> These "long gone luminaries" would be appalled at our current situation. They expected that the populace would be educated - not to a base level, but to an "E

> These "long gone luminaries" would be appalled at our current situation. They expected that the populace would be educated - not to a base level, but to an "Enlightenment level" - each of us capable of rational discussion, discourse, and understanding of virtually all topics of our day. Where we were limited, we would have the temerity to defer to another with better understanding, in the hope of becoming more educated ourselves. We would not rely upon some mystical being who may not even be there (most of them were Deists), but instead rely upon ourselves and the guidance of history to correct our problems as best as we could. We would embrace and not eschew Science and its understandings, because in that knowledge we could find answers. Why would they have had these lovely expectations, given that they (the founders) constituted a small minority in the colonies and were constructing a government for a majority population that was basically uneducated? Free public education as a movement remained decades in the future. The founders were not stupid or delusional, and they knew their neighbors, and they had no expectation that "the populace would be educated".