#2 Recovering the Founders' Vision of Civic Education

The Learning of Liberty explains the Founders’ complex vision of the civic education that is necessary to sustain our Republic.

The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders

By Lorraine Smith Pangle and Thomas L. Pangle

University Press of Kansas, 1993 • 350 pages

The verdict: For education reformers seeking to restore moral and civic education to American schools, the Learning of Liberty can serve as both a road map and a North Star.

WHY THIS BOOK MATTERS

Benjamin Franklin once quipped, perhaps apocryphally, that the Founders gave us “A republic, if you can keep it.” The Learning of Liberty articulates the Founders’ ideas on how emerging schools could contribute to that difficult task. As we celebrate the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, revisiting the Founding Fathers’ thoughts on education can help renew civic education across the nation.

THE ARGUMENT

Thomas and Lorraine Pangle’s The Learning of Liberty is an in-depth analysis of the American Founders’ ideas about education in an emerging nation, including their thoughts on republicanism, religion, and human nature, and how they were applied. In it, the Pangles assert that knowing the history of this “new American ideal of public education that puts civic instruction at its core” can help schools rediscover their civic purpose. They argue that doing so would help to “sustain a high quality of leadership and produce resourceful, self-reliant citizens.”