I don't think Adams opinion on public education changed much from 1777 until his dying day, do you?
Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a humane and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant.” – John Adams, Thoughts on Government.
“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.” Benjamin Franklin
It seems Jefferson considered public education as "infrastructure" in the same vein as "roads, rivers, canals and other objects of public improvement"....and using federal land trusts to pay for it....
"....Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the
public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of Federal powers. By these operations new channels of communications will be opened between the States, the lines of separation will disappear, their interests will be identified, and their union cemented by new and indissoluble ties.
Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal, but
a public institution can alone supply those sciences which though rarely called for are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country and some of them to its preservation....
The subject is now proposed for the consideration of Congress, because if approved by the time the State legislatures shall have deliberated on
this extension of the Federal trusts, and the laws shall be passed and other arrangements made for their execution, the necessary funds will be on hand and without employment....
The present consideration of a national establishment for education particularly is rendered proper by this circumstance also, that if Congress, approving the proposition, shall yet think it more eligible to found it on a donation of lands, they have it now in their power to endow it with those which will be among the earliest to produce the necessary income. This foundation would have the advantage of being independent of war, which may suspend other improvements by requiring for its own purposes the resources destined for them.....""
State of the Union Address: Thomas Jefferson (December 2, 1806)
Federal trust lands were granted by the United States Congress to states upon entering the Union. These lands were designated to support essential public institutions,
primarily public schools....
Utah still has federal trust lands that generates revenue that can only be used for public education....
So...even though it was not an enumerated power in 1806...the federal government still believed in and had sway over public education.
