Education seems to be a constant theme in All The King's Men, whether it's the school house contract that Willie was involved in or simply learning lessons along the way. Perhaps, the most interesting revelation Jack has had so far is that which includes learning and his own education. Jack is very lucky. He was able to attend a great school and acquire an exceptional education, leading him into his interesting job in politics and with powerful boss Willie to guide him through parts of it. "Long ago Jack Burden was a graduate student, working for his Ph.D. in American History, in the State University of his native State" (p.224) but this was a different Jack Burden. He was young and naïve, and without the wisdom and experience that working along side Willie gave him. But, he was without-a-doubt, educated, well-read, and informed about the intellectual world. What Jack found out later, is that education doesn't always come from school or university. He continues to uncover this truth when he reminisces about his summer spending time with the Stantons. That was the first day that he "saw Anne and Adam as separate, individual people...and [he] saw [himself] as a person" (p.166). Jack comes to acknowledge that there is meaning and lessons to learn outside of the classroom in that scene. Learning has veils and "year by year, [time] drew off another veil to expose a meaning which [they] had only dimly surmised at first...the brightness is meaning" (p.166).
Jack, when it comes to knowledge, seems to have an almost pompous air surrounding the subject, which probably stems from having a great education while being stuck next to people like Willie, Sugar Boy, and Tiny Duffy, who, while they do learn from life experiences, lack the 'proper' education aspect. His positive revaluation comes in chapter seven though, when he returns from his little excursion out West. On the train home, Jack ponders his place in life and his willingness to envy people. "I have often envied people," he says, "People I have seen fleeting, or some people I had known a long time, a man driving a long, straight furrow across a blank field in April, or Adam Stanton. I had, at moments, envied the people who seemed to have secret knowledge" (p.437). As he travels "eastward, over desert, under the shadow of the mountains, by mesas, [and] across plateaus" he realizes that power and education don't necessarily coincide. Knowledge is the important thing, whether it comes from a school or real life experiences. He ends his thoughts with the influential idea that "with knowledge you can face up to anything, for knowledge is power" (p.437).
I agree that education / knowledge is a thread that weaves itself through the novel. Jack's pompous attitude about his knowledge put him in a position where, because of a textbook education and a lack of real life experience (as you stated), he sees himself as more intelligent than other people. The Great Twitch is a theory that he considers his own "secret knowledge" and he sees himself as better in some way because of it, or at least derives satisfaction from it.. During most of the first part of the novel ,Jack gives no thought to the idea that much of anything can be learned from other people except by scrutiny and observation, which in Jack's mind is usually comprised of a pre-disposed idea Jack has about people already. These patterns helped keep Jack in his perpetual haughtiness and self-righteous denial. Also because he has had such a good life/education he has had a cushion 5 miles deep to keep him from having to feel much of reality and adulthood, (his mother brings him money for suits when he goes to the University--which he can't handle and drops out of), and when the novel is over, Jack is finally living adulthood in a prepared, self-assured way, even if his psychological mind is far from perfectly molded, he at least can make sense of the pieces and, like Danny suggests, learn something from them and from the synthesis of experience in addition to his textbook/history major education.
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