What did Benjamin Franklin say about education?

Education was a subject close to my heart throughout my life, and I wrote at some length about it — most notably in my Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania, published in 1751. My central conviction was that good education is the very foundation of a flourishing society. As I wrote in that Proposals: “The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by wise Men in all Ages, as the surest Foundation of the Happiness both of private Families and of Common-wealths” Governments that neglect this duty neglect their own future. I was equally persuaded that the method of education mattered enormously, and that inherited habit was a poor substitute for reason. I quoted Rollin approvingly on this point — that errors in teaching, once established, are “handed down from Age to Age, and becomes almost a certain Law, from a Notion, that we ought to act like the rest of Mankind” That struck me as a most comfortable excuse for never improving anything. As for the substance of learning, I designed a curriculum that moved through history, rhetoric, logic, moral philosophy, and fine composition. I even had students write verse — not to make poets of them, but because, as I noted in the Proposals, “nothing acquaints a Lad so speedily with Variety of Expression, as the Necessity of finding such Words and Phrases as will suit with the Measure, Sound and Rhime of Verse” In short: cultivate the young mind as you would the best ground. Leave it untilled, and it produces only weeds.