.
