The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin Education

These words seem to convey a desire for readers to know about Franklin's precocity. His ability to read is tied up in his memory of and knowledge about himself. He can't recall a version of himself that couldn't read. It's interesting, too, that the root of "readiness" and "read" is the same – this connection helps us associate the qualities of eagerness and preparedness with the act of reading, just as Franklin seems to do throughout his text.

If there's one thing we get out of this book, it's how much Franklin likes to read. To which we say: great! Us too. Here Franklin is also connecting money to education, though. The act of reading, through purchasing books, becomes a reward for working for and saving money. Reading and education become prizes for industry and thrift. It doesn't hurt that education, as a kind of self-betterment, can also be seen as a virtue. Instead, it leads to a cycle where education brings out good qualities, which lead to the desire for more education.

Franklin loves to learn so much that he's willing to lose sleep over it. Because he's been working a traditional day job since he was a pre-teen, he's constantly making up for lost time. He also doesn't have a lot of money. This scene, then, shows his resourcefulness and determination. He makes use of every possible spare moment, by reading when he should be resting, and borrows books instead of buying them.

Education for Franklin isn't just about reading, although that's what he likes best. He wants to know everything. Even though he was only in school for a little while, he managed to flunk out of math twice. So he's compelled by both his desire just to be better educated and his embarrassment at not knowing better math, to seek out subjects he finds difficult and master them.

Vaughan makes an argument for why Franklin should keep writing in a way that suggests he knows very well how to influence his old friend. Since Franklin's been so invested in educating himself throughout his life, Vaughan encourages him to keep writing by telling him his life story (and the Art of Virtue, which Franklin doesn't finish) will help other people engage in that same kind of "self-education." This may appeal to Franklin even more than flattery or compliments: seeing his work as an instrument that will help other people to do something he believes in so much.

Franklin's such a crazy, wild man. Right. What we really mean is, he comes off here as constantly virtuous and industrious, not as someone who likes to party. Whether that's true is another story. According to what he says here, though, in order to motivate himself to keep getting better educated and continue learning, he considers reading a pleasure as well as a practical or important activity. He equates it to more traditional "Amusements" like gambling and drinking, and uses it as a replacement for fun social time.

This is one of the few times in the Autobiography that Franklin gets into issues of gender. Even though he kind of ruins things at the end here by saying that the ultimate goal of female education is to pass business on to another man, we're going to run with what he says in the middle. That is, women should be educated in literature and arithmetic, like men, and learn about practical things that can serve them well in the business world. They shouldn't focus only decorative things like music because, in the (for this society) unlikely event they have to fend for themselves, they won't be able to cope with business unless they've been well educated. The next step, we'd like to tell Franklin, is to let women into that university of yours you've been organizing.

Believe it or not, this is revolutionary education at work. People used to have to learn Latin first, even though it's so darn difficult, before they could learn other, comparatively easier languages. Franklin offers a theory, complete with his own experience as evidence, that it's actually easier to start with simpler, building-block languages, and work your way up to the more difficult ones. (However, Franklin's such a smarty-pants, and so committed to his own education, that he doesn't really make the best "ordinary" example for his theory.)

That's right, founding a university is just that easy. Seriously, though, while Franklin makes the process sound simple and straightforward, we shouldn't let that take away from the importance of what he's doing here. His little idea that Pennsylvania needed an institution of higher learning has taken on a life of its own, receiving government support in America and Britain, gifts of land and money, and continued assistance from the Assembly. It's amazing to watch the construction of an institution that we now take for granted as prestigious and extremely well-established, and to think that, without Franklin, it wouldn't be here at all.

This just goes to show how, despite not getting to have a formal education Franklin still ends up with its benefits. These aren't just any colleges giving him degrees – he's talking about Harvard and Yale. Two of the oldest (well, then they were pretty young), most prestigious universities around, and they're giving advanced degrees to someone who dropped out of traditional school at age twelve. All that reading Franklin did really pays off here.