Mr. Jefferson was a strong opponent of the practice of sending boys
abroad to be educated. He says:
"The boy sent to Europe acquires a fondness for European luxury and
dissipation, and a contempt for the simplicity of his own country.
"He is fascinated with the privileges of the European aristocrats, and
sees with abhorrence the lovely equality which the poor enjoy with the
rich in his own country.
"He contracts a partiality for aristocracy or monarchy.
"He forms foreign friendships which will never be useful to him.
"He loses the seasons of life for forming in his own country those
friendships which of all others are the most faithful and permanent.
"He returns to his own country a foreigner, unacquainted with the
practices of domestic economy necessary to preserve him from ruin.
"He speaks and writes his native tongue as a foreigner, and is therefore
unqualified to obtain those distinctions which eloquence of the tongue
and pen insures in a free country.
"It appears to me then that an American going to Europe for education
loses in his knowledge, in his morals, in his health, in his habits and
in his happiness."
These utterances of Jefferson apply of course only to boys in the
formative period of their lives, and not to mature students who go
abroad for higher culture.