Watch Gunsmoke Season 20 Episode 17: The Fires of Ignorance Online

	IMDB Rating: 8.6/10 from 27 votes
	Release: 1975 / Gunsmoke / Season 20 / Episode 17
	Genre: Western
	Director: Victor French
	Stars: Milburn Stone, Ken Curtis, Buck Taylor
	Synopsis: One of the series' most honored episodes centers on whether youngsters have the right -- and the duty -- to get a free public education. A teenage farm boy is holed up in the corncrib reading a borrowed copy of "The Iliad" when a fox gets into the henhouse, killing three chickens. The boy's father gives him a whipping to remember and considers taking him out of school. The middle-aged schoolteacher (Allen Garfield in a prototype of his "Teachers" movie role) figures out what happened and continues to encourage the student, giving him a copy of "The Odyssey" next. The father finds the book and burns it. Then he physically hauls the son out of school, bowling over the teacher in the process. The teacher goes to Matt and swears out a warrant for the father's arrest on assault charges. In the ensuing courtroom trial, Doc (in Milburn Stone's last major role on the series) is called on the testify about the value of a public education, while the teacher drills his own student on the ...