The Unfair Advantage: How the Founding Fathers Actually Learned to Think

Looking back at the creation of the United States it is almost impossible feat of collective genius. As the nation celebrates 250 years of independence, we naturally marvel at the monumental forces that transformed a loose collection of agrarian colonies into the world's leading industrial and technological powerhouse.

We study what they built, while often completely ignoring the parallel engine that made it possible: the unfair advantage of the colonial mind. The architects of America possessed a cognitive edge that has been systematically erased from the modern government classroom. The story of American education over the past two and a half centuries is a story of radical, sometimes dangerous adaptation. It is a timeline closely connected to global history, formed by intense spiritual convictions, molded by industrial demands, and formed by bitter battles for equal access.

When the thirteen colonies declared independence 250 years ago, only a few thousand men in a population of some 2.5 million held a college degree—a fraction of one percent. In fact, on the eve of the Revolution, there were only nine chartered colleges operating across British North America. These institutions, modeled closely on the ancient English universities of Oxford and Cambridge, focused primarily . . .