Literary Discussions

I got the impression from Plato's Republic that a society or state ideally would be an instrument designed to produce the finest possible citizens. Perhaps that is not the correct way to look at Plato's work. I think about the 1950s as the cold war era and a race for space which encouraged the notion that one must take "college prep" courses and people who took business or shop or electronics were somehow second rate.  I admired the St. John's College catalog notion that a person might take those studies and be a farmer or a carpenter. I suppose in a way the secular life of the mind is "like a religion."  Certainly there are novelists, poets, artists, musicians who make a living at odd jobs but devote their life to their art or writing.  I assume Jefferson wanted to found colleges, libraries and public education because one could not have a government "of the people and by the people" unless the people were educated.