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finally crucial French intervention at Yorktown, which broke the back of the British.
As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, Franklin had few equals among the educated of
his day—though he left school at ten. He spent nine years as American Commissioner to France.
In terms only of his ease with the French language, of which he had little until he was in his
sixties, this unschooled man’s accomplishments are unfathomable by modern pedagogical theory.
In many of his social encounters with French nobility, this candlemaker’s son held the fate of the
new nation in his hands, because he (and Jefferson) were being weighed as emblems of America’s
ability to overthrow England.
Franklin’s Autobiography is a trove of clues from which we can piece together the actual
curriculum which produced an old man capable of birthing a nation:
My elder brothers were all put apprentice to different trades. I was put to the
grammar school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the
tithe of his sons, to the services of the (Anglican) church. My early readiness in
learning to read (which must have been very early, as I do not remember when
I could not read) and the opinion of all his friends, that I should be a good
scholar, encouraged him in this purpose...I continued, however, at grammar
school not quite one year.
Young Ben was yanked from grammar school and sent to another type less ritzy and more nuts
and bolts in colonial times: the "writing and arithmetic"school. There under the tutelage of Mr.
Brownell, an advocate of "mild, encouraging methods," Franklin failed in arithmetic:
At ten years old I was taken home to assist my father in his business....
Accordingly I was employed in cutting wick for candles, filling the dipping
mold and the molds for cast candles. Attending the shop, going on errands, etc.
I disliked the trade, and had a strong inclination for the sea, but my father
declared against it.
There are other less flattering accounts why Franklin left both these schools and struck out on his
own at the age of ten—elsewhere he admits to being a leader of mischief, some of it mildly
criminal, and to being "corrected" by his father—but causation is not our concern, only bare facts.
Benjamin Franklin commenced school at third-grade age and exited when he would have been in
the fifth to become a tallow chandler’s apprentice.
A major part of Franklin’s early education consisted of studying father Josiah, who turns out,
himself, to be a pretty fair example of education without schooling:
He had an excellent constitution...very strong...ingenious...could draw
prettily...skilled in music...a clear pleasing voice...played psalm tunes on his
violin...a mechanical genius...sound understanding...solid judgment in
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