Chapter 48: Virginia

The nation’s founders believed education was essential to maintaining their new experiment in government. Rousseau noted in 1758 that “public education … is one of the fundamental rules of a popular or legitimate government.”¹ In the 1830s, when de Tocqueville visited the United States, he reported that even the roughhewn pioneer “with the Bible, an axe, and a file of newspapers” was educated.²

The evolution of education in the new republic, however, varied among different regions. Virginia, as Cubberley wrote, fell into the category of pauper and parochial school conditions.³ In the colonial years, with Governors Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, George Cabell, and John Tyler as the exceptions, the Commonwealth of Virginia was slow to support free public schools. This was also true of many other southern states. In 1810, the Virginia General Assembly, under Governor Tyler’s leadership, established the Virginia Literary Fund to provide public education funding for the poor.⁴ The bill stated: