In correcting public evils, great reliance is placed on schools.… But schools no more make statesmen than human learning makes christians. Literature & scientific attainments have never prevented the corruption of government. Knowledge derived from experience & from the evils of bad measures may produce a change of measures to correct a particular evil. But learning & sciences have no material effect in subduing ambition & selfishness, reconciling parties or subjecting private interest to the influence of a ruling preference of public good.

During his first career as a schoolteacher at the time of the American Revolution, Webster was concerned that most of his students' textbooks came from England. So in 1783 he published his own American text, A Grammatical Institute of the English Language. The Blue-Backed Speller, as it was popularly known, went on to sell nearly 100 million copies over the next century.