Product Description

Is American education preparing the future leaders our nation needs, or merely struggling to teach basic literacy and job skills? Without leadership education, are we settling for an inadequate system that delivers educational, industrial, governmental and societal mediocrity? In A Thomas Jefferson Education: Teaching a Generation of Leaders for the Twenty-first Century, Oliver DeMille presents a new educational vision based on proven methods that really work! Teachers, students, parents, educators, legislators, leaders and everyone who cares about America's future must read this compelling book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #47704 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01
• Binding: Hardcover
• 195 pages

About the Author
Oliver Van DeMille is the founder and president of George Wythe College and a popular speaker and business consultant. He and his wife Rachel have eight children.

Customer Reviews

Fundamentally flawed. False claims
In this book Oliver DeMille sells a promise and a hope to parents that are dissatisfied with public education. DeMille argues that we need great leaders like Thomas Jefferson to be able to meet the problems of the 21st century, and the way we get those leaders is that we give them an education like what Thomas Jefferson had. DeMille claims to have discovered what nearly all great leaders in the past have had:

"Find a great leader in history, and you will nearly always find two central elements of their education - classics and mentors. From Lincoln, Jefferson and Washington to Ghandi, Newton and John Locke, to Abigail Adams, Mother Theresa and Joan of Arc - great men and women of history studied other great men and women." p. 37

This is the basis for everything else he espouses in the book. However, Joan of Arc most likely couldn't read. George Washington was not familiar with the classics and it was something that he was a little self-conscious about. In fact, if you look at leaders of the past, including the ones DeMille lists as examples, virtually none of them were particularly well-versed in any classics and had any significant mentoring, if any at all. But this is the proof DeMille attempts to use to convince the reader that what he will describe is not only what great leaders in the past have done, but what we must do now.

Reading the classics is fine and anyone would benefit from reading them. But DeMille isn't even consistent with what he considers a "classic." For Thomas Jefferson, it was Homer and Livy, for parents now, it's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and books by Cleon Skousen.

Part of the Thomas Jefferson Education approach is that there are six "Phases of Learning." DeMille claims to have discovered them after researching the life of Thomas Jefferson:

"These Phases were first noted and identified in our research of the education of Thomas Jefferson, and were later seen to be a pattern of many luminaries in history who lived exemplary lives and changed the world for good." p. 31

What he fails to mention is that these "Phases" started with Freud's psychosexual stages, which were then modified by Erik Erikson to be social more than sexual and to extend past childhood into adulthood, which were then also modified by Jean Piaget, until coming into their final form by DeMille (his other book, Leadership Education explains this). These phases are not something DeMille discovered when researching Thomas Jefferson, but rather more likely something he discovered from studying modern cognitive development theorists and child psychologists.

DeMille also claims to have discovered 7 Keys of Great Learning (he later added an eighth about not being stressed). One Key is to only inspire your child, never require them to do anything academically. Another Key is that you should only focus on yourself. If you are having problems with his methods, the problem is most likely that you either aren't inspiring enough or you need to stop fussing over your child and focus more on yourself. In fact, DeMille gives and example of what happens in seminars when people say they are having trouble getting their child to do math. DeMille just simply asks the parent when the last time she (the parent) has read a "math classic" (Euclid, Archimedes, Newton), and when she answers that she hasn't, then DeMille says that's the problem right there. If you read it, then the child will observe your love to learn and will be inspired to discuss what you are learning with you and somehow either learn that way, or be motivated to go learn math through self-instruction (which should only be done through "math classics").

DeMille also advises parents and students to learn a foreign language through a "classic" in that foreign language. He recommends that in order to learn Spanish, you should pick up a copy of Don Quixote in the original Spanish in one hand, and English translation of it in the other. I highly doubt anyone could learn through that method. Regardless, the Spanish in Don Quixote is older and difficult, like Shakespeare is to English speakers now.

DeMille claims that we need leaders to secure our liberties and that only through such leaders will we be saved as a country. And these leaders will only come through TJEd:

"The leaders of the future will come from the schools, homes, colleges, universities and organizations where classics, mentors, and the other elements of Thomas Jefferson Education are cherished and seriously perused." p113

"Where are the new American Founders of the Twenty-first Century? None of us know who those statesmen will be. But this I do know-the great statesmen and stateswomen of the future will be prepared through the Five Pillars of Statesmenship." p133

He also repeatedly claims that the "conveyor-belt" education (public schools) cannot produce the needed leaders and results in unsatisfactory lives and jobs:

"Which one do you want for your children? If you want to be low-income, production, service, government jobs, you ought to be in a conveyor belt school; because that's what it will prepare you for, and will do it effectively...But if you want more, you'd better get into another system." p117

This book is big on promise, but low on details, and the details supplied are fatally flawed and insufficient for any education. The claim that virtually all leaders had an education of classics and mentors is not true (search around on the internet to find more on this claim, there are some good posts evaluating this), and there's no evidence that what he describes as a "leadership education" is at all what leaders in the past have had. He leaves out crucial aspects of Thomas Jefferson's life that probably were influential in his becoming a leader, like learning Latin and Greek at age 9, and graduating college before getting his "mentor" George Wythe when he was a law clerk, let alone Jefferson's natural intellect. I think this book appeals to parents who do want something better for their child, but are not able to properly evaluate the claims and promises DeMille makes.

Before anyone decides to do this approach, ask a few questions about the claims. Use some critical thinking skills. Don't be so quick to accept everything as gospel just because the author started off talking about how the classics were important.

Even better than the first!
I received this book just this weekend - and have already devoured the new chapters - all very good additions. I noted that many of the little errors have been corrected, and the book is just beautiful - hardback, with a lovely dust jacket - and a nice black bookmark! Classic! All that said, my review still stands from the first edition:

I can give the education of our patriots to our children!
My theories, hopes, expectations, and dreams for homeschooling our children are all laid out in this book. It has classic book lists in the back divided by age range (Dr. Seuss is on the list!), step-by-step instructions for how to become an effective mentor to your child or classroom, and succinctly and interestingly describes the current failures of "traditional" classroom methodology. (I'm a former public school teacher, and I agree from experience!)

The only place I disagree with the author is in learning a foreign language - he states we should read a classic in the target language and discuss it. Reading don Quijote in Spanish to anyone who doesn't already know Spanish, will sound like gibberish...So to get a head start on your young one knowing a second language try Workbook and CD like Flip Flop Spanish instead.

Otherwise, this book is quick and extremely informational to read, - a new way of thinking for me, for sure! - and in another year, I look forward to testing its theories in our daily practical lives!
Sra. Gose
Author of Flip Flop Spanish: Ages 3-5: Level 1 & Flip Flop Spanish: Ages 3-5: Level 2

Very worthwhile
This writer has identified the limits of current public education, and the unnecessary expense involved. He promotes the importance to the world of a return to the classic educations that great men and women of the past received. They were mentored in the classic works written by the great men and women of all generations previous to them. He makes the point that we need to return to this tried-and-tested formula to continue into the future with more great men and women. Which makes a great deal of sense.The book is clearly written, but not fully developed into the kind of detail that would make you feel empowered to go ahead. If you didn't know there were seminars available in this method of education, close enough for you to attend, you could easily feel let down by the end of it.