President Woodrow Wilson and the Purpose of a College Education
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia, in 1856. He was the son of Presbyterian minister Joseph Ruggles Wilson and his wife, Janet Woodrow Wilson. Wilson grew up in the South while his father served in churches in Augusta, Georgia, and Columbia, South Carolina. Joseph Wilson homeschooled his son, until he was 16. Both his father and his mother read to him extensively, including books by Charles Dickens and Sir Walter Scott, essays by Charles Lamb, and The Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper. “Tommy” did not learn his letters until he was nine. He learned to read when he was 11. He studied briefly at Davidson College in North Carolina, beginning at age 16.
In 1875 Woodrow Wilson entered the College of New Jersey, which is now Princeton University, graduating in 1879. After studying law at the University of Virginia and working briefly as a lawyer in Atlanta, Georgia, he married Ellen Louise Axson of Rome, Georgia. Wilson taught for a time at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, earned a Ph.D. in political science at Johns Hopkins University, and taught at Wesleyan University in Connecticut before beginning a long career at Princeton. He spent twelve years as a professor of jurisprudence and political economy before becoming the president of Princeton in 1902. He served as its president for eight years.
Wilson published several books about history and government. During his years as a professor, he was interested in entering politics. He eventually ran for governor of New Jersey.
Woodrow Wilson Campaign
for Governor of New Jersey
Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution
Wilson served as New Jersey’s governor from 1911 to 1913. In 1912 he was nominated as the presidential nominee for the Democratic Party.
Wilson campaigns from the back of a train in Bradford, Ohio, 1912.
Courtesy Library of Congress
Wilson for President Lantern Slide
Courtesy Library of Congress
Wilson won the election and became the 28th president of the United States in 1913. He served for two terms.
Woodrow Wilson by Edmund Charles Tarbell.
Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution;
transfer from the Smithsonian American Art Museum;
gift of the City of New York
through the National Art Committee, 1923
21,000 soldiers at Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio,
created this portrait of Woodrow Wilson.
Courtesy Library of Congress.
I have almost finished listening to a long audiobook biography of Wilson. I was particularly impressed with how Joseph Wilson educated his son. When I heard that Wilson learned to read at age 11, I thought about how knowing that would encourage you. Wilson remained very close to his mother and father as long as they lived. His respect for his father made me especially surprised when I learned of a belief Wilson had throughout his time as a college professor and college president. He said that the purpose of a college education is:
“to teach young men to think as differently from their fathers as possible.”
If that minister’s son, Woodrow Wilson, who deeply respected both his father and his father’s faith, believed that the purpose of a college education is to teach young men to think as differently from their fathers as possible, we can only imagine how very true—and very tragic—that philosophy is in many, many colleges today.
See to it that no one takes you captive
through philosophy and empty deception,
according to the tradition of men,
according to the elementary principles of the world,
rather than according to Christ.
Colossians 2:8