A proper education

Finished Jon Meacham's fine new Lincoln bio, which cites Addison's smart insight that successful democracy and a "proper education" are inseparable.

Lincoln's self-education was extensive and thorough. He was a reader. Few of my young students ever indicate a preference for elective or leisure reading. They'd rather play games, or watch others play games.

There are thus relatively fewer committed autodidacts among us now, I suspect. This does not bode well for our future. Our educational institutions are going to have to step up.

"Lincoln encountered the English essayist, poet, and politician Joseph Addison in the pages of Lindley Murray's The English Reader. "The philosopher, the saint, or the hero, the wise, the good, or the great man," Addison had written, "very often lies hid and concealed in a plebeian, which a proper education might have disinterred, and have brought to light.""

— And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle by Jon Meacham
https://a.co/9I9Rkaa