The Sketch Book of Nick DeLuca

Earlier this year, the Wyoming State Legislature, driven by the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, proposed cuts to the University of Wyoming budget of up to $60 million. Though the legislature ultimately restored UW’s full funding, the question on many Wyomingites’ minds was: why? Freedom Caucus members said the reason was to “get UW’s attention.” They certainly did that, and in doing so recalled an anti-intellectual strain in Western political culture that’s historically been hostile to academia, expertise, and critical inquiry.

But given that UW is the state’s only four-year public higher-ed institution and enrollment is down since COVID, it was an unusual posture for the legislature to take.

I think one of the West’s most beloved adopted sons would also be concerned if he were alive today: Theodore Roosevelt.

“Institutions are to liberty what elementary schools are to knowledge; they bring it within the reach of the people.”

Alexis de Tocqueville

Roosevelt was a scholar who penned several volumes of US naval history, Western history, and biographies. Born and raised an Easterner in New York City, Roosevelt cut his teeth in the West after the tragic losses of his wife and mother within hours of each other. Seeking to escape his demons — he famously wrote “black care rarely sits behind the rider whose pace is fast enough.” — Roosevelt set off for his ranch in what is today’s North Dakota.

The time Roosevelt spent in the West was transformative. He adopted traits and habits characteristic of the emerging Western identity he described as “the strenuous life.” He gained an appreciation for people whose backgrounds, motivations, and perspectives were radically different from his own pampered and privileged life. His tailored buckskin and Harvard AB were hardly the credentials required to ingratiate himself with the cowboys of the Dakota Badlands; it was his raw determination that won their esteem.

Though Roosevelt did recognize the value of this social diversity, it was predominantly among white people. He was an imperialist, nationalist, and chauvinist. His views on race and gender ultimately restricted who he thought was fit for US citizenship and should be the beneficiary of a US education: predominantly Anglo-Saxon males. 

Roosevelt’s remarks at the Indian School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, mirrored these prejudices when he said:

“I am glad to see the Indian children being educated as these are educated so as to come more and more into the body of American citizenship, to fit themselves for work in the home, work in the fields, for leading decent, clean lives, for making themselves self-supporting, for being good providers and good housekeepers; in other words, for becoming American citizens just like other American citizens.”

The implication was that Indigenous peoples must assimilate into Anglo-American cultural identities for them to become good citizens, not that Anglo-American cultures should accept and tolerate Indigenous peoples as they are.

But the principle of providing sound education to promote citizenship, though applied imperfectly by Roosevelt, has since been claimed by a larger circle of Americans. It is that inheritance Wyoming risks abandoning.

---

Roosevelt’s hardscrabble experience in the West later crystallized his commitment to rugged labor and what he described as a “practical” education: not an education grounded in curricula but one rooted in toil, industry, and skill-building. Indeed, the Fargo Forum reported in 1910 that Roosevelt referred to his time in North Dakota as his “post-graduate course.”

In 1903 Roosevelt embarked on a sweeping eight-week, 14,000-mile tour of the West to espouse the dual importance of education and civic engagement. (It was also an opportunity for him to promote the 1902 Reclamation Act, and champion national parks, national forests, and resource conservation.) To Roosevelt, an educated American and a good citizen were one and the same.

On April 2, Roosevelt launched his tour at Northwestern University where he set the tone for his speeches Western speeches to come. The best thing colleges and universities could instill in their students, he said, was “character, a fine and high type of citizenship. That is what we must strive to produce in our universities.” In Roosevelt’s view, schools didn’t provide education so students could merely gain and retain knowledge; they offered students the direction to apply that knowledge on behalf of their countrymen.

Roosevelt spoke of these same ideals from the steps of Old Main at UW on May 30. As beneficiaries of a state-funded education, he told students in attendance, they owed it to themselves and their fellow Americans to pay it forward. By investing educational resources in its students, the State of Wyoming entered into a compact with them. In return, he proposed, students must offer Wyoming “the service of a good citizen.” And he warned Americans not to feel entitled to the privileges of citizenship. Rather, they should contribute a service to the country to exercise those privileges.

Just as Roosevelt bridged the cultural divide between East and West, his belief in the bond between education and citizenship bridged generations. In fact, it evoked the very founding of the nation.

In the early stages of the American Revolution, colonial patriots modeled the prototypical American citizen as the antithesis of the typical British subject. A government of the people by the people could only function if its citizenry was informed of history and current events, and took active and energetic participation in government. Alexis de Tocqueville witnessed this American cultural aspect during his visit to the US in 1831; using the New England form of local government, the town meeting, as an example, he observed that “institutions are to liberty what elementary schools are to knowledge; they bring it within the reach of the people.” Roosevelt’s 1903 speeches on education reflected this tradition, fusing together the tenets of education and civic responsibility.

Almost 100 years after de Tocqueville, Roosevelt’s niece, Eleanor, made this same observation. In April 1930, Eleanor published an essay titled “Good Citizenship: The Purpose of Education.” In it she argued that education and citizenship were inseparable, much like her uncle Theodore did during his 1903 tour of the West. Citing “Theodore Roosevelt’s example,” Eleanor supported the idea that “‘a service’ was owed to the country in peace, and that this could only be rendered satisfactorily when every citizen took an interest in good government.”

If Wyoming’s leaders believe, as Roosevelt did, that education forms the backbone of democratic citizenship, then disinvestment was not a pragmatic consideration. Instead, it stood in contrast to the enduring Western civic tradition that braids together education with citizenship, and has since been extended to a wider swath of Americans.

I agree with Roosevelt when he told the crowd gathered at UW: “People of Wyoming, I believe in you and in your future.” 

It’s not clear that the Wyoming Legislature does.