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Washington had no father as a teenager, and we know he was no genius, yet he learned geometry,
trigonometry, and surveying when he would have been a fifth or sixth grader in our era. Ten years
later he had prospered directly by his knowledge. His entire life was a work of art in the sense it
was an artifice under his control. He even eventually freed his slaves without being coerced to do
so. Washington could easily have been the first king in America but he discouraged any thinking
on that score, and despite many critics, he was so universally admired the seat of government was
named after him while he was still alive.
Washington attended school for exactly two years. Besides the subjects mentioned, at twelve and
thirteen (and later) he studied frequently used legal forms like bills of exchange, tobacco receipts,
leases, and patents. From these forms, he was asked to deduce the theory, philosophy, and custom
which produced them. By all accounts, this steeping in grown-up reality didn’t bore him at all. I
had the same experience with Harlem kids 250 years later, following a similar procedure in
teaching them how to struggle with complex income tax forms. Young people yearn for this kind
of guided introduction to serious things, I think. When that yearning is denied, schooling destroys
their belief that justice governs human affairs.
By his own choice, Washington put time into learning deportment, how to be regarded a
gentleman by other gentlemen; he copied a book of rules which had been used at Jesuit schools
for over a century and with that, his observations, and what advice he could secure, gathered his
own character. Here’s rule 56 to let you see the flavor of the thing: "Associate yourself with men
of good Quality if you Esteem your own reputation." Sharp kid. No wonder he became president.
Washington also studied geography and astronomy on his own, gaining a knowledge of regions,
continents, oceans, and heavens. In light of the casual judgment of his contemporaries that his
intellect was of normal proportions, you might be surprised to hear that by eighteen he had
devoured all the writings of Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, and Daniel Defoe and read regularly
the famous and elegant Spectator. He also read Seneca’s Morals, Julius Caesar’s Commentaries,
and the major writing of other Roman generals like the historian Tacitus.
At sixteen the future president began writing memos to himself about clothing design, not content
to allow something so important to be left in the hands of tradesmen. Years later he became his
own architect for the magnificent estate of Mt. Vernon. While still in his twenties, he began to
experiment with domestic industry where he might avoid the vagaries of international finance in
things like cotton or tobacco. First he tried to grow hemp "for medicinal purposes," which didn’t
work out; next he tried flax—that didn’t work either. At the age of thirty-one, he hit on wheat. In
seven years he had a little wheat business with his own flour mills and hired agents to market his
own brand of flour; a little later he built fishing boats: four years before the Declaration was
written he was pulling in 9 million herring a year.
No public school in the United States is set up to allow a George Washington to happen.
Washingtons in the bud stage are screened, browbeaten, or bribed to conform to a narrow
outlook on social truth. Boys like Andrew Carnegie who begged his mother not to send him to
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