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This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

Thomas Jefferson and the Development of American Public Education by James B. Conant originates from the Jefferson Memorial Lectures delivered at the University of California in 1960. Conant uses this platform to revisit Jefferson's role as both a visionary political leader and an educational innovator, situating his ideas within the broader trajectory of American schooling. Having earlier spoken on the Jeffersonian tradition in education while serving as President of Harvard, Conant now expands beyond selective scholarship schemes to address Jefferson's entire philosophy of public education. He explores Jefferson's proposals for free education at all levels for talented but impoverished youth, his advocacy for diffusion of knowledge as a safeguard for democracy, and his attempts to establish systematic schooling in Virginia. The first two chapters trace Jefferson's wide-ranging contributions to educational thought, while the third returns to the enduring question of access and merit in American society. Conant's study also places Jefferson's educational vision in historical context, juxtaposing his unfulfilled proposals with the actual development of public education across the nineteenth century and beyond. By linking Jefferson's democratic ideals to the eventual rise of America's unique system of public schools, Conant underscores both the originality and the limitations of Jefferson's initiatives. The volume includes a substantial appendix of Jefferson's own writings-letters, legislative drafts, and reports-that reveal his commitment to education as a cornerstone of republican government. For Conant, understanding Jefferson's educational philosophy is not merely an exercise in historical appreciation; it is a way of grasping how foundational ideals shaped, and continue to shape, the evolving structure of American schooling. The book thus bridges biography, intellectual history, and policy analysis, highlighting the lasting significance of Jefferson's educational thought for modern debates about equity, opportunity, and the civic purposes of education. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1962.

I visited the universities of Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide, and the New South Wales University of Technology, and attended a week's Seminar on Science in Australia at Canberra. At Canberra I had an opportunity to talk informally in the hotel lobby with a number of scientists from different universities as well as to listen to the formal discussions for five days. On that occasion I also had an opportunity to talk briefly with the Vice-Chancellors of two of the three universities which I did not visit personally, namely, Currie of Western Australia an Hytten of Hobart. About the University of Queensland I am totally uninformed and it may possibly be an exception to all that follows, though if it were a marked exception it would seem that this fact would have been called to my attention in a number of the conversations. In addition to these direct sources of information about the academic world, my talks with some of the industrial leaders at Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, with some of the political people of both parties, and one or two short comments by reporters and radio interviewers gave me some indication of the feeling of the general public about the universities. Likewise the controversy which has been quite acute in Sydney about the relation of the technical college to the University and the development of the New South Wales University of Technology threw a good deal of light on academic politics.

IT WOULD BE pleasant if I could use this chapter to tell the reader of the success in the nineteenth century of Jefferson’s new and bold educational ideas. But I cannot. Of the four objectives embodied in Jefferson’s eighteenth-century proposals only the last, the establishment in Virginia of a true university, was realized in his lifetime. The first, the provision of free elementary education, was slowly accepted in principle but largely negated in practice. It was not until the 1860’s that free public elementary education for all became a widely accepted doctrine in the United States. Of the second and

IN THE FIRST CHAPTER, I considered Thomas Jefferson as an educational innovator. In the second, I considered his success in establishing the University of Virginia and his failure to persuade the legislature of his state to establish a system of free public elementary schools. In connection with this failure, I traced the slow development of a concept we now take for granted, namely, that public schools should be free for children of the rich and poor alike, that they should be locally managed and largely locally financed as well. As I pointed out, only the social forces generated by industrialization

This report presents an informed view of the university sector at a crucial point in its development, between the end of the war and the Murray (1957) and Martin (1964-85) reports to the federal government after which significant development and diversification in the tertiary education sector occurred. It provides an outsiders view as the author assesses the parochialism associated with these essentially British institutions. Problems experienced by academic staff in relation to the government, their institutions and colleagues are also discussed. Finally, it considers the relationships of the institutions and systems of Australian education with the broader society, especially industry and government.