Charles Jennings
Professor Toth
English-13-1301
July 9, 2015
Are you Free to Think
Educate and inform the whole mass of the people…they are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.
-Thomas Jefferson

Americans view few things as highly cherished as liberty and education. A pursuit of liberty caused the first pilgrims to come to America in order they might have freedom of religion, the pursuit of liberty is what caused the colonies to declare independence from king Gorge. Liberty has become the theme, pride, and joy of America. Viewed as highly important even before the founding of the United States, as a means of maintaining liberty. Today, however, many people do not understand the relationship between education and liberty, believing them to be old fashioned and in opposition to one another, when in fact they couldn’t be farther from the truth. Education and liberty have an interdependent relationship, you can’t have one without the other.
In order to understand why education and liberty have an intertwined fate, you must first understand what education and liberty are. Education, as we understand it here, is a process of inviting truth and possibility, of encouraging and giving time to discovery (Smith). Education is not confined to a school or to a series of subjects like Math, English, and Science. These subjects are critical part of learning, but they are not the only things that encompasses education.
Some people think education is going to school and getting a degree, which it is in some ways, but it is also the exploring of sociality. To learn about yourself and those who came before, and how to understand the world around use. Other people believe that unless you’re going to be a scientist, your degree doesn’t matter (insert). All of them agree that education is highly important and critical to a person who wants to better themselves.
Just as education is invaluable, liberty is just as important. Liberty is defined as freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions (Dictionary, website). Yet most see it as so much more. It is so closely related to freedom that freedom that is it normally thought to be, liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule (Locke). Yet anyway you wish to think of it, it is one of the fundamental theories of humanity.
Education gives you the tools to be able to think and learn, liberty gives you the ability to find truth. It is not the freedom to do whatever you want, being irresponsible and denying basic truths and morals to all man. With those definitions in mind, let us go on to see the relationship between education and liberty. Education is dependent on liberty for two main reasons. First, without liberty, you will be taught what to think instead of how