"I am not fully informed of the practices at Harvard, but there is one from which we shall certainly vary, although it has been copied, I believe, by nearly every college and academy in the United States. That is, the holding the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular vocations to which they are destined. We shall, on the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall choose to attend, and require elementary qualification only, and sufficient age." | by: | Thomas Jefferson
(1743-1826), US Founding Father, drafted the Declaration of Independence, 3rd US President |
Source: | in a letter to George Ticknor, 1823
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition 15:455 (Lipscomb and Bergh, editors), 1903-04 |
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