[zdragnar]

Even into the 1950's and early 60's, my dad went to a one-room school, probably until he was around 14 years old. No running water or air conditioning, the job of the first student to arrive in colder months was to start a fire in the stove to heat up the room.

Had he been born a few years earlier, it would have been unlikely for him to even graduate. 1940 was the first year that the graduation rate hit 50%.

[somenameforme]

Absolutely, although by then electricity, radio, urbanization, and other such things had already radically reshaped the overall character of society to be something much closer to today than of Jefferson's time.

Jefferson, in modern parlance, would probably be a 'pragmatic libertarian.' He envisioned independent self-reliant people, and in fact (like many of the Founding Fathers) was somewhat opposed to 'economically dependent' people, including wage laborers, voting - for fear that their vote could be coerced too easily, and that they might otherwise be irresponsible. That's where things like property ownership came from as a voting requirement.

And a major part of self reliance is an education that is both broad and fundamental which is where the 'pragmatic' part comes in, as I think fundamental libertarianism would view education as exclusively a thing of the private market, whereas Jefferson supported broad and public education precisely as part of this formula to independence.