An excellent corollary to John Taylor Gatto's book "Dumbing Us Down." If one is looking for a positive way forward after the diagnostic of the problem with the current education system this book provides a path forward by presenting the type of education that produced great statemen through the ages by focusing on the two-fold sources of mentors and classics. Highly recommended.

Although I was a annoyed by the propaganda in this book, didn't agree with many of his opinions, and found him repetitive, I was able to weed through and find things that I thought could improve my children's education. This book is a big proponent of homeschooling, but I feel these suggestions can be used to improve any form of education.

Here are my notes:
--read great books (classics) with your children and discuss them together
--ask good questions and let your children figure it out...encourage curiosity and thinking
--study the lives of great teachers together...Gandhi, Washington, Churchill, Mother Teresa, etc...
--teach love of learning by example
--“It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds….In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours.” William Ellery Channing
--"When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before.” Clifton Fadiman

This will always be a 5 star read. I read it for the first time in 2015.
This is the 6th time I have read the book.
It always reaffirms they way we chose to homeschool and parent our children. I always find something new that resonates with me during each read.
This book is a home education classic to me.

One of my all-time favorite books about self-education and reading the classics!
My review: https://www.greatbookstudy.com/2019/0...

I've read a lot of reviews on this book, some negative and some positive. Mine will be positive.

I've read of many criticisms regarding flaws in the educational program that Dr. DeMille has presented in this book. I would like to argue that Dr. DeMille is not really presenting a program of education, but a philosophy of education. The philosophy is basically this: The only person that you can educate is yourself. The only TRUE education is self-education. I suppose this goes against the philosophy of some teachers and school directors, but I don't think that any good teacher could deny the truth of this philosophy of self-education if they pondered it with an open heart. Don't we always hear, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink"? Nobody can force another person to learn anything.

Along with this philosophy Dr. DeMille outlines how self-education is best promoted--not only for oneself, but by teachers truly inspiring their students. This outline includes, primarily, inspiring teachers and the use of classics (created by other inspiring teachers, past and present, in any field, and in any venue).

There have been periods in my educational history that I have been taught by the use of what this book calls the Thomas Jefferson Education method, and times when other educational philosophies were applied to me. I've come to see that any time I have been inspired to real education, it's been when the principles of Thomas Jefferson Education were applied, even if the teacher or the program did not claim to ascribe to this method. Thomas Jefferson Education is simply the title that Dr. Oliver DeMille has given to the best of educational methods and philosophies that have ever been used today and in history--the only one that truly works.

This is the book that inspires to me read better books, to read more often, and to continue my education. If anyone says you are just born either liking to read or not it is not true. We can all improve our study habits by improving the books we read. Leslie says this theory could also be known as a "Louis Lamour education" as Louis Lamour also was an avid reader. (Which reminds me of another great book --Louis Lamour's autobiography.) But this book is more than just about reading. It's about our entire lifetime of learning. It's about continually seeking knowledge and experience for ourselves and our families. It's about seeking opportunities to get involved in the community and our country. It's about taking a more active interest in our children's education and our own.

Some excellent ideas...very idealistic. I like the three levels of learners.

This book was amazing! I feel so inspired to read the classics and to help my children to do the same. It's overwhelming, but like everything else, one day at a time. My children are currently attending public school, but I'm thinking hard about pulling them out and exposing them to this awesome concept.

I love the discussion of what is lacking in education today and it all really resonated with me. I learned how to work the system, walked away with A's but not much by the way of critical thinking. My husband does not concur with a lot of the ideas in the book. He has a PhD in education and is in charge of statewide testing and has different views of what is needed in education more based on research. Both points may be valid.

I recommend this to anyone who feels like they didn't get the most out of their education and to anyone who would like more of their children's education.

A must read.

My wife's family introduced me to the Thomas Jefferson model. It follows the form of the famous Founding Father's education--if you have read biographies of Jefferson, you will know that he had mentors who had been schooled in the classics, and he followed their lead by delving into great books. deMille breaks the education process into stages: the Core phase is for children who are under age 8, and are learning primarily through engaging the world: they learn their foundational values through play, work, nature, and family. When children are older, their Love of Learning is nurtured by allowing them to delve into a passion (for example, cars, or in my case, castles), and then branching out from there. For example, if you were to build an education around castles, you could learn a lot about history, physical science, mathematics, politics, even health and physical education, not to mention spelling, writing, and so forth. The idea is to not quench a child's natural enjoyment of discovery, and instead using that to engage their mind with finding out about the world. When they are older, sometime between 12 and 14, they are ready for the Scholar phase, when they intensively learn from the classics (rather than workbooks, textbooks, or other secondary sources). Mentors re-read the classics along with the young learner--no resting on your laurels. There is discussion about the ideas, and also writing. One key idea is the concept of doing your best--learners either did a "good job" or they need to "do over"; written work is revisited until it represents a young scholar's best work. Scholar phase can continue through the undergraduate years of college, until you reach the level of professional education (in my profession, that starts in grad school). The aim is to prepare a young mind for leadership, rather than for run-of-the-mill production work. deMille calls traditional education, by contrast, "assembly line" education organized toward producing workers for the general economy, but inadequately prepared for tackling the problems of society from a leadership position, particularly because they have learned to conform, follow the program, and not take charge of their own future and environment.

2.5 stars [Education]
This was an average to below-average book on education theory. It was often generic, populist, and repetitive. Chapter 7, on a "leadership education" in the public schools, was the worst. DeMille is right in saying the 'system getting out of the way' is a positive force, but quite wrong in pushing teacher autonomy. Autonomy without discernment is an evil; we have too much of it today. It turns a podium into a soapbox for indoctrination into either certain wrong doctrines on the nature of man or reality, or relativistic ones. I recommend skipping the entire chapter. In fact, skip the whole book except for 3 particular chapters: read chapters 4, 5, and 6, on Mentorship, Classics, and Great Teaching. They redeem this book from a below-average rating, giving practical and wise advise on in-class methodology.

Demille, Oliver. A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-First Century.

Fear not. This book has little of Jefferson in it, in case you are bothered by his Deism, slavery, and defense of Lockean politics. One shouldn’t read this book as a manual on how to do education. I gather that other books in the series do that. The best approach might be counter-intuitive: read it as an inspiration manual.

Demille’s argument is simple: the best way to train leaders is to get them to read the classics in dialogue with a wise mentor. This skirts the debate between classical vs. private vs. public education. Demille offers a tool, not an ideology. Like many texts that lean towards the classical model, the volume is weak on math and science, but it still works quite well on the arts and humanities.

He begins with a distinction some might find artificial but upon further inspection is quite profound: you cannot “fix” education. An education is what the student gets out of the process largely based upon the student’s effort. What you can fix is teaching and externals. “Teachers teach and students educate” (Demille 12). The best education is when the student gets excited about learning and goes from there (with guidance).

He notes the three types of education: conveyor belt, professional, and leadership. It is fashionable to mock the conveyor belt approach (presentation of facts, etc). There is nothing wrong with that approach. It accomplishes precisely what it was designed to: educate poor people so they can get a job. The professional approach is fairly obvious: medicine, business, etc.

Demille’s focus is the leadership approach to education. It’s purpose is to train leaders who perpetuate freedom by knowing how to think. (A textbook teaches you want to think; a classic teaches you how to think.)

I won’t spend too much time on Demille’s method except to note a few good points. One is to “structure time, not content” (45). Is it better to make the student read 50 pages of Thomas Aquinas or spend two hours analyzing what Thomas means by essence and being? Go deeper, not wider.

There is the tough question of “What is a classic?” I’ll keep the list open-ended, but we can say a book that was formative upon the Western mind.

Can I get a Job?

Since we are now at the point where a university education does not guarantee a (good?) job, education is freed to be more formative and soul-forming. Modern America replaced leadership with job prep. While modern education gurus urge teachers to ask higher-order thinking questions, and while textbooks are happily being replaced with “modules,” the system is fundamentally the same.

Employers hire people, not degrees. (That said, don’t do anything stupid like go to Patriot Bible College. I’m also quite skeptical of a certain “Reformed” college in the Pacific Northwest). As Peter Drucker said, “The basic economic resource…is no longer capital…It is and will be knowledge” (115).