In practically all her novels, Jane Austen extols the improvement of the mind (especially the female mind) through reading; see especially Pride and Prejudice, Vol. 1, chapter 8. (New York: The New American Library, 1961, p. 35).
Thomas Jefferson. Autobiography, in Writings. New York: The
Library of America/Literary Classics of the United States, 1984.
Jefferson's father placed him in the English school when Thomas was five years old, and at age nine in the Latin school, where he learned Latin, Greek, and French until 1757. In 1758, Jefferson continued two years of the same program of study with a Reverend Maury. In 1760, he attended the College of William and Mary (for two years), where he was taught by a Dr. William Small of Scotland (a mathematician). His education consisted of Ethics, Rhetoric, and Belles Lettres. In 1762, he began to study law.
Joel Spring. The American School 1642-1990. 2nd ed. New
York/London: Longman, 1990.
Benjamin Franklin's model academy embodied his own education. " '…it would be well if [students] could be taught every thing that is useful, and every thing that is ornamental. But Art is long, and their Time is short. It is therefore propos'd that they learn those things that are likely to be most useful and most ornamental.' […] Franklin's early life was a model for getting ahead in the New World […] The 'useful' elements in Franklin's education were the skills learned in apprenticeship and through his reading. The 'ornamental? elements,… were the knowledge and social skills learned through reading, writing, and debating" (p. 23).
Theodore Sizer, editor. The Age of the Academics, New York:
Teachers College Press, 1964.
"The academy movement in North America was primarily a result of the desire to provide a more utilitarian education as compared with the education provided in classical grammar schools" (p. 22). Lester Frank Ward. The Psychic Factors of Civilization. 2nd ed. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp, 1970. "The highest duty of society is to see that every member receives a sound education" (p. 308).
Transcendentalism: "A 19th century New England movement of writers and philosophers who were loosely bound together by adherence to an idealistic system of thought based on a belief in the essential unity of all creation, the innate goodness of man, and the supremacy of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of deepest truths." The main figures were Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller (cf. Encyclopedia Britannica, Micropedia. 1990 ed.
Paul F. Boller. American Transcendentalism, 1830-1860. An Intellectual Inquiry. New York: Putnam, 1974. Major philosophers of pragmatics:
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Although no finished work deals explicitly with his pragmatic conception, this conception permeates his entire activity. His semiotics is the result of the fundamental pragmatic philosophy he developed.