Van Buren Administration - Education
Education
Like his immediate predecessor in the White House, Andrew Jackson, Van Buren had little formal education. As a child his studies in the crude village schoolhouse in Kinderhook, New York—which were not regularly held anyway—were often interrupted as Martin was called away to work on the family's farm or in the tavern. He attended enough school to learn a little Latin and some grammar and rhetoric, and he left the school at the age of 14 to work as an apprentice to one of the town's best lawyers, Francis Sylvester. It was while working for Sylvester that his real education would begin in the study of law.
Van Buren's lack of a formal education was rarely an issue in his political life, but it was true that late in life he regretted not having had more educational opportunities. He never seemed at ease among some of the elite statesmen in the nation's capital. Though he authored volumes of pamphlets, letters,...
[The entire page is 206 words long]
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