Neglected phases of the educational doctrines of Locke and of Rousseau

Abstract

There is a present-day tendency to claim more sweeping applicability for certain ideas proposed by John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau than was suggested by these writers themselves. That we regard as generally applicable an idea which its originator did not so esteem does not prove our regard unfounded. But we should not make the mistake of not recognizing that the idea was originally conceived to have partial applicability only. Locke's Thoughts Concerning Education was expressly intended as a series of proposals for the education of boys of the gentlemen class. That Locke would not have advocated many of the things he did if he had been writing on the education of all the children of all the people seems extremely probable. For such and such a group he believed that such and such a type of training and education was desirable. The scheme may have universal validity, but it was not so claimed by Locke; it was a scheme for a certain segment of society; it was limited and not general, in the original presentation. There was no attempt on Locke's part to set forth general principles of education, as there was in the Great Didactic of Comenius, probably written about the time of Locke's birth. One does not wish to say that Locke was outlining a curriculum, and yet it was nearly that; certainly it was a kind of regimen that was presented, rather than a set of general principles. Throughout the Thoughts, Locke was constantly conscious of the social niches into which the subjects of his scheme were ultimately to be fitted. He saw clearly that the humanistic education so prevalent in his time was not suited to the purposes in mind. He made two proposals that have attracted attention. He saw them both as relevant to a particular situation. Although ordinarily considered as two discrete suggestions, they are really unified by their common relevancy to this particular situation. Locke is classified both as a social realist and as a disciplinarian. The former classification rests upon the Thoughts, and the latter most largely upon other works of Locke, although the disciplinary conception is then read back into the Thoughts by virtue of its presentation elsewhere. Hart (Discovery of Intelligence) classifies Locke only with the disciplinarians and makes direct reference only to the Thoughts for his support. Monroe (Textbook in the History of Education) does not make Locke an exemplar of social realism, but of the disciplinary theory, although he admits that certain portions of the Thoughts seem inconsistent with this view. The most satisfactory interpretation of that confusing dilemma is to recognize the