The Educational Thought of John Adams

Modern scholars have long identified the educational thought of John Adams (1735-1826), first Vice President and second President of the United States, as concerned with usefulness. But how did he come to such a belief while living in the ideological climate of the eighteenth century, which held that not education but nature defined a man’s ability?

This article asserts that Adams’s educational thought was the product of his social and cultural background as well as the result of years of change and revision through application. By examining the origins and processes through which Adams developed his thought, the author intends to explicate our understanding of the development of Adams’s belief in a direct relationship between government and learning, articulated in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780; an idea that would later dominate nineteenth century America’s views on education.

Written nearly twenty years apart, these two statements illustrate contrary attitudes towards the importance of learning. They also illustrate a shift in John Adams’s (1735-1826) educational thought. The first statement mimics the prevailing eighteenth century thought that one’s ability and station is determined by nature. The second, written by a greatly matured Adams, is an affirmation of social determinism and serves as the antithesis to his earlier belief. That such a reversal occurred signifies a theoretical shift.

Why did Adams’s educational thought change so radically? How did such a change affect his career as a statesman, and thereby, the foundations of the fledgling United States? The answers to these questions reveal that Adams was a pragmatist, not an idealist. He viewed the world in which he lived through a lens crafted by his own experience, not through ideas imported from Europe or gleaned from the books and essays of the Scottish humanists. His educational thought was utilitarian in that it emphasized usefulness; his opinions on mankind were optimistic, though at times perhaps naïve. The origin of Adams’s thought can be found in the roots of his own educational experiences, and it is in his formative years, that a fuller understanding of Adams must begin.

Since the beginning of the Adams Papers Project in 1954, a resurgence of scholarly research on Adams as statesman, politician, diplomat, father, husband, philosopher, and even lover (Nagel 1984; Howe 1966; Cremin 1977) has emerged. But in all the tracts published in the last half century, Adams’s role as an educational thinker has been woefully neglected. To my knowledge, no scholarly handling of the subject has been published. What can be gathered from extemporaneous comments by Adams’s biographers and archivists, and students of his political and religious ideology, does not reveal or codify his ideology, but simply categorizes him as either a modernist or an ancient, forcing him into pre-constructed categorizes which more often obfuscate rather then elucidate our understanding (Smith 1963).

In this article I argue that Adams’s educational thought, while long identified as utilitarian, was not fully developed until after he had completed his own education and had assumed the role of a professional educator for three years. I shall demonstrate that Adams’s educational thought was the long-term result of change and revision through application and the incorporation of different perspectives on education. Beginning with a discussion of Adams’s utilitarian view in his post-formative years, I shall then return to his early life, examining his employment at Worcester as schoolmaster, in order to fully understand the process by which he arrived at his educational thought. By centering my analysis on the application and then the development of his educational thought, a fuller understanding and reevaluation of earlier assessments of his ideology will be possible, as well as a furthering of our understanding of the process and experiences which he carried into later life. Finally, such an analysis will expose the necessity for future work on this subject as well as suggest possible conclusion that may arise when Adams’s early educational and ideological developments are considered in relation to his adult career.

Historically, John Adams has been viewed as a committed utilitarian educator who believed that education was the defining quality of one’s life. His grandson, the first editor of the Adams’s papers, Charles Francis Adams (1807-1886), noted that Adams was a firm modernist, believing that knowledge and education, if they were to be learnt by the pupil at all, ought to be directly applicable to life (Adams, C.F. 1891: 2, 68). John Adams defined these useful or applicable forms of knowledge as any that contributed to the production of some valuable result or commodity. “It is not indeed the fine Arts, which our Country requires. The Usefull, the mechanic Arts, are those which We have occasion for in a young Country, as yet simple and not far advanced in Luxury, although perhaps much too far for her Age and Character” (JA to AA, May 12, 1780; letters can be found in Butterfield 1963). The key for Adams was that education must be applicable to the present need (Ellis 1993; Smith 1963).

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine (JA to AA, May 12, 1780).

These prophetic lines, written to Abigail Adams (1744-1818) around May 12, 1780, are a clear articulation of Adams’s goal for his children and by extension his country. They are also an elegant expression of what he meant precisely by “The Usefull” and “mechanic Arts.” Adams’s approach involved first identifying the future needs of the country, and then determining which generation would be best suited to fulfill them. For his part, Adams was required to study that which he felt was necessary; in this case it was political and military leaders that his fledgling country required and therefore their arts were what he dedicate himself to studying. As he reported while in The Hague to Abigail concerning the work of the natural philosopher Pierre Lyonnet (1706-1789), “I doubt not the Book [Lyonnet’s] is worth studying. All Nature is so.—But I have too much to do, to Study Men, and their mischievous Designs upon Apple Trees...and other Things, ever to be very intimate with Mr. Lionet, (whom I respect very much however) or his Book” (JA to AA, Aug. 3-4, 1776). Adams clearly considered politics and war a more important course of study for himself than science.

His children’s future determined, Adams left for his grandchildren the pursuit of those “fine Arts” omitting only poetry, the art of tapestry and of porcelain, which he found no need for in the America of his or his son’s day, but that would be of greater importance to an established, politically independent, financially powerful and stable America. As he recorded after a day-visit to the workshop of the famous American painter Charles Willson Peale, “I wish I had Leisure, and Tranquility of Mind to amuse myself with these Elegant, and ingenious Arts of Painting, Sculpture, Statuary, Architecture, Musick. But I have not” (JA to AA Aug. 21, 1776).

Significantly, Adams did not say in his educational statement of 1780 that his grandchildren “must” study the fine arts or even “ought to,” but rather that, after the dutiful application of their forebears to their required callings, the third generation of Adamses would have only the “right” to study the arts. The identification of Adams’s adult educational thought as utilitarian is thus demonstrated. But we are left with a greater hindrance to our understanding of Adams; how did he develop, embrace, or arrive at this educational thought? The answer to this salient question lies in Adams’s formative years, when he was still experiencing and understanding the world in which he was born and in which he lived.

Adams began the development of his educational thought in the small schoolhouse at Worcester. In January 1756, Adams arrived in Worcester to assume his duties as schoolmaster. It was during this time of isolation that Adams began to develop his theories on education. His position as schoolmaster provided him with an opportunity to reflect upon his past and consider his future. He was a very ambitious man who felt a daily compulsion to test his abilities by probing the limits of his promise and pushing himself to new realms of accomplishment. This tendency towards self-evaluation partially explains the ennui he experienced early in his stay in Worcester, but it also explains why Adams arrived at the conclusion he did as to the purpose of education. He desired to accomplish great things, and decided that he would begin by determining what accounted for greatness in others. Adams began his investigation with a rigorous inquiry into human nature and the qualities of genius, and ended by rejecting the role of nature in lieu of education as the defining quality of great men.

Adams found a microcosm in which to study human nature within the walls of his own schoolhouse. “I find by repeated experiment and observation, in my School,” Adams claimed, “that human nature is more easily wrought upon and governed, by promises and incouragement and praise than by punishment, and threatning and Blame,” for “Corporal as well as disgraceful punishments, depress the spirits, but commendation enlivens and stimulates them to a noble ardor and emulation” (March 14-15, 1756). However, if encouragement was all one needed to succeed, Adams was left with two perplexing questions: Why did not men, equally encouraged, become equally great? And why did one who received little encouragement, surpass those who received ample support?

Adams concluded that there must be a limiting agent for man, some quality or aspect of his existence, which prevented him from greatness. But how was such discrimination carried out? Perhaps as a result of youthfulness, Adams decided that it must be in the origin of the mind that discrimination began. “The man to whom Nature has given a great and Surprizing Genius, will perform Great and Surprizing Atchievments, but a Soul originally narrow and confined, will never be enlarged to a distinguishing Capacity,” for “By dilligence and Attention, indeed, he may possibly get the Character of a Man of Sence, but never that of a great Man” (April 10, 1756). For Adams, empowering nature with the discriminating ability had great advantages for an ambitious young man who was aware of his ability but lacked the confidence of assured success.

Previously, Adams had believed that it was human nature which determined one’s proclivity for greatness or obscurity; now he endorsed education as the defining quality. With tenacity and “fixt Determination” Adams believed that he could cultivate his mind and improve himself. Moreover, his proscribed curriculum revealed yet another aspect of Adams’s views on education. Gone from his weekly studies were the sciences and mathematics of his youth. In their place, he strictly set himself upon sacred, Classical, and contemporary literature, studies which were necessary for his chosen profession, the Law. For he had set himself upon that course since witnessing the Circuit Court pass through Worcester in early May (Shaw 1976: 17). Exactly a month after his educational resolution, Adams signed a contract with James Putnam, the only lawyer in Worcester, and began to read law in his office. Little is know concerning the period in which Adams studied law (summer 1756 – summer 1758). He kept no diary and few letters survive. In his autobiography, Adams passed over this period perfunctorily. It appears that Putnam provided Adams with books on the law as well as history and religion. They lived together comfortably enough, sharing their meals together, discussing religious question more often then legal ones, and generally enjoying one another’s company (Smith 1963)

Despite the dearth of material from this period, we know that while reading law in Putnam’s office and keeping school in Worcester, Adams continued to refine his views on education. By the end of summer 1758, Adams had completed his studies with Mr. Putnam, and on October 5^th, he returned to Braintree and his father’s house. While living once again in the house of his birth and trying to build a practice of law for himself, Adams resumed writing in his diary and also began a piece which he intended for publication or as literary practice. His thoughts assumed the form of a letter to “My Friend,” in which Adams would present the most complete articulation of his views on education to this point in his life.

He began with a discussion of the mind and nature. “Such is the Nature of the human mind, that each individual must and will have some Employment, for his Thoughts, some Amusement, Business, study, Pleasure or Diversion, virtuous or vicious, lawdable or Contemptible, to consume his Time” (Earliest Diary, 69). Of these various employments, Adams makes a distinction of human agency in their selection, simultaneously tipping his hat to “Nature” and her role, but ultimately imbuing man with the discriminatory power. “If he is not instructed to contemplate the Heavens, he will instruct him self to contemplate Cockell shells, and Pebblestones; if his Rank and Fortune exempt him from Business, he will engage himself in Study or in Play, in Hunting or whoring, or something else, better or worse” (Ibid.).

Having enumerated the various means by which one may employ one’s time, Adams moves to proscribing how one ought to best prepare oneself for his path in life. “The first Question,” Adams insisted, “that a young man should ask himself is, what Employment am I by Constitution of my mind and Body, and by the Circumstances of Education, Rank and Fortune, directed to pursue? And the next is what is the best Method, the safest, easiest, nearest Road to the proper End of that Employment I have chose?” (Ibid. 70-71). Again, we see an amalgamation of Adams’s early assertion of nature’s power in determining ability with his later realization of the power of a structured digestion of knowledge. But in his suggestion that one seeks the “nearest Road” to a chosen profession, Adams endorses an educational approach that his earlier resolution only vaguely hinted at – utilitarianism.

The 1758 Adams letter to an unidentified correspondent is a valuable document for the insights it provides the historians of its author’s educational thought. Adams entered into study under Mr. Putnam with nascent worldviews and ideas; he emerged with solid concepts and beliefs. The ideas on education, which Adams expressed in his letter, are a rejection of his earlier views on human nature and knowledge. Where before Adams had sought nature’s gift of “Surprizing Genius” as a loadstone for his life, he now relied on the axiom that his main enterprise would always be to “distinguish between Useful and unuseful” forms of knowledge to guide him through life. His commitment to this course is best demonstrated by the advice he gave his wife, Abigail Adams, nearly twenty years later, concerning the upbringing and educating of their children:

Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute. The virtues and powers to which men may be trained, by early education and constant discipline, are truly sublime and astonishing...It should be your care, therefore, and mine to elevate the minds of our children and exalt their courage; to accelerate and animate their industry and activity; to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel all their lives...[for] Without strength and activity and vigor of body, the brightest mental excellencies will be eclipsed and obscured (JA to AA, Oct. 29, 1755).

Adams’s educational thought was a personal development, derived from his experiences, not borrowed from the requisite beliefs of the eighteenth century. The origins of his educational thought lie in his personal quest for greatness. At the outset, he believed that nature determined one’s proclivity for success. However, Adams quickly abandoned this belief after pitilessly evaluating himself and finding no sign of the requisite genius. After further reflection Adams altered his views, endorsing self-development over natural endowment—a view that led him ultimately to a utilitarian educational thought not restrained by nature.

My findings add to our understanding of Adams and his educational thought. Such contributions ought to be of more than antiquarian interest since they allow us to better understand one of America’s most influential early statesmen. The personal journey that led Adams to his educational thought is further evidence of Adams’s independent and pragmatic personality. Like analyses of other branches of Adams’s ideology such as politics and social class, that of education shall only further our understanding of his greater motives and objectives. The developmental process that led Adams to his educational thought was a direct and pragmatic approach. He did not borrow his ideas from others and make them his own, but rather observed, tested and revised his theories until a body of thought emerged that was commensurate with his own personal experiences.