Thomas Hobbes On The American Education System

The debatable education system of The United States of America is unlike that of many other countries. The U.S. does not offer free education at the higher levels which include a college education or specialization education. Whether or not national education should be obtainable at no expense has been controversial since education has been offered in general. Those who have called for free education may be oblivious to the freedoms and values that would suffer as a result. Philosophers like John Locke and Thomas Hobbes, argued for and against the liberal rights and freedoms that we, as humans, have learned to incorporate into education today. Though the Constitution does not blatantly state that Education is a right, the tenth amendment reads,

Another major piece of literature by Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, accounts for human knowledge and its means for creating agreeable beings in a peaceful civilization. Hobbes writes “Man is made fit for Society not by Nature, but by Education.” The outlook that Hobbes has on the importance of nature allows liberals and citizens in general to believe that Hobbes would have stood for a free educational system- even through higher levels. Those who refuse to be educated are seen as useless to society because they have nothing to offer to the sovereign. Although the Leviathan only partly touches on the significance of education, it is obvious that Thomas Hobbes’ was open to liberal views on instruction, which in my belief could have been detrimental. Higher education is costly but the standards of education would decrease if it was at no expense. Luckily, our government follows different values that were enforced and inspired by a different

When the business of education is over it ceases of itself, and is also alienable before. For a man may put the tuition of his son in other hands; and he that has made his son an apprentice to another has discharged him, during that time, of a great part of his obedience, both to himself and to his mother. But all the duty of honour, the other part, remains nevertheless entire to them; nothing can cancel that. It is so inseparable from them both, that the father's authority cannot dispossess the mother of this right, nor can any man discharge his son from honouring her that bore him. But both these are very far from a power to make laws, and enforcing them with penalties that may reach estate, liberty, limbs, and