In a letter to William Duane from Monticello on September 16, 1810, Jefferson wrote: “ . . . I have recieved information of Pestalozzi’s mode of education from some European publications, & from m( ^~ r) Neef’s book, which shews that the latter possesses both the talents & the zeal for carrying it into effect. I sincerely wish it success, convinced that the information of the people at large, can alone make them the safe, as they are the sole, depository of our political & religious freedom . . . ”

Joseph Neef [originally Francis Joseph Nicholas Neef], 1770-1854, was born in Alsace. He came to America in 1806, where he remained until his death.

Neef wrote to Jefferson from Philadelphia on June 10, 1806, to announce his arrival “ dans le pays de la liberté,” to which Jefferson replied on June 23.

On March 2, 1816, in a letter to Robert Ould of Georgetown, thanking him for a copy of the Abridgment of the Lancastrian system of education he had sent him, Jefferson wrote: “ . . . when that method was first introduced I was too much engaged in business to pay more than a very limited attention to it, altho’ it was the subject of considerable discussion before the public; and since my retirement no circumstance has led my enquiries towards it. of course I am too much a stranger to the method to have formed any judgment concerning it. but it’s value must now have been sufficiently tested by experience . . . I presume it’s advantages must be confined to cities where great numbers of pupils can be collected together. in the country our schools are from a dozen to 20. generally, which being too few to be divided into classes according to the progress each has made, I suppose that method would be impracticable . . . ”

Later in the same year, on August 19, in a letter to John Preston, the compiler of a Lancastrian spelling book which he wished Jefferson to recommend, the latter wrote: “ The Lancastrian System of education was proposed when I was too much engaged in business to attend to it, and after my retirement I considered it as the commencement of a system which was to go into operation with another generation and with which of course I should have nothing to do. I have therefore never read a sentence on the subject, nor know a single element of [it] consequently am totally unqualified to recommend it to others, and were it moral to recommend what I know nothing about, it would only degrade myself without honoring your book. under these circumstances you must be so good as to excuse my declining it, and with my best wishes for it’s success if it be really useful . . . ”

Joseph Lancaster, 1778-1838, the founder of the Lancastrian system of education, and author of the pedagogical maxim a place for everything and everything in its place, was born in Southwark, London. In 1818 he visited America in order to establish Lancastrian schools in the western hemisphere, and died in New York. The first edition of his Improvements in Education was published in 1803.