In this episode, Charlie Jett explores John Adams’s rich and skeptical reflections on education in response to Jefferson’s university plans. Adams laments the chaos of competing theories, quipping that one could die before mastering them all. He warns that education, like religion and government, needs deep reform and traces its turmoil back to the Reformation’s bloody conflicts. Referencing Talleyrand, German universities, and European reformers, Adams situates Jefferson’s ambitions within a centuries-long struggle over knowledge and power. With biting wit, he concludes that even philosophers are “arrant hypocrites,” exposing his lifelong skepticism toward human nature and intellectual vanity.
