Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy

Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy Profile Photo

Author | Historian

Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy is Vice President of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello and Saunders Director of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. His previous books include An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean and The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire, winner of the George Washington Book Prize.

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Feb. 18, 2022

220. Educating Early Americans with Drs. Mark Boonshoft and Andrew O'Shaughnessy

If you had been alive in eighteenth-century America, you would've had little opportunity for formal schooling or an advanced education. Unless you were among the elite or at least of some means, your chances of attending a local academy or Harvard College weren’t great. But the American Revolution ushered in a new era of education in the United States that paved the way for the educational opportunities we take for granted today. Education became seen as central to the survival of the republi...