Washington Had Only A Grade-school Education

After his father passed away when he was 11 years old, the first president's formal education came to a stop. Young George was no longer given the chance to pursue an education in England while studying overseas, as his older half-brothers did. He did, however, go to Hartfield's Lower Church School. In addition to being a skilled draftsman and mapmaker, he also acquired arithmetic, trigonometry, and land surveying. He began writing with “great force” and “precise” in his early adult years, but his prose lacked comedy or wit. He had a tendency to blame others' inefficiency for his flaws and mistakes in the chase of adulation, status, and power.

As the oldest of six children in his father's second family, Washington's mother never remarried, leaving the young man to bear heavy responsibilities at a young age. She showed him how to manage a tobacco farm, and when he was 16 years old, he started working as a land surveyor. Washington would be ashamed of his inadequate education for the rest of his life.