John Locke 9781472541413, 9780826484055

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Series Editor’s Preface

Education is sometimes presented as an essentially practical activity. It is, it seems, about teaching and learning, curriculum and what goes on in schools. It is about achieving certain ends, using certain methods, and these ends and methods are often prescribed for teachers, whose duty it is to deliver them with vigor and fidelity. With such a clear purpose, what is the value of theory? Recent years have seen politicians and policy makers in different countries explicitly denying any value or need for educational theory. A clue to why this might be is offered by a remarkable comment by a British Secretary of State for Education in the 1990s: ‘having any ideas about how children learn, or develop, or feel, should be seen as subversive activity’. This pithy phrase captures the problem with theory: it subverts, challenges, and undermines the very assumptions on which the practice of education is based. Educational theorists, then, are trouble-makers in the realm of ideas. They pose a threat to the status quo and lead us to question the common sense presumptions of educational practices. But this is precisely what they should do because the seemingly simple language of schools and schooling hides numerous contestable concepts that in their different usages reflect fundamental disagreements about the aims, values, and activities of education. Implicit within the Continuum Library of Educational Thought is an assertion that theories and theorizing are vitally important for education. By gathering together the ideas of some of the most influential, important and interesting educational thinkers, from the Ancient Greeks to contemporary scholars, the series has the ambitious task of providing an accessible yet authoritative resource for a generation of students and practitioners. Volumes within the series are written by acknowledged leaders in the field, who were selected both for their scholarship and their ability to make often complex ideas accessible to a diverse audience. It will always be possible to question the list of key thinkers that are represented in this series. Some may question the inclusion of certain thinkers;

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some may disagree with the exclusion of others. That is inevitably going to be the case. There is no suggestion that the list of thinkers represented within the Continuum Library of Educational Thought is in any way definitive. What is incontestable is that these thinkers have fascinating ideas about education, and that taken together, the Library can act as a powerful source of information and inspiration for those committed to the study of education. Richard Bailey Roehampton University, London

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Foreword

John Locke’s writings on education still contain much to inspire and instruct the modern educator and parent. We might start with what, in these days of guidelines that detail the approved way of teaching every part of the curriculum in many countries of the world, seems his extraordinary modesty in offering only Some Thoughts Concerning Education. We might continue with the fact that Locke has no romantic view of childhood: for him it is education that turns the self-centred and demanding infant into the rounded adult. In this respect he still speaks to the modern world where commercial pressures and the reconstruction of the child as infant consumer make ‘progressive’ theories of education, based on the innate and healthy curiosity of the child, increasingly problematic. While doubting that children will want to learn unless they are properly taught, Locke is far from inhumane. He understands that childhood has its own needs and what we would now call its own developmental psychology: for example, he does not doubt that children need play and toys to play with (Some Thoughts . . . §39). But this is not child-centredness, for the education he proposes has in view not the happy and fulfilled child but rather the civilized and accomplished adult the child will grow into. This will not be achieved through didactic methods. Children are to learn the customs and ways of the new world they are born into not by being taught rules, but through practice; and if the occasion for practice does not occur naturally then it must be constructed. The teacher’s skill thus lies in finding and constructing such occasions, and joining the process of habituation to the active development of the child’s power of reason. The key is that the child should be brought to want to learn. For Locke education is centrally what we would now call ‘moral education’: its aim is what he calls virtue. Attention must therefore be paid to the strength and vigour of the child’s body, ‘so that it may be able to obey and execute the Orders of the Mind’ (Some Thoughts . . . §31). The mind is to be set right not simply for its own sake, but so that it will assent only to ‘what may be suitable to the Dignity and Excellency of a rational Creature’ (ibid.).

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This approach makes sense of much that may seem odd to the modern reader. Locke gives advice on a range of subjects, including children’s diet, sleep and footwear, the consequences of sitting on the cold ground when hot after exercise (invariably fatal, it seems) and the importance of regular movements of the bowels. We would not expect to find this kind of thing in a modern book on education. But for Locke ‘education’ has more the sense of ‘upbringing’ (the German Erziehung ) than of school-based education in the modern sense. He is writing for parents rather than teachers as we now understand that term; he is writing for people whose sons (this is the eighteenth century, and daughters do not figure prominently) are to grow up into gentlemen under the individual guidance of tutors and of their parents: a class of people who are interested in the wider question of how their offspring are to grow into satisfactory adulthood, and not simply in their intellectual attainments. This too, unfortunate gender bias aside, has perhaps something to say to us today. It is a major strength of Moseley’s book, then, that he so carefully and thoroughly sets Locke’s educational writings in their context. This involves a sensitive reading of what Locke understood by ‘education’. It involves situating his ideas in the intellectual and practical world of the eighteenth century. Above all Moseley’s book draws out the many connections between Locke’s educational writings and his other texts. Locke wrote on, among other subjects, politics and what we would now call psychology, and was keenly aware of the democratic implications of his empiricism. The idea that the senses are a reliable guide to sure knowledge gives the ordinary individual new dignity, for virtually all of us can employ our senses. And if our understanding is to a significant extent delivered to us through our own senses and experience of the world, if we are nine-tenths a tabula rasa or blank sheet on which experience inscribes knowledge and moral capacity, then care must be taken that the process of inscription goes well. That process is what we call education. It is this detailed and scholarly drawing of connections that distinguishes this book and more than justifies Moseley’s claim that Locke richly repays the study of those interested in education today. Richard Smith Professor of Education University of Durham

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Introduction

Born in 1632 in the quiet Somerset village of Wrington, into one of the most politically tumultuous and intellectually revolutionary centuries in English history, John Locke rose from the ranks of the minor gentry to become a thoroughly respected scholar of great breadth and insight, a scientist, philosopher, and an influential and respected educationalist. His educational writings, published in 1693 as Some Thoughts Concerning Education (hereafter Thoughts), remain enjoyable and applicable today. This is partly due to Locke’s enthusiasm for an encouraging education free from fear and pointless subjects but also because of his carefully constructed theory of knowledge in his monumental An Essay on Human Understanding . The Essay synthesized and gave logical credence to the evolving scientific revolution of his day, providing a philosophical defence of empiricism and the importance of the senses in acquiring knowledge. Moreover, his philosophical writings were complemented by his own educational experiences as a tutor at Oxford and private tutor to various families. But Locke was not just a teaching academic turning his thoughts to educational matters: he was also a practising physician with experience as an obstetrician and paediatrician. John Locke is also famous for his libertarian political work, The Two Treatises, which he kept anonymous until his dying days, but which has arguably fired debate and political change throughout the past three centuries in the clamour for rights and defence against government encroachments. Similarly, his Letters on Toleration helped to foster the eventual legal separation of church and state in the USA and their de facto political separation across much of Europe. Locke, it can be readily gleaned, was a man of scholarly as well as practical breadth and the student can pick up one of many threads to his life and follow a sufficiently engrossing story. Lockean scholarship is correspondingly huge and it is enmeshed in a similarly pregnant century in which books, manuscripts, correspondence, and memoirs abound addictively for

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Intellectual Biography

the researcher of the seventeenth century. A fortuitous finding of Locke’s manuscripts in the early part of last century (kept by a descendant of one of his nephews) has attracted historians of thought and there has been much recent academic revision of some of the key points in Locke’s development and maturation. Locke was a diligent organizer – hoarder, one is tempted to say – of his documents: receipts, rents collected, letters, drafts, etc, to the tune of 3,000 letters and documents. In itself, the collection is a good reflection of the assiduous meticulousness of the man, but it also provides a fascinating insight into the times: the student who studies a particular aspect of Locke’s thought is highly recommended to branch out and enjoy another side of it, whether it be his personal letters on education to the Clarke family, his medical notes on childbirth, his purchase accounts at Westminster School, or his political activity during the Restoration. For those desirous of learning about his pedagogic enquiries and prescriptions, this work provides an overview of those significant and pertinent links constructed across his philosophy, exploring how his explicit educational thoughts link to contemporary educational norms, as well as how his reflections on knowledge, science, religion, morality and politics also relate directly and indirectly to a Lockean philosophy of education. Locke’s life is of great interest and relevance too. Locke moved from his village in the western county of Somerset, close to the important trading harbour of Bristol, to Westminster School in the City of London, and from there to Oxford, where, had he followed a quiet destiny of scholarship and risen to the position of College Don, we would not be surprised. However, an auspicious meeting with the ascending politician, Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper (Earl of Shaftesbury, hereafter Ashley), changed Locke’s life in many areas, providing him with the experience and, arguably, the confidence to write on broader concerns. Their friendship also propelled him into higher political and intellectual circles; he travelled and lived in various places around France and Holland, meeting some of the Continent’s great thinkers and scientists; he even suffered exile in Holland because of his connection to Ashley during the reign of James II. He returned to England following the Glorious Revolution and eventually retired to the county of Essex and the home of a long-time friend and Platonic love, Lady Damaris Masham, where he died in 1704. Travel provides new experiences and cause for reflection, as Locke himself would teach us in his Thoughts on Education, but his life also coincides with political upheavals that cannot be ignored in piecing together an overview of Locke ‘the man’ and Locke ‘the educator’. Civil war (1642–50) erupted across Britain between Royalists and Parliamentarians in his tenth year, and his county of Somerset, generally Royalist in persuasion, was periodically of military focus and intent for both sides – but more importantly, the

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Introduction

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war brought to the fore deeper questions concerning the Protestant Reformation and the relationship between the state and church and a man’s conscience, as well as the role and duties of political authority. Locke’s primary intellectual drive was to seek the truth by understanding how we come to know things and what kind of life we ought to live – both questions replicating into minor and major themes across the span of his scholarship, experiments, and advice on matters ethical, religious, political, and educational. The wars disrupted the career of many an intellectual, theologian, and academic colleague, as did the various political tumults made by both sides, who, when in power, tended to rid institutions of opposing thinkers or influential teachers. Yet Locke managed to steer a very prudential path – or was at times fortunately placed to be protected or defended by well-placed friends – to ensure that he remained in the intellectual and scientific hub. That is, until Ashley finally fell out of power; but again fortune was with Locke, for his temporary exile placed him in circles that proved eminently suitable for the ensuing Glorious Revolution (1688) and the overthrow of James II. Fortune is naturally capricious, so it is not surprising that Locke’s recommendations and prescriptions on education underline the importance of forming a gentlemanly attitude of good manners and practical education, which provides both a stable yet pragmatic foundation to life and an attractive personality to others in all manners of business. The gentleman’s education ought to enable him to be a man of business as well as possessing a capable personality to secure his ease of passage through life’s tumults and opportunities, when reliance on self and a host of trustworthy friends may become vital not just for expanding wealth and ties but also, we can add, ultimately survival in a changing world. While the seventeenth century presented tumultuous political storms and the violence of civil war, today’s shattering of traditional cultures and the ever-shifting ebbs and flows of commerce and fashion – and hence of personal prospects – can be obviously linked to the kind of life Locke would have us lead: a peaceful and stable life based on a strong education in what is useful as well as in the cultivation of qualities required to engage with peoples of all backgrounds, stations, and trades. The details will naturally be picked up in this book. This first section presents an overview of Locke’s historical and intellectual context and the relevant and identifiable influences, as far as we may surmise, on the development of his own thinking. First, his own educational experience is of paramount interest and importance for the development of his pedagogy, and we trace his upbringing in Somerset, his removal to Westminster School and culture under its prominent and influential headmaster Richard Busby, and his success in securing a place at Christ Church, Oxford, where Locke

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rose to become one of the college’s capable academics but, more critically, where he became an enthusiastic participant of the scientific circles quietly developing there. Second, we chart the sudden change in his political thinking, especially under the patronage and friendship of Ashley, without whom, some commentators contend, there would have been no ‘Locke’, particularly the quiet yet sharply critical mind that developed alongside his libertarian political philosophy. In doing so, we review the wider intellectual context by looking at the dominant thoughts of the humanist renaissance, the scientific revolution, and the general philosophical background to his century, noting the specific influences of Bacon, Descartes, and Montaigne. Accordingly, we draw upon this overview for a look at particular educational methods and schools against which Locke was very much in revolt.

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Educational Experience

Like several key contemporary writers on education (notably Montaigne), Locke was not encouraged by the educational system which he experienced. Much time, he argued in the Thoughts, was lost learning useless information or practising the art of disputation for no intellectual gain, and the natural love of learning was typically squashed under the threatening rod of the schoolmaster. His disapproving comments on education certainly reflect the critical temper of the times, but his influence did not remain with sympathetic readers: various elements of Locke’s opera form such an integral part of the great cultural and political flow of modern life that his educational ideas still impact on thought, sometimes not in the way he intended or even, in some parts, would have liked. The emphasis on bodily and mental health, the rejection of learning the impractical or what the child has no aptitude for, and the focus on cultivating gentlemanly or virtuous qualities are still with us and detectable through the centuries. But his ideal vision of well-do-do families enjoying the services of a personal tutor with whom they can cooperate to secure the most effective education for the children, designed and adapted to the individual pupil’s intellectual abilities and dispositions, has been swamped by the rise of mass education slavishly following national curricula, which are in turn politically infused with ephemeral fashions: modern mass education is far removed from Locke’s child- and family-centred pedagogy. In the United Kingdom today (2006), many parents certainly employ tutors – but often for assisting their children’s passage through a multitude of tests and exams that Locke would have decried as inept contrivances and distractions that act to put most children off learning for enjoyment. The Lockean ideal, which Locke accepts can rarely be universal given the varying classes in society, is for what commentators call the middle class – those who are financially comfortable enough to secure the services of a tutor: a service which therefore could not be available to all. Yet it would be wrong to dismiss Locke’s educational thinking as relating only to

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the Marxist bˆete-noire – the bourgeoisie: the particularities prescribed can always transcend class and income, for he emphasizes the vital role that any parent can play in their child’s development, and arguably the Lockean ideal resurfaces in the schools of Maria Montessori. But it was not just on academic matters either that Locke enthused: he stressed the need for good nutrition, exercise, and fresh air, as well as for learning a trade. In many respects, Locke advised the gentlemanly class to take a leaf out of the less artificial methods of the yeomanry and farming classes, whose children were seen to be hardier and more self-sufficient mentally and morally and thereby more adaptable and independent for their work too. It is therefore not an extraordinary conjecture to claim that Locke’s own experience of early childhood – and his later reflections upon that time – were generally happy; his school and university experiences, while certainly developing the man, can be read as contrasting with the simple beginnings in Somerset, but they also opened up Locke’s mind both in the immediate power of the contrast and in the indelible influence of his heads of school and college. We begin his educational experience with Locke’s childhood, and chart its progress.

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Somerset

Locke was born on 29 August 1632, in the village of Wrington, Somerset in a small cottage belonging to his maternal grandparents on the north side of the church. (In 1868, it was, incidentally, being used as a school house.) His parents apparently only stayed three days in the cottage (it was common for expectant mothers to return to their mother’s house for their ‘lying in’), for they removed ten miles to the east to live in Belluton, a pleasant Tudor farmhouse overlooking the market village of Pensford and having commanding views of the gentle Mendip Hills. The house of his birth was very basic compared to Belluton, a house that had belonged to his grandfather, Nicholas Locke, who had left the place to his son upon the death of his first wife, Frances, and moved to a more spacious home with his second wife, Elizabeth Heale. The house could be described in modern language as having three bedrooms, a kitchen, utility rooms, three reception rooms, and outbuildings: comfortably well appointed for Puritan England, with a library (worth £5/14), and upstairs the bedrooms possessed curtains, flock beds, rugs, and pillows (Cranston 1957, 6–7). Belluton lies at the northern end of Pensford, and in fact fell under the parish of Stanton Drew, which means that the Locke family would have attended church in either Pensford or in Stanton Drew. Stanton Drew is an ancient place of worship, and even has a druidical stone circle, although Locke, being of a more utilitarian mind, never seems to have been too observant of the history or aesthetics of the places that he visited or lived in, so its peculiarity does not warrant a mention in his writings. While such places typically attract myths and ghost stories, Locke was emphatically deriding of such tales, advising parents to avoid telling their children frightening tales (Thoughts, §138) and remarking on the impact such tales can have on undermining confidence (Essay, II.xxxiii.10–16). Locke’s family was of good local standing; his uncles Peter and Edward became successful businessmen as a tanner and a brewer respectively, whereas his father lived more modestly as a lawyer to the local magistracy.

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Somerset was one of the most populous and rich counties of the country, yet despite its affluence gained from hard work and a division of labour, perspicuous social strata (albeit highly flexible since Tudor times) permeated social relations – each individual had a moral superior to look up to in a hierarchy that ended with the monarch, whose sole superior was God (Harris 1994, Ch.1). It is vital to be aware of this social context, for Locke wrote his educational writings explicitly for the gentry class, who, he argued, should deal with inferiors and superiors appropriately and avoiding condescending or humbling themselves. Locke’s father, also John, had married Agnes Keene, a tanner’s daughter from Wrington. Wrington became historically important, for its incumbent rector, Dr Samuel Crook (see below), managed to attract the legal and political weight of the archbishopric and monarch to his parochial affairs, a story that would not have been missed by the local gentry and may have formed part of Locke junior’s attitude to authority that was released in his later years. Some commentators place much emphasis on Crook’s sermons in Locke’s intellectual development; certainly they reflect the independent spirit of the Puritan movement and we recognize several elements of Locke’s later thoughts in Crook’s passages, but, as Locke had moved to a different parish over ten miles away after his baptism, the influence can only have been indirect – possibly through his father possessing Crook’s published sermons or through local oral channels. The impact of religion cannot be ignored in Locke’s thinking: he was born a Puritan, became a more tolerant Latitudinarian, and maintained the primacy of religious faith throughout his life. Because he advised both in the Thoughts and in the Essay that the young pupil should be taught faith prior to learning any knowledge of the secular world (direct learning taking a low priority next to religion and becoming a virtuous person), it is appropriate to consider the religious context that so influenced Locke’s youth.

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Puritanism

The Puritan movement emerged in the sixteenth century as a continuing programme of ecclesiastical reform through the voices of various theologians who sought to purify the Protestant churches of any Catholic remnants. The German Priest Martin Luther had initiated the Reformation of the Papacy in 1513, with his famous 95 theses criticizing the institution of the Church and the sale of indulgences, while stressing the inner spirituality of Christianity. The papacy had become corrupt and divided over the prior two centuries and criticism had been fomenting; it boiled over with Luther’s tentative requests for much-needed reform. Another branch of the evolving Protestant movement came from Jean Calvin, who influenced those who became Presbyterians in the British Isles; Calvin claimed that only a few, predestined people could be saved by grace of God, a belief that gave followers a belief in their moral supremacy over others. Skipping the details, Henry VIII of England split from the Roman Church in 1534 to found what became the Anglican Church. In Anglicanism, the Head of the Church was no longer to be the Pope but the monarch, which of course meant that problems over ecclesiastical and secular jurisdictions were nominally resolved by the merging of the state and church; however, problems did not disappear as some had hoped (or feared), for the monarch had to act within the understanding of the law of the land and, like American Presidents and Supreme Court Judges, often had to deal with incumbent Archbishops, Bishops, etc, whose reading of the Anglican doctrine could differ. The Anglican Church’s history was initially rent by attempts to return the country to Catholicism during the reign of Mary Tudor. On the accession of her sister, Elizabeth I, a compromising Act of Uniformity was forged in which a particularly English version of Christianity, infusing Protestant and Catholic elements, was imposed on the English. This infuriated Puritans, who wished to rid the Church of its Catholic elements; and while Elizabeth tended to permit the quiet worship of Dissenters (and implicitly Catholics, so long as they did not challenge her rule), the law prohibited the advancement of those seeking greater independence from the state. From 1566,

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Elizabeth insisted on a uniformity of liturgy and clerical dress (the latter was an issue of which Locke later wrote an apology while at Oxford), and this prompted the Presbyterian movement, which sought to decentralize the Church so it could adapt to the local wishes of clergy and laity; and this in turn encouraged the Separatist movement, which sought disestablishment from the state. While further monarchical intervention led to some dissenting leaders being arrested, nonetheless many Protestants of puritanical leanings achieved notable offices in Oxford, Cambridge and pulpits across the land. Hopes of a more tolerant atmosphere towards dissenters under James I (VI of Scotland) soon faded; although James had been brought up on Calvinist Protestantism, he argued that the Church and State must be one: ‘no bishop, no king,’ was his retort to the Puritans. Some dissenters were pushed out of office, but James’s absolutist reply also encouraged more radical groups to discuss the absence of bishop and king, while one congregation from Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, famously migrated to the American colonies on the Mayflower . Matters became more intricate and politically delicate with the advance of an anti-Puritan party within the Anglican Church under the auspices of William Laud. Laud was a follower of Arminianism (after the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius, 1560–1609), which expressed the salvation of all, in contrast to Calvinist salvation of the predestined few. Laud persecuted the Puritans, whose attempts at toleration and compromise with the state church could now be viewed as having failed. On the accession of Charles I, Laud became Archbishop of Canterbury and sought to impose this new uniformity on the country. He began with Scotland, which prompted a riot in Edinburgh and the raising of an army that invaded England and defeated Charles’s forces and demanded compensation before they would return! In 1640, when Locke was eight, Charles had to reconvene – for the first time since 1629 – a very suspicious Parliament, but before adding that ‘the rest is history’, to see how this is woven into Locke’s early life, we must return to Locke’s locality and Dr Crook’s independent stand against the ecclesiastical authorities.

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Dr Samuel Crook

Despite the lack of direct influence on Locke’s thinking, Dr Samuel Crook, who baptized Locke, is nonetheless worth noting, because right at the beginning of Locke’s life we get an indication of the political and theological problems that will beset the reception of Locke’s writings and which also provide a flavour of contemporary issues. Crook was a Cambridge graduate and Fellow of Pembroke and Emmanuel, a man who was locally popular as a prodigious preacher, but whose independent spirit earned the ire of his Bishop, William Pierce (1632–70) and Royalist-leaning colleagues. As a Puritan, Crook looked down upon breaches of the Sabbath; unfortunately his parishioners preferred to enjoy their Sunday recreations and played the notorious fives, a ball game customarily played by two teams of five in the churchyard on the northern side where there were no graves, but which nonetheless caused theological and often physical desecration (Strutt 1903, 82–3). The game, a form of hand tennis or volleyball with a line for a net, had infuriated churchmen for at least 200 years, and it is interesting to note in passing that Locke did not recommend the game in his later notes on physical education! The local judges agreed with Dr Crook and prohibited the games, but the Bishop of Bath and Wells was furious at the judicial usurpation of his ecclesiastical authority; however, his appeal was rejected by the Lord Chief Justice, whose decision now attracted the irate attention of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, and the supportive King, Charles I, who had re-instigated the sporting traditions of the English with the reissue of his father’s (James I, VI of Scotland) Book of Sports. The permitted sports were constrained to ‘Dauncing of men and women, Archery, Leaping, Vaulting, May games, Whitson Ales, Morisdances, and setting up Maypoles’ and interestingly bowling was to be prohibited alongside bear- and bull-baiting. Notably, in James’s time at least, magistrates were empowered to enter the houses of anyone thought to be playing dice, bowls, tennis or football! Charles ordered a proclamation to be read in churches up and down the land giving people the liberty

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to play their games after Morning Service. (This seemingly liberal act may have acted as a slight distraction to permit the forbidden Catholics to enjoy their rights – something never far from the Stuart dynasty’s mind). The proclamation divided the country morally, with both sides intolerant to the other’s claims; the lines were gradually being drawn for the future Civil War, and the causation ran serendipitously (along with other things, of course) from Locke’s baptism minister. ‘I no sooner perceived myself in the world but I found myself in a storm,’ (‘First Tract’) Locke wrote, looking back on the political maelstrom that blew up in his youth. Locke, incidentally, in his early Oxford writings, initially sided with the King’s prerogative in matters indifferent – i.e. petty religious matters, which would have included the rights over sports; but later, after meeting Ashley, he became more inclined to permit the individual to choose his own religion and, correspondingly, his own pastimes and hobbies, although as an educator he was keen to point out the benefits of some hobbies over others for children and young adults, and he never apparently favoured team sports. The war that broke out whirled around his village (Crook, although a man of strong moral stature, tended to side with whichever troops were in or near the village, indubitably rendering unto Caesar . . .); fighting took place at Lansdown and nearby Devizes. The local city of Bristol was a Royalist stronghold during the war, held by Prince Rupert for a while, but it fell to the Parliamentarians in 1645: Locke had just turned 13. The battle raged only six miles to the north, which, given Locke’s epistemological emphasis on childhood associations, cannot but have left their mark on his mind.

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Parents

John Locke senior and Agnes produced two more children, but only one, Thomas, survived, and he died in his mid twenties. Locke’s father was austere and strict in his manner of treating the boy, but as he grew older, his father gradually relaxed his bearing, adapting, as Locke was to see it later on in life, properly to his son’s maturation. As a result, although he may have been in fearful awe of him as a child, Locke grew to respect him as an ideal father. Reported by Lady Damaris Masham: Mr Lockes Father us’d a conduct towards him when young, that he of keeping him in much Awe, and at a Distance whilst he was a Boy; but relaxing still by degrees of that Severitie as he grew up to be a man: till . . . he liv’d perfectly with him as a Friend.(Masham 2003, 167) The salutary lesson in paternal relations resurfaces explicitly in Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education and his advice to keep children at a distance when they are young, removing that distance gradually by degrees as they mature. His father apologized to Locke later for having once used the rod more passionately than he ought to have. However, we are missing the influence of Locke’s mother; although in his educational writings Locke referred to examples he had learned from adaptive mothers rearing and teaching their children academically and morally, he did not have much to say about his own mother. Agnes was nine years older than her husband and gave birth to John when she was 35. She was, in her son’s words, ‘a very pious woman and an affectionate mother’, and from what we can tell of Locke’s appearance probably a handsome woman; a great niece commented that she ‘was a most beautiful woman, as was the family’ (Cranston 1957, 13); she died when Locke was 22. Was there a lack of maternal influence, as Quick thought (Quick 1880, Introduction, ix)? It is difficult to assess the impact on him personally: there is evidence, nonetheless, that she was certainly active in his early childhood education – she gave him a family recipe book which he used for medical concoctions

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as well as notes on scientific observations; she also provided several recipes to his collection (Dewhurst 1963, 5). Respect to parents was presumed in Puritan culture, with ‘Honour Thy Father and Thy Mother’ being the wellunderstood Fifth Commandment. Although women were decidedly lower in status than men – in their relevant classes that is – Locke was not so disparaging of them as other contemporaries, which may reflect a contented family: in the First Treatise, he reminds his reader that Sir Robert Filmer, who presented a defence of patriarchy, had omitted the ‘and thy Mother’ in his rendition of the Fifth Commandment. The form of Locke’s early education is not known; we can surmise that he was taught at home, perhaps by his father or possibly by a local tutor – although Locke did not mention having or being influenced by one as he did with his being influenced by his father’s attitude; conjecturally, he may have attended a local school in Pensford, at the church perhaps, or in Stanton Drew, but again, the pertinent information is missing. His father possessed a library of sorts and his mother was interested in helping him to learn, but beyond that we can only guess. From his Puritan background, he inherited a scepticism towards authority and a trust in his own mind and the power of reason, but his scholarly break came from his father’s connections to Alexander Popham. Locke senior did not improve himself socially or financially during his life; nonetheless, employment by Sir Alexander Popham proved exceedingly lucky for his son, for his loyalty to Popham secured a place at Westminster School for the young Locke. When civil war broke out, John Locke senior gained employment as captain in Popham’s cavalry. Popham, the local member of parliament for Bath (several miles east of Pensford), had raised a company of horses for the Parliamentary army under the command of William Waller (Oxford Graduate, later MP for Westminster in 1660 and political contemporary of Ashley). Popham and Locke seem to have fought in a victorious battle in Somerset, probably at Lansdown Hill, when Parliamentary forces defeated the Marquis of Hertford’s troops; but Popham’s horses were routed in Waller’s defeat at Roundway Down, near Devizes, in July 1643. It was reported of Popham’s men that they had earlier ransacked Wells Cathedral – perhaps the troops expressing their revenge on the incumbent bishop who had taken on their local hero, Dr Crook. Popham returned to civilian life and to politics, rewarding his captain with new duties as clerk for the sewers (which was no slight as the modern mind may read it), and in 1647 Popham extended a further reward to Captain Locke to offer a place at Westminster School for his son, who was now aged 15 and a good age to be removed to a traditional place of learning.

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Westminster – Busby

Popham’s patronage enabled Locke to go to Westminster School in the autumn of 1647; at the age of 15 he had five years to complete, and many of his class colleagues would have been two or three years younger. It may seem extraordinary to the modern educated reader, thrown into an age cohort system in which we rise through the ranks of scholarly progress on the virtues of our date of birth rather than on any aptitude or learning, but schools started pupils off according to their academic ability rather than their age: indeed, one could even go up to Oxford or Cambridge at the impressionable and apparently, given the use of the cane, tiresome age of 14. Westminster School, re-established by Elizabeth I upon an old monastic school in 1560, flourished under the headship of Dr Richard Busby. Through his insistence on exacting scholarly virtue, Busby attracted some of the pre-eminent families of the aristocracy and began a fashion for sending their boys to such public schools rather than employing a teacher or sending them to a local private school (Tanner 1934, 14). (‘Public school’ merely meant that it drew on pupils from beyond its locality, hence the usual requirement to board.) The disciplinarian and scholarly emphasis of the school produced an impressive list of renowned graduates, who filled prominent political and theological positions; it also produced, in the seventeenth century John Dryden, George Jeffreys, Robert Hooke, and Christopher Wren, as well as John Locke. Busby’s influence on Locke is critical for understanding his educational thinking later on in life – arguably, Locke owed a great deal to the Westminster headmaster and the school both professionally and academically, for without them it would have been impossible for the young man of gentry parents and middling income to have been accepted at Christ Church and to have studied and explored as much as he did. In his later pedagogic reflections, Locke indubitably reacted against the harshly narrow curriculum of Westminster and jokingly threatened to have one his correspondent’s boys

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sent to the school to be whipped into discipline and learning, but the ethos of discipline and industry that Busby insisted upon certainly did not leave Locke’s mind, and reappears in his own prescriptions (as we shall see). Dr Richard Busby (1606–95) was an ardent Royalist but tolerant of the Puritan groups; he took over the previous headship of John Williams, who was fired after allegedly insulting his lifelong enemy, the Westminster Prebendary and later Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud (‘the little Urchin, meddling Hocus-Pocus’, he had penned). The seventeenth century was a fractious and delicate time, when sentiments were likely to be swiftly roused and also promptly condemned with sometimes terrible consequences: Locke was all too aware of the fine line he had to tread, a sensitivity that did not leave him, as we later find him reluctantly publishing and even refusing to allow his name to be added to his work. Busby was born in Lincolnshire, attended Westminster, won a coveted King’s Scholarship, and proceeded to Christ Church, Oxford, where he tutored (and acted in plays!) until 1638, when he became Headmaster of Westminster at the relatively young age of 32. He was, like Crook, certainly a man of independent thought, but a Royalist to the core (‘untaintedly loyal’, said a former pupil and later friend, Dr Robert South); one would have expected trouble for him during the Interregnum of the Parliamentary Commonwealth, especially when all public servants were expected to sign the National Covenant – Busby strategically called in sick that day, which the governors of the school graciously accepted. Busby was a man dedicated to education and the improvement of the boys under his tutelage: all else, he once said, was the province of the governors. Whatever their reasons (perhaps oversight), the Parliamentary government that ruled the country from 1649–60 did not press for his removal, despite Dr John Owen of Christ Church, aide to Cromwell and Vice Chancellor of Oxford (1653–57), saying of him, ‘it would never be well with the nation until this school was suppressed; for that it naturally bred men up to an opposition to the Government.’ Indeed, one of Busby’s lasting traits was to inculcate an independent mind in his pupils, with its usual unexpected results: upon meeting a former pupil, Philip Henry, who had resigned from the establishment Anglican church to join a Dissenting branch of Protestantism, Busby inquired: ‘Prythee, Child [sic], what made thee a nonconformist?’ Henry replied, ‘Truly, Sir, you made me one, for you taught me those things which hindered me from conforming’ (Tanner 1934, 16). Locke – emanating from a rural Puritan mentality, thrown into a classics-teaching Royalist school – ended up with a liberal philosophy and a strong disdain for the use of the classics for most children. The Busbian independence of spirit – rather than sheer rebelliousness (he survived by putting down an attempted coup d’´ecole by Under Master

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Edward Bagshaw to call Busby before the Monitors for his behaviour) – and the respect one owes to conscience, so familiar from the local sermons of his baptismal Puritan Minister, Dr Samuel Crook, were thoroughly inculcated in Locke. Busby taught the boys to be sceptical of persuasive arguments and never to accept what we now term as political spin, two virtues that remained steadfast in Locke’s reflections on all subjects, including, ironically but quite properly, the need to send children to schools in the first place. Locke began his formal schooling as a first-form peregrinus taking lodgings with a Mrs Susan Bates until his election in 1650 to the King’s Scholarship, which gave him a room in the School. In his first year Locke, being of a relatively mature age, no doubt worked diligently to catch up with the required studies to overcome any handicap of a country boy’s education. The school day began at 5.15am when the boys were called for prayers, after which they washed; from 6 until 8am they worked on grammar exercises until breakfast. From 9 till 11 they worked on classical poetry and prose on alternate days, and read Latin manuscripts over dinner. From 1 until 3pm, they read from a chosen classical author, and from 4 until 5pm copied rhetoric, proverbs, or other sentences chosen by their Master. After supper they studied geography. The format of the day did not change as they ascended the years, but the depth and breadth of study increased. In his second year Locke read and copied from Terence, Aesop’s Fables (which became a preferred text of his to teach children), Erasmus, and the Sacred Dialogues; in his third year there was more Aesop and Terence, Sallust, and Cicero; in his fourth year, geography was studied (travel literature became a passion for Locke) along with Demosthenes, Livy, Cicero, and ancient history. He also would have begun Hebrew lessons and started his preparation for the King’s Scholarship election to Christ Church; he bought Helvicus’s Theatrum Historicum, which he later used for his own students’ exercises, and began reading political theory. To increase his chances of success in the election, Locke bought extra lessons from Dr Busby for £1 a term. The last year at Westminster climaxed in the election of six scholars to Oxford with a scholarship of £20; six others would go on to Trinity, Cambridge on £10 a year. It seems that Locke worked studiously to ensure his election, which demanded a proficiency in ‘intellect, learning, character and want of means’ as well as writing, as was the custom, to his patron, Alexander Popham, and various other connections in the Republic; his father encouraged Dr Busby to support his son, and Busby assured Locke of his encouragement. Locke’s earlier success in gaining a King’s Scholarship was based on a challenge to conjugate Greek or Latin grammar correctly. It seems as if it was a knock-out competition, with the youngest or least able student beginning the challenge by asking the next boy up in the ranks; if the

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latter lost, the younger took his place until he was finally knocked out: the remaining 20 students were accorded scholarships, and Locke was number ten on the list of that year. In the second and much more vital election, Locke had to prepare and memorize a public speech in Greek, Latin and Hebrew – it is not clear from the sources whether he had to do one in each language, but he certainly spoke in Hebrew, for he wrote to his father hinting that his Hebraic speech was to be his pi`ece de resistance. Nonetheless, Locke was nervous about the approaching examination, for he wrote to his father to ask for his advice in case he failed to secure a place. Locke’s ability and whatever connections he was able to use certainly worked, for he secured the sixth place to go up to Christ Church. Removal from Somerset – a prosperous agrarian and commercial county – to the bustling city and School of Westminster on the nomination by one of his father’s employers, and being from a disciplined family, would have encouraged the young Locke, very conscious of the presumed station of many colleagues, to prove his worth at his new school. Nonetheless, the intellectual atmosphere in which he excelled provided him with a stark contrast to his puritanical but gentlemanly and rural background in the highly charged intellectual and classical-oriented atmosphere of Royalist Westminster, rubbing shoulders with some of the country’s finest developing minds and progeny of illustrious families, and with monitors shouting out their commands in Latin. Locke’s innate talent, which so easily could have been channelled into less productive routes, was given an unrelenting push at Westminster: we cannot be sure that Locke enjoyed his time at the school, despite being one of Busby’s favourites (his ‘white boys’) – he never criticized Busby by name, although he was highly critical of the need for all those exercises in classical erudition.

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Oxford – Owen

From Royalist Westminster School, Locke was thus elected to be sent up to Parliament-controlled Christ Church, Oxford, in 1657, when John Owen (1616–83) presided as University Vice Chancellor and Dean of his College. Like Busby before him, Owen provided, we can detect, an influence on Locke’s philosophical development, although perhaps less dramatic than that of his old headmaster. Oxford had been purged of its Royalist sympathizers by Oliver Cromwell upon his own usurpation of the Chancellorship after the Royalist cause was defeated in the Civil Wars. Cromwell had put friends and family into the various offices of the colleges, filling the rest with applicants from schools and clerical positions. Two-thirds of its dons had resigned or were dismissed for failing to take an oath of submission to Parliament, and half of Christ Church’s students had departed. The city had been a particular target of the Parliamentarians, for the University had given up much of its plate (coinable wealth) to the King and had been his headquarters for part of the war (1643–46). Ironically, William Laud – the man who rose to become Archbishop and persecutor of Puritans under Charles I, and who was to be executed by Parliament – had once been Chancellor of the University, and had attempted to push through disciplinarian reforms to tighten up the University’s scholarship and reputation by closing taverns and brothels and instituting High Church rites: the Puritans followed his lead in their own style, stipulating much prayer and attendance of sermons – attendance both physical and mental, to be verified by students reporting to appointed faculty. Despite Parliamentary decrees to purge the University of Royalistleaning students and faculty, Owen maintained a tolerant blind-eye towards any remaining Anglicans (those of the Royalist party’s religion), indirectly providing the observant with a lesson in political diplomacy while securing his conscience, a theme that Locke was already familiar with from his own upbringing in Somerset and from Dr Busby. Calvinist-leaning Owen had been a rector and vicar in Essex before coming to Cromwell’s attention after preaching Congregationalist sermons

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outside Parliament. The two hit it off and Owen quickly became one of Cromwell’s aides, and travelled with him to put down (brutally) Catholic insurgents in Ireland in 1649. Nonetheless, Owen could not support the attempt to crown Cromwell King, nor the formation of the Lord Protectorate (1653–58); Owen held the Vice Chancellorship until 1657 but stayed on as Dean of Christ Church cathedral until the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, when he was removed. Congregationalists or Independents had developed out of the Reformation and had been persecuted under Elizabeth I for their belief in the right of each congregation to make its own decisions about its own affairs, without having to submit them to a higher authority – i.e. a bishop or prince – an issue about which Locke was to write his first sally into political thought (‘First and Second Tracts’), although, rather surprisingly for the reader of Locke’s Two Treatises, Locke argues for the Monarch’s right to stipulate how congregations ought to arrange themselves in ‘matters indifferent’. He was at this point in his career very much a man of the establishment in which he resided, yet, given what Locke was to develop into, we must acknowledge that he was learning and observing all the time, drawing on his experiences with a greater lucidity than most people would have in similar circumstances. He was still maturing when others were becoming more set in their ways, and the effective reason for his encouraging mental growth was that finally, at Oxford, he found something stimulating to sink his intellectual teeth into: medicine. If it had not been for the ‘Invisible College’ of scientists and physicians meeting regularly, experimenting, and disseminating ideas and results, Locke would have truly despaired of any further learning and would probably have married and taken up law. He was beginning to lose his momentum at Oxford, because he faced a repeat of the Westminster curriculum, which, even though at a higher level, was beginning to wear thin; and later he remarked to his friend Le Clerc that he had lost a great deal of learning time on useless scholastic disputation and pointless questions (Quick 1880, xxi). He is said to have turned his head to reading romances for pleasure in his first year and became a frequent visitor and correspondent to a more lively and witty bunch of men and women at Black Hall, St Giles, Oxford. Love letters to several ladies paint a different character than the caricature austere Puritan we normally have; nevertheless, he pursued his courses of study, earning his BA after three years and his MA after another three. He had gone up to Oxford in the Autumn of 1652 in the company of his patron, Sir Alexander Popham; he was later to write dutifully and gratefully to Popham, ‘Sir, to say I am obliged to you is no more than to profess myself an Englishman . . .’ (Cranston 1957, 29). Locke was 20, when some of the students there were much younger – with 14-year-olds on campus, the tutors acted both as parents and academic advisors, and were known to whip the

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boys for their failings. They instructed their charges, told them what books to buy and directed their reading according to their ability; they checked their proficiency, and inspected their manners and conversation (Axtell 1968). The students studied logic, metaphysics, and classical languages and took their BA examination by Disputation, in which they had to defend or attack a chosen thesis. Locke’s tutor, Thomas Cole, was 26, only six years older than Locke, and, like Owen, an Independent. He rose to become principal of St Mary’s Hall, but was ejected at the Restoration by the now incumbent Royalists, and went on to found an Independent Academy in Oxford. Cole seems to have encouraged Locke’s exploration of extra-curricula reading, notably Aristotle’s logic in the original, thus opening Locke’s eyes to the philosophy untainted by Scholastic disputation, and later Locke is to advise his tutees to study thinkers in the original. Locke also admired an Edward Pococke, a tutor in the College, for his behaviour: ‘I do not remember I ever saw him in any one action that I did, or could in my own mind, blame or think amiss in him’ (Quoted, Aaron 1955, 5). Virtuous behaviour becomes a fundamental tenet to Lockean education. Day began and continued in much the same fashion as at Westminster, rising at 5am for chapel, breakfasting at 6am, and working from 8am until noon; there were two more hours of work in the afternoon before supper at 7pm. With the Puritans in control, the students were obliged to attend sermons (and remember them) and private prayers with their appointed tutors before retiring. Conversation in Latin was compulsory, as it always had been – indeed, there was no change to the curriculum with the political changes, just a change in the atmosphere, one which Locke was beginning to find increasingly constraining: any hint of High Church Anglicanism in either dress or rite was mocked by the Puritan students. However, discipline was strict and academic study taken seriously: Anthony Wood, a contemporary of Locke who has left us his memoirs and history of Oxford, noted that there was much disputing, which sometimes led to fights breaking out. The Puritans eschewed the pubs but drank privately; they did not permit games except for some festivities for MA graduates, and during Owen’s Chancellorship, the student body was drawn mainly from a ‘new money’ class, with few nobles and gentry. Locke flowed along with the expectation of his position without any secure vision of what path to pursue after Oxford, something which plainly comes back in his concerns for pupils to secure a trade for themselves; but after graduating with the BA in 1656, the Masters student found himself with a lot more academic freedom to study beyond the narrow classical curriculum in which, he reported he had ‘lost a great deal of Time’, and it was now that Locke fell in with the ‘Invisible College’ of scientists – the forerunner to what became the Royal Society. The scientists, whose members

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included Westminster graduates, Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke, and Richard Lower, were running with the spirit of the times that had been unleashed in the Renaissance and which had gathered pace over the past century through the rejection of the classical-bound dogma of medieval science. Initially the society was run by Oliver Cromwell’s brother-in-law, the Warden of Wadham College, John Wilkins. Not a man of books, Wilkins was a passionate experimenter and cryptologist: he experimented with telegraphy and wrote on the possibility of submarine and lunar travel, and he and Wren built a variety of astonishing contraptions. Wilkins was congenial to Royalists and Parliamentarians alike. His marriage to Robina Cromwell brought him into the highest circles of the land during the Protectorate, and in the subsequent Restoration his popularity at Court and forgiveness by the King permitted him, as President of the scientific society, to ask Charles for his patronage – and hence the Royal Society was born. Wilkins was later awarded the bishopric of Chester. At Oxford, Wilkins encouraged a migration of the scientific brains away from London, with its soldiers and uncertain politics, attracting Robert Boyle and William Petty, for example, to live nearby, and around him grew an avid collection of luminaries. Locke was drawn like the proverbial moth.

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The Scientific and Philosophical Revolution

Gradually over the previous two centuries, the world had been opening up to the curious minds of Europe. Voyages of discovery had introduced Europeans to countries and cultures hitherto unknown or of fabled existence, and had destabilized any security of an established Euro-centric world; but more critically, the scientifically-minded (although they were not called scientists then) increasingly turned their thoughts to the growing disparities between the sacrosanct writings of the ancients and what their eyes, mathematical reasoning and scientific instruments told them. The more adventurous thinkers were extolling the importance of induction and hence empiricism, a method of studying nature that had its roots reaching back to one particularly appropriate strain of thought, that of the Oxford Chancellor from 1215 to 1221, Robert Grosseteste (1168–1253), who had emphasized the need to study the world empirically. Grosseteste was a little before his time (as it were), but the empiricist-inductive theory continued through a host of thinkers and scientists who especially began to flourish in the seventeenth century. The Reformation unleashed by Luther had sought to address serious grievances with the Roman Catholic Church, but it produced an ongoing intellectual revolution that in some respects helped to further human thinking, notably in the sciences, and in other respects helped to hinder mental and scientific progress. The reason for the apparently contradictory effects was that, initially, scientific thinking was making some progress under the pre-reformation church: Copernicus presented an alternative conception of the earth’s position relative to the sun, overthrowing the received dogma that the earth was stationary. However, the Protestant reformers (Luther and Calvin) initially reacted strongly against the new intellectual trends, condemning them as contrary to the teachings of the Bible (a criticism that remains with us today in Creationist attempts to reject evolutionary theory); the Catholic Church, which once tolerated the new thoughts, during the reins of Popes Paul IV, Pius V and Sixtus V and with its infamous Inquisition, clamped down on people such as Giordano Bruno (burned) and

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Galileo (placed under house arrest after forced retraction of his Copernican findings), because their findings and conjectures contradicted the official teachings of the church. Those who oppose official teachings are called heretics, and the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are awash with charges and counter-charges of heresy – a political and cultural phenomenon that rarely fades from human history, as thousands of heretics (against Marxism) were once again were persecuted, tortured, and killed in the totalitarian regime of the Soviet Union in the twentieth century. As the Catholic Church clamped down on heresy, and the growing Protestant-controlled regions sought to reject new thinking, Europe did not seem the best place for science and innovation to flourish. However, the very fact that patrons, universities, and cities faced theological and thereby political competition meant that safe-havens for free thinking could be found. Paris became one of those centres, as did London and Oxford. Hence Locke was able to exploit the relative security of England in his pursuit of scientific experimentation; yet the peace was not so guaranteed to afford complete relaxation, for we know that Locke had to exile himself for political safety and his Two Treatises were published anonymously. The gaps in control that emerged permitted new and newly rediscovered thoughts to grow: the Protestant revolt from Rome had encouraged others to revolt against all the remaining trappings of Catholicism that they perceived in the emerging Protestant churches, leading to Puritan sects such as Anabaptists and later Quakers. The theological challenges posed by these sects also led to political challenges that encouraged the call for toleration, of which Locke was a fundamental and highly influential thinker, penning various essays on toleration that culminated in his Letter Concerning Toleration in 1689. The Reformation thus tended to create new, complex and overlapping moral and religious allegiances, which inevitably spilled into political problems and war. The intellectual stakes were accordingly high and the encouraging hand of educationalists can be discerned trying to effect a new moral order as they saw fit. The first voices we hear in early Stuart Britain complained of the humanist-classical curriculum that required young people to spend so much time on ‘heathen’ and ‘pagan’ authors – i.e. the Romans and Greeks. The subject matter of the classical texts was often a matter of controversy for such Puritans; in 1650, William Dell, Master of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, proposed that ‘in teaching youth the tongues, to wit, the Greek and Latin, such heathenish authors be most carefully avoided, be their language never so good, whose writings are full of the fables, vanities, filthiness, lasciviousness, idolatries and wickedness of the heathen’ (Clark 1959, 43). Comenius, a highly influential educational theorist of the seventeenth century, likewise condemned the teaching of the classics: Latin, he

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argued, should be learned, but primarily for science and diplomacy – that is, the boys’ learning should have some practical purpose. Milton, in his own tract on education, also complained of the waste of time and effort in learning how to ornament verses rather than know things. But educational thinking was not to develop as scientific thinking did: science was revolutionized in Locke’s time, indeed by many of his friends and associates, but educational thinking remained wedded to the humanist curriculum of learning the ancient languages and teaching boys to memorize verses and repeat their styles. Not even the Puritan Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell could substantially alter the educational philosophy of the schools. As very much a part of the strong critical current of the period, it is not surprising to find that in Locke’s writings and thoughts on education we hear the critical voice that the scientific revolution was unleashing: ask not what a thing is, but ask what it is for; not why it works, but how – studying why the earth circles the sun is a pointless endeavour compared to making the effort to understand the laws of its operation. Here we witness the development of early utilitarian thought, the roots of the eighteenth century’s ages of reason and enlightenment (for which Locke was a founding and wellread thinker). The classicism that Locke and his contemporaries rejected as being unnecessary for all except the academically-minded retained its place well into the nineteenth century, when political and cultural changes, influenced by Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian thinking, finally altered the nature of demand for education and, just as Locke envisioned, education became more purpose-oriented and reflective of the changing demands of the economy: the engineers, industrialists, and financiers of the Industrial Revolution had little need for Latin and Greek, although its impetus was kept up for more traditional professions (like law and medicine). On the cusp of the seventeenth century, we can broadly say that English thought was mired in Scholasticism (especially in its schools), which it had inherited from the Continent; the country had not produced any great philosophers since William of Ockham and John Wycliffe, yet change was in the air, emanating from the Italian Renaissance and the crucial lynchpin to English advancement, Francis Bacon. Bacon (1561–1626) provided the critical impetus for seventeenth-century empiricism with his Novum Organum. He encouraged scientists to work together (a vision finally achieved in the forming of the Royal Society in Locke’s time), and to study nature and induce theories from experiments. In several rejections of fallacious reasoning (which resurface in Locke’s Essay), Bacon argued that the scientist should reject perceptual illusions, linguistic confusion, personal bias and dogmatic philosophy. He should observe nature in order to understand its laws – an epistemological claim that was decidedly controversial, for the Church claimed, broadly speaking,

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that knowledge emanated from God, not from the senses. Otherwise, the Church accepted that other knowledge could be learned from the ancients, and notably Aristotle, whose logical syllogisms had been transplanted into the ubiquitous disputations for examinations, against which seventeenthcentury philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke railed. Bacon had tapped into the continental revolt against arid Scholasticism in which, for example, the Swiss physician Paracelsus (1493–1541) discarded the medical treatises of the ancients in favour of what evidence he saw with his own eyes and what recipes for prescriptions he could garner from folklore; Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) opened up cadavers and sketched them, rather than trust what predecessors had said about the body; and Francois Rabelais (1494–1553) in turn presented an individual-centred anarchism in his famous satirical rejection of Scholasticism, Pantagruel and Gargantua. In the wake of the incipient rejection of Scholasticism, men sought to look upon the world with their own eyes – and that of course rubbed off onto educational writings, especially Locke’s. The ideas of Renaissance Italy had gradually spread their way north, being somewhat thwarted by the eruption of wars (especially the Thirty Years War across Europe (1608–1648) and the Civil Wars in Britain), but finding tranquillity wherever possible – notably Paris, Amsterdam, London, and then Oxford. Science flourished where politics and especially religious intervention withdrew, which in the seventeenth century was in few places. Oxford, the centre of English scientific experiment, was able to survive and persist because of the informal nature of gatherings often taking place in private houses, but also because both Royalist and Puritan thinkers cast aside political argument in order to study: the anarchy of experimentation had an appealing pull to the observant and quizzical minds, who were fired by the prospect of discovery following Bacon’s call to experimentation. Hooke, Boyle, Halley, and Newton all surface and revolutionized scientific thought. Locke caught the bug; he had started making medical notes in his first year in the recipe and ailments book that his mother had given him, but through his friend, Richard Lower, he began studying medical texts and tried a few experiments himself to prove, for example, the circulation of blood by vivisecting a frog. He was attracted to the medical work of Thomas Goddard and Thomas Willis, until meeting Robert Boyle.

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Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle (1627–1691), who had been educated at Eton and had toured Europe with an able tutor, was the next great scientific and intellectual influence on Locke. He was at Oxford from 1654, but Locke and he were not introduced formally until 1660, by which time Locke had graduated with his Masters and was awarded a position of Senior Studentship (in 1658), which kept him on at Oxford. While he had been dissuaded from a career in the Church by a childhood friend, John Strachey, Locke was making plans to join the legal profession. The position of Senior Studentship, although temporary, enabled Locke to pursue his medical studies and also to avoid taking Holy Orders to remain in the College; and it required Royal approval, which he obtained. Not much is known of Locke’s activities between 1658 and 1660, although it is likely he took on students of his own; he kept up his Black Hall connections and may have been considering marriage. Importantly for Locke’s intellectual development, Boyle was a thorough empiricist, who was radically challenging the unthinking dogmatic traditions of medical practice, in which practitioners would prefer to ignore the evidence of their senses so as not to disagree with the old text books and teachings of Aristotle, Avicenna, Galen, etc. Boyle had satisfied himself that Aristotle was wrong on medicine, and he in turn revived the Greek theory of atomism – the notion that materials could be broken down into smaller and smaller elements until they were finally ‘uncuttable’ (i.e. the definition of atom). These particles or corpuscles could be joined together into compounds; hence Boyle and his immediate circle of colleagues, including Locke, were fascinated with advances in chemistry (or chymistry) Before meeting Boyle, Locke had voraciously read the writings of the new scientists – Sennert, Bacon, Junge, van Helmont, and Cardan, as well as the empiricist work of Pierre Gassendi. Gassendi revived Epicureanism, rejecting the rationalism and innatism of Ren´e Descartes in favour of observation and experiment, but without extinguishing the use of deductive methods; he argued for a mechanistic view of the universe and claimed man’s moral

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goal was to pursue happiness. Gassendi had died in 1658, but his writing had an impact on Locke’s theory of knowledge. Under Boyle’s tutorship Locke read widely and in 1663 attended lectures of the visiting chemist, Peter Stahl, from where we get one of the diarist Anthony Wood’s biting descriptions of our man: ‘This John Lock was a man of turbulent spirit, clamorous and never contented. The club wrot and took notes from the mouth of their master, who sate at the upper end of a table, but the said J. Lock scorn’d to do it; so that while every man besides, of the club, were writing, he would be prating and troublesome’ (Axtell 1968, 41) Commentators point out that Locke did actually make many notes, and Wood was a rather bitter man in his descriptions of others (being a recluse and deaf); yet Locke was also much more advanced in his studies than the other students, and indubitably that would have led him to question Stahl with more pressing questions. Locke and Boyle worked together on various projects and publications, notably later cooperating on The Origins of Formes and Qualities (1666), which expounded a corpuscular or atomic physics, and in which we read a clear anticipation of Locke’s theory of knowledge. Boyle also employed Robert Hooke (1635–1703), who developed an air pump for creating a vacuum (Locke addresses the philosophy of the vacuum in the Essay), and who also went on to produce his own laws of mechanics. Locke pursued the investigation of nature in several ways: he took, for instance, weather readings (he was interested especially in the effect of the weather on disease), and collected, pressed and identified local flowers in a 1730 page-bound herbarium, using students’ essays and exercises for paper. This investigative method in accumulating samples became the mainstay of the eighteenthcentury collector of flora, fauna, rocks, and fossils, and a popular hobby for the curiously minded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (Today, when images abound on the internet, never mind in wonderful reproductions of books, children’s collecting and naming – beyond pop and sport stars’ images – have been lost to history.) Locke also created a personal encyclopaedia – a commonplace book, in which he kept notes on various subjects; and from this we can detect that from 1661, he was beginning to turn his mind to political, constitutional and religious questions, which eventually came out in his Essays on the Law of Nature and his First and Second Tracts on Government (the latter not to be confused with his Two Treatises!) In the fervent atmosphere of scientific experiment and advance, we can imagine a gradual breaking away from the scholastic tradition within which Locke had been educated and indeed owed so much – yet an inquisitive mind was still at work when engaged in his scientific explorations, for deep down, Locke was intensely curious about how we knew things at all and why

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we got into such disputations, which seemed increasingly useless. Locke had by then read the philosophy of Ren´e Descartes, a man with whom he had much disagreement, but a thinker nonetheless who enabled Locke to free his mind from Scholastic trappings. His attachment to Boyle and Wilkins’s scientific circle also gave him the evidence that learning could progress when advanced by the senses, observation and reflection upon evidence, rather than by toying with words and their definitions.

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Ren´e Descartes

Ren´e Descartes (1596–1650) was one of the great stimuli to seventeenth century and modern thought. His writings were the first books to give Locke ‘a relish of philosophical things’, Lady Masham was to report, and taught him how to develop a philosophical inquiry. Locke was encouraged by the Cartesian application of reason: Descartes taught the reader to question and to doubt everything, including the existence of one’s own body. The only thing that could not be doubted was the existence of the thinker who was doing the doubting, with his famous phrase, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ capturing the essence of his rationalism. Descartes played down the role of the senses, which could easily be fooled and were therefore not to be trusted, but doubted. Descartes had been given a traditional Renaissance education of classical studies by the Jesuits, yet he argued that none of it could be accepted with the certainty that a chain of mathematical reasoning could be; where the senses can fail and thereby give us no certainty, the world could be mapped out according to the mathematics of physics, he argued (an argument that has often been lost in mainstream characterizations of Descartes as wondering whether life is but a dream). This is an argument whose thread, when we look carefully at the writings of the seventeenthcentury philosophers, including Locke himself, we find popping up regularly. Hobbes, for example, argued similarly, but disagreed with Descartes on metaphysics: where Descartes permitted a mind-body dualism (in which the mind is considered immaterial and the body material), Hobbes was a thorough materialist, arguing that the spirit or mind is thereby material. We encounter Cartesian rationalism as well as Hobbesian materialism in Locke, although Locke was often reluctant to follow through his reasoning into questioning his religious faith, something which critics were only too happy to do for him. From Descartes, we get a mechanistic view of the universe, and of non-human animals; the analogy of the clockwork universe becomes a well-worn one in the following two centuries, with scientists like Newton motivated to understand the workings of the clock and theologians accepting the existence of the clockmaker – God.

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Philosophically today, undergraduates are introduced to two veins of epistemology – empiricism and rationalism; the alleged split can be found in the seventeenth century, for the inductive method of Bacon, which fired the curiosity to explore and experiment, was compared with the mathematicalrationalist method of Galileo and Descartes. Locke was fundamentally a Baconian for a good part of his life, laying stress on the role that the senses play in learning what exists and how things work in observation; and while he was encouraged by Descartes to liberate his mind from what Scholastic trappings remained, it was not until he had digested and reviewed Newton’s Principia that he accepted the role of the geometric and mathematical method of understanding the universe (which emerges in Book IV of the Essay). Then he could recommend that his older students read Newton and Descartes – indeed, Locke wrote an introductory essay for his pupil Francis Masham on Newton’s physics (with Newton’s help!).

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Humanism

The philosophical forces rising against the traditional order of thought, schooling and life were also bolstered by the Humanist tradition, which had percolated through Oxford with the visit of the Dutch thinker, Desiderius Erasmus, whose circle of friends included Thomas More, author of Utopia – not the first creator of a political visionary society, but one whose influence cannot be ignored (Locke was to pen his own version of an ideal society in his essay, Atlantis). The Renaissance Humanists sought to shift intellectual focus away from God to man and life in this world; they still believed in God, but his actions were deemed to be less immediate and direct, leaving man to live life as he saw fit through the power of his reason and to understand the nature of the world through his senses, although thinkers differed on whether morality should also be a rational enterprise. Locke was drawn in his adult life to Latitudinarianism, which emphasized the role of reason in religion – anything that smacked of passionate ‘enthusiasm’ was to be rejected as leading to strife; if a religious feeling or event could not be reduced to a rational explanation, it should be rejected. Locke was no doubt aware of the deist or atheist connotations implied in such thinking – indeed, he emphasized the need to establish faith in a child before knowledge, for he knew that faith could not be supplanted in a reasoning mind. In Renaissance art and literature, we witness the ascendancy of the individual gradually pulled out of theological and into personal settings; in Shakespeare’s plays we hear the rise of the modern voice, leaving the stock character of the medieval mummery plays and surfacing with its anxieties and doubts and, above all, choice. As the self is promoted and becomes the focus of philosophical attention, so too is the child and his education: Locke’s writings serve as the culmination of two centuries’ thoughts and comments, and act as a springboard to deliver the Renaissance-Humanist ideal into the modern era.

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The Renaissance Child

The Renaissance had started the shift from viewing children as miniature adults to being considered as children who need to develop and to mature. The period is characterized by the rebirth of ancient wisdom, when the Greek, Roman and particularly the Aristotelian tracts and their Arabian commentators and scholars re-emerged centre-stage in Italy, and spurred an intellectual, artistic, and scientific revolution. However, the wonderfully liberating spirit was soon lost to children, who were forced to study the form rather than the content of the ancients; eventually much education narrowed to focus on studying the languages and their grammatical rules, rather than the edifying philosophical visions the ancients could produce. But the revolt soon began: Vittorino da Feltra (1378–1446) opened a school in Mantua, in which he refused to force a child to learn something he was apparently not disposed to learn: better to learn virtuous behaviour, he argued, and allow each pupil’s talents to surface naturally. The call for a liberal education, in which differing abilities and aptitudes were to be recognized and the teacher to adapt accordingly, while encouraging the moral development of a virtuous man, was taken up by Vergerius (Pietro Paulo Vergerio 1349–1420), and Leonardo Bruni d’Arezzo (1369–1444), who both argued that education should go beyond books and that exploration and learning should be fun. Gradually, a critical educational movement grew, emphasizing the need for a pupil to apply himself to that which he enjoys most, for then learning will not be hard at all; indeed, much education should be ‘negative’, in the sense of allowing the child to flourish undiminished by expected strictures. However, such pedagogically libertarian ideals tend to be extinguished by schools, which inevitably bureaucratize learning and thereby reduce possible variations in education, and in doing so, converge onto a cultural homogeneity and uniformity of prescription. The educational ideals and spirit of the Renaissance gradually made their way northward with the scientific ideas, finding a liberal footing in the Netherlands in the Jeromite schools; but in Germany they encountered Luther, who, indubitably excited about the prospect of children

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learning , called for state-funded and compulsory education, thereby, despite his rhetoric, undermining the spirit of Renaissance pedagogy (that each child should be viewed as unique and requiring particular attention to encourage and lead them in their intellectual development). Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560) and Johannes Sturm (1507–89), who were much more influential, advised against the liberating spirit in favour of rote learning – and of course this is the tone that besets education down to the present day: graded expectations based on averages or ‘standards’, which the individual child maturing at his or her own pace must bend (or be bent) to accommodate. The Catholic Church followed suit, setting up successful schools across Europe, particularly those of the Jesuits, founded by Ignatius Loyola (1491–1556), whose interest in the individual – while certainly evident in recognizing the need to cultivate a pupil’s cooperation and the potential in each – was subordinated to the interests of the Church. Erasmus (1466–1536), on the other hand, truly developed the nascent Renaissance liberation of the child from medieval bounds. The child’s experience of education must be good and happy, and the tutor should strive to get the pupil to enjoy his work; learning should begin through play, and fear should be absent. Learning should commence with the natural world: ‘let the boy learn to consider the glory of the heavens, the rich harvest of the earth, the hidden fountains of rivers . . .’ The tutor needs to come down to the child’s world, to ‘play the child again’, and to be spontaneous. Pictures and objects are much more useful in learning than words and rules (we encounter this in Locke), and experience of intelligent conversation should precede reading of good literature; the embryonic gentleman should also be encouraged to learn a mechanical trade, for after all, Erasmus noted, Christ was a carpenter, so it should not be beneath anyone’s station to work with his hands. Erasmus criticized the traditional schools for assuming that their pupils were ‘diminutive adults’. However, despite his inclination, his emphasis was on learning from books rather than first-hand. In contrast, the anarchic rebel, Franc¸ois Rabelais (1490–1553), relegated books: ‘It were better for him to learn nothing at all than to be taught from such like books under such school masters.’ Lessons should be naturecentred, beginning with the pupil’s observing the new day and closing with looking at the evening or night sky, reflecting on what he has learned or seen that day. Rabelais encourages the freest development of the pupil, drawing on Augustine’s commandment, ‘do what thou wilt.’ Following Rabelais comes Montaigne, whose educational writings were highly influential on Locke.

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Montaigne

Michel Montaigne (1533–92), whom Locke had studied in detail and whose ideas resurface in his Thoughts, was concerned with the limits of reason and man’s fallibility. Montaigne’s particular use of the title Essais implies the attempt he is making at furthering our understanding (or limits thereof), which of course Locke emulated in his own Essay Concerning Human Understanding . In Montaigne we read of his scepticism towards abstract arguments and generalizations, which leads him to accept the validity only of the concrete phenomena that his senses recognize and of the self that is involved in such recognizing – both arguments that appear in Locke’s Essay. Montaigne was a man whom Locke certainly admired and consciously or not tried to emulate, and not just in the titling of his magnus opus. It was important, Montaigne wrote, to experience the outside world, to meet with other people from all walks of life and engage in conversation – a virtue of Locke’s that his contemporaries noted. Montaigne advocated reading to assist one’s learning of others, particularly history and travel books – the latter were Locke’s passion. Montaigne met with some native American Indians (Brazilians), as did Locke, and both were taken by their dignity and capacity to reason. Montaigne advised, in Roman fashion, that public service is a duty to be honourably discharged but that it should not destroy a man’s autonomy – a value that Locke adheres to in his later life when employed by the Crown. Both were writing to educate the cultivation of the gentleman, one could argue. ‘I have always been of the opinion that a virtuous life is best disposed to be the most pleasant,’ wrote Locke; and Montaigne stated: ‘Le prix et hauteur de la vraye vertu est en la facilit´e, utilit´e et plaisir de son exercice . . . C’est la m`ere nourrice des plaisirs humains’ (quoted in Axtell 1968, fn 2, p.154). Both are of course drawing extensively on Roman moral philosophy, with its Stoical stress on dignity, honour, and duty. But the connections are philosophical as well as historically emulative: in his writings on education, Montaigne emphasizes learning from concrete experience rather than unconnected, floating abstractions, which children’s

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minds would not be able to make sense of – and we find this in Locke’s work too. In this Montaigne was presenting his discerning observations and reflections on children, but was also part of a rising tide of perceptive advice on children’s maturation and education. Montaigne also warns against books: a pupil who has his nose in his books is not developing; he is not living in the present but is learning from what has been – perhaps it would be better to say that he is not mindful of the present. Relying on other people’s thoughts is also to be avoided, for who cares what Cicero said, when what is important is what I say now: that is, the pupil ought to be encouraged to think and speak for himself. Selfknowledge should thus come before other types of knowledge; the pupil should be freed to learn for himself, otherwise he becomes ‘servile and cowardly’; but the tutor should not forget that what is being educated is neither a mind nor a body, but a man.

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Comenius

John Amos Comenius (1592–1670), ‘the last of the Protestant educators’ (Lawrence 1972, 95), was, among many others, on Locke’s bookshelf. According to Comenius, the teacher should lead his pupils in an agreeable and pleasing manner; he should recognize differences not just in intellect but also in temperament and character, and that children do not mature at the same pace; he should excite the pupil’s mind, and then to harness learning he should give the pupil something to do, for ‘you will quickly rouse and grasp his interest, so that he will throw himself into the work’ (Lawrence 1972, 98). Comenius fleshes out a system of learning beginning with the emphasis on physical things before going onto mental work – the pupil should learn physical dexterity in wielding tools; and children’s desire to run around should be accepted: ‘Too much sitting still . . . is not a good sign.’ All growth in the child should come from within. Interestingly, he also advocated that science and religion need not be incompatible, as Locke was to argue.

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Port Royal Schools

Locke, it is claimed, also drew inspiration from the Little Schools of Port Royal in France, which flourished in the late seventeenth century and whose masters also sought to remove education from authoritarian and disciplinarian influences and to make learning a pleasant experience. Affection and love for the children were paramount virtues in a Port Royal teacher; the child should be understood as a child rather than a miniature adult, and so the teacher must in recalling his own youth be tolerant and recall how difficult and protracted learning can be. Children should not be chastized for failure and the master ought to recognize the proportional mix of ‘light and dark’ in each child and adapt his guidance accordingly. Education, adapted to the individual pupil, nonetheless retained two important aims: to develop character and to make children think. Intelligence was to steel the young and impressionable mind against temptation and sin, so SaintCyran, the founder of the school, warned against the dangers of possessing knowledge without moral purpose or wisdom: accordingly, the heart should be rewarded before the head, the masters argued. Given the necessary moral underpinning, children’s curiosity was to be encouraged, above all, and as Locke was to underline in his own researches, to seek truth and to think for themselves. Learning, the masters acknowledged, begins with the senses and proceeds gradually from what is known and concrete to the more abstract; children should be encouraged to write about what they are taught and know, and lessons should be as practical as possible. For Locke’s research, he consulted a couple of dozen sources, but we do not know what he read at others’ homes on his travels. Educational works were becoming increasingly popular as the Renaissance redirection of focus onto the child qua child dripped down into the consciousness of the concerned parent, keen to ensure a good life for their children. That good life was particularly focused on the requirements of the gentleman (and gentlewoman), and although Locke adapted the particularities slightly for the children of the aristocracy, there was no educational concern with the

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children of the poor. Very much in the critical flow of the times, Locke’s thoughts reflected the disparagement of Scholasticism and the championing of a Humanist, more sensorial and utilitarian education, appropriate to the individual child. Humanism, in turning attention to man also, naturally, turned attention to the child; and social historians have noted that with the rise of Humanism, the child takes on a more prominent role in family life and is increasingly recognized in educational writings as deserving a special regard. Other contemporary books that Locke probably read and which may have influenced him were Thomas Elyot’s The Governour (1531), Roger Ascham’s Scholemaster (1570), Richard Mulcaster’s Positions (1581) and Elementarie (1582), John Brinsley’s Ludus Literarius (1612), John Milton’s Of Education (1644), and John Drury’s The Reformed School (1650). The direct influence of these authors is indiscernible, as Locke did not always quote his sources, which forces historians to weigh the evidence accordingly. Montaigne is certainly represented explicitly, whereas we feel Rabelais’s insistence on learning things first-hand rather than through books. Like Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations a century later, much of Locke’s work is derivative but his synthesis and emphasis make the Thoughts not only readable but also influential. In terms of educational thinking, therefore, Locke was part of the groundswell humanist movement which revolutionized children’s learning and is still abroad today in a variety of progressive-humanist and traditional-humanist educational experiments and theories; but, as many have claimed, he was the first, or the most critically influential, writer to deal primarily with the child’s education.

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Ashley Cooper and Locke’s Intellectual Break

The year 1660 was a watershed:Locke’s father died leaving him a small rental income; and the nation greeted back the exiled King Charles II in May, and Oxford was once again the subject of political attacks (it is rarely not the subject of political attacks, if we consider the present British Labour government’s proposals to increase the student intake from statefunded schools over private schools). Owen was removed from his Vice Chancellorship and subsequently fired from Christ Church as well, and was replaced by Presbyterian John Conant, a God-fearing man who thought that students should also be godly afraid and who was known to enter students’ rooms to check the quality of their reading. At the end of the year, Locke was appointed to a Lectureship in Greek, but had meanwhile became thoroughly acquainted with the scientists and had become Boyle’s pupil (later to become his friend). His mind was fired with the new discoveries and controversies of the group. Until 1665, Locke ascended the rungs at Oxford, being elected to Censor of Moral Philosophy, a post below the Dean, in December 1664, which he held for a year. From his valedictorian speech, we detect a man still wedded to the traditional system of which he was very much a part (in teaching his students, Locke used the same texts as would be expected of a Greek Tutor), with no hint of the reformist philosopher with which we soon became familiar – Locke is conservative and Royalist, and not just pragmatically. His Tracts on Government (1660 and 1662) are a defence of the King’s right to enforce his will upon those irksome ‘matters indifferent’; Locke’s essays form a reply to his fellow student at Christ Church, Edward Bagshaw (the radical who had attempted the famous overthrow of Busby at Westminster), who had published and argued for religious authenticity and a rejection of the state’s attempt at religious uniformity, and whose friends and pupils had (in assuredly Bagshawian tradition) stolen priests’ surplices in reaction to what they (rightly) perceived as a political shift towards religious uniformity. Bagshaw was a Presbyterian who was in general agreement

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with Locke’s thesis but who vehemently disagreed with the Anglicanization of religion that the Act required. Locke explained in his retort how disruptive the religious ‘scribblings’ of the age have been to his country, pens causing ‘as much guilt as their sword’ (‘First Tract’). While acknowledging his respect for both authority and liberty, Locke preferred to steer a middle path, observing that liberty may ‘turn loose to the tyranny of a religious rage’ unless its outward form is subjected to the state’s jurisdiction: that is, religious dissent should be subservient to the need to secure the peace, and thus the people ought to accept the religious policy of the presiding regime – a very Hobbesian thesis indeed. On the verge of a promising scientific career, Locke was offered and accepted a post on a minor diplomatic mission to Cleves under the ambassadorship of Sir Walter Vane, a position he filled very well in that he was offered further posts on his return to England, which on reflection he turned down in favour of returning to his intellectual hub at Christ Church, apparently keen to press on with his studies in medicine. The move proved an interesting one, for within a year he had been introduced to Anthony Ashley Cooper, the next great influence on his life and thought. From many perspectives, Locke was ready for either fruition or decay: he might have continued at Oxford to become a Dean or Vice-Chancellor, and his intellectual capacity and gentlemanly qualities and his ability to court his patrons judiciously certainly would have aided further academic promotion (although those in the high positions were off-puttingly unacademic); he might have pursued his growing interest in science with the niggling questions he was dealing with in his notes on the theory of knowledge; he might have penned more political tracts, having enjoyed parrying the old Westminster rogue and now Oxford colleague Edward Bagshaw; or more likely he might have become a practising medical Doctor – after all, he took the Bachelor of Medicine degree and was applying for the Doctorate. Yet his conservatism, born out of a rustic’s rise and natural deference for his peers and betters and for the Establishment into which he had been accepted, may have thwarted any radically disposed conjectures festering in his mind. Locke had swum with the cultural tide, keeping his political nose above the waters and his intellect in the relatively stimulating work of the scientists, but all that was to transform with a fortuitous introduction to Ashley. Suddenly, Locke’s life changed gear thoroughly, and we enter the most exciting phase of his intellectual development – one that was, even if we narrowly think of our own purposes, to provide him with much experience, as a private tutor to Ashley’s family but also as a physician, midwife and paediatrician to the young both of the Ashley family and to some friends. Naturally, much of Locke’s advice and ability came to the fore, being the

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blooming and fruition of earlier reflection and medical experiences, but some of it, especially his political thinking, underwent a radical turn indeed. Anthony Ashley Cooper (1621–83) was a wealthy and politically powerful patron to work for, who worked for whoever was in power – Royalists, Parliamentarians, the Protectorate and the Restoration monarchy. He had initially sided with Charles I in the first Civil War, but changed sides to fight with the Parliamentarians when he became displeased with the political and religious advice afforded the King; he supported Cromwell and was promoted until he became dissatisfied with the increasingly military leaning of the Protectorate (1653–54). Just over a year after Cromwell’s death in 1658, Ashley Cooper sat on the commission for the Convention Parliament that invited Charles II to return to England; although the members were not thoroughly enthusiastic supporters of the Restoration, it appeared to be the most prudent step for the country to take. From 1660–73 Ashley worked for Charles II, eventually rising to become Chancellor, and he was promoted to the Earldom of Shaftesbury in 1672. Ashley argued for religious toleration for dissenting Protestants and supported the Anglo-Dutch wars on mercantilist grounds (Dutch profit equates to English losses), but his anti-Catholic stance eventually led to his dismissal from government. Out of office, Ashley actively engaged Parliament to keep Charles II’s brother, James, who was an open Catholic, from marrying another Catholic and from becoming King. James, the then Duke of York, was also a capable and efficient Lord High Admiral of the Fleet and had taken New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, having it renamed ‘New York’; he later fought in the Anglo-Dutch wars. Initially, James had the backing of the establishment: he was more serious and thus more acceptable to the Anglicans, and he leaned towards toleration. However, his very Catholicism worried those who were, like Locke, of a more Puritan and cynical leaning. Out of office (in the notorious Tower of London!) and in opposition, Shaftesbury formed ‘the Country Party’ to criticize the King’s government. From this evolved the first two political parties of modern times: the Whigs and the Tories (the Whigs generally speaking followed Shaftesbury and the Tories supported the Anglican establishment and the Stuart succession). However, in 1679, a spurious plot was uncovered to assassinate Charles II in order to instate his Catholic brother on the throne; this gave Shaftesbury’s political stance momentum and growth, for the country feared a return to Catholic Stuart rule and the conditions that had created the Civil Wars. In 1681, Shaftesbury marched on Parliament with an armed force, but the King’s dissolution of the Parliament left him suddenly vulnerable: he was imprisoned and charged with treason, a charge rejected by the jury. The poet laureate and Westminster graduate of Locke’s youth, John Dryden, penned a biting satirical attack, ‘Absalom and Achitophel,’ on Shaftesbury

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at this time on behalf of his royal paymasters, and a year later Shaftesbury fled to Holland, dying in exile in 1683. Returning to how all this affected Locke’s life: in 1666 Lord Ashley had happened to go to Oxford to take the waters from a local spring, while Locke was given the duty of overseeing the carriage of the bottles to his Lordship’s Oxford residence in the absence of Ashley’s friend, Dr David Thomas. The carriers did not appear as requested and Locke went to make his excuses; he and Ashley got on so well that Ashley offered Locke a position in London at Exeter House, in part to aid the victims of the Great Plague but also, it turns out, to act as Ashley’s physician, secretary, marriage broker for his first son, and paediatrician and tutor to his grandchildren, an experience which Locke drew on for his Thoughts. In 1668 he oversaw a life-saving operation on his patron to remove liver cysts, which involved draining the pus and cysts from the liver and the eventual insertion of a removable silver tube that Ashley wore from then on. It was the first known successful operation of its kind. Locke had been and continued on his return to London to be very active in scientific and medical circles; before meeting Ashley, he was involved in Boyle’s circle and ran a laboratory with the physicians and experimenters David Thomas and Thomas Blunt. There he compiled a set of notebooks, ‘Adversaria Pharmocopeia’, detailing elements and compounds. Fortunately for Locke’s interests, Ashley possessed his own laboratory at Exeter House (it was a fashionable accessory for the rich of the time), which enabled Locke to continue both his medical and chemical studies and his relationship with Boyle and Thomas. Through an old school friend, John Mapletoft, Locke was introduced to the great physician Thomas Sydenham, whose philosophy resembled that of Boyle and who was similarly carving out his own reputation by revolting against the precepts of the old schools of thought. Sydenham was busy curing people of the plague by doing the opposite to the traditional remedy of encouraging a person to get hotter: he insisted on lots of liquids and a cooling of the body to assuage the high temperature that victims were suffering, and most survived. Sydenham’s own thinking was part of a reactionary tradition emanating back to Paracelsus and Van Helmont, that a physician ought to study the disease not the textbooks, and not to bother about the causes of diseases but rather to treat them using known techniques. He and Locke collaborated on various essays and, alongside the co-practitioner and friend, Mapletoft (employed by the Percys), Locke accompanied Sydenham, acting as his assistant and secretary. In Sydenham’s De Arte Medica, we find such Lockean arguments as: ‘True knowledge grew first in the world by experience and rational observation . . . True practise consists in the observation of nature; these are finer than any speculations.’

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In 1667, Shaftesbury was elevated to the Cabinet and in 1668 Locke was elected to the Royal Society and sat on a committee ‘considering and directing experiments’. In 1671, discussions with Sydenham, James Tyrell, Mapletoft, and other medics prompted Locke to begin work on the first draft of what would be his Essay Concerning Human Understanding . He was also gaining a reputation for his obstetrics, paediatrics, and tutoring of children, putting into practice what he was later to write up in his Thoughts. He became tutor to all six of Ashley’s grandchildren. Locke’s years at Exeter House were very productive, although in 1672 Ashley got him some government work (Council of Trade and Plantations), which took Locke away from his experiments, (he used his contacts to send him exotic plants and remedies from England’s outlying colonies, particularly in the West Indies). In 1673, Ashley temporarily fell from power; Locke kept his job until the contract ended the next year, when despite an offer of secure employment back in Oxford, he packed his trunk and left for France. In France, Locke was asked by Ashley to take charge of the son of a friend of his, Sir John Banks. Caleb Banks and Locke must have got on well, for Locke took the opportunity to take Caleb on a personalized tour from 1677 until May 1679. They visited Paris, Versailles (where they took in an opera and saw the King), the Loire Valley and were heading for Italy when the snows came and blocked the Alpine passes. The tour of Europe was to become a critical step in Locke’s reflections as to the nature of a young gentleman’s education, but he advised not to take them too early so that they would not benefit, nor too late so that they would resent a tutor’s presence – between the ages of 10 and 14 would be best. Arguably, the final episode in Locke’s development as a teacher is now complete: the next three decades see him increasingly involved in political and public service roles, and answering criticism following the publication of his Essay. He was, of course, to gain more experience as a tutor to the Ashley Coopers and to others, and from penning his Thoughts Concerning Education (for his cousin’s husband, Edward Clark), and adjusting some aspects in his correspondence with William Molyneux; but the intellectual foundations upon which he developed his pedagogy were now set. The rest of his life will be thus briefly sketched out here.

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Locke’s Later Years

Locke returned to London, aged 47, to Ashley’s new home, Thanet House, to enjoy the heat of the Exclusion Crisis, in which Shaftesbury and his supporters sought a Parliamentary Act to exclude the King’s brother, James, from taking the throne. The next few years increased in political machination and intensity, as Charles II died in 1685 and his Catholic brother did ascend the throne; Locke turned his finely-tuned mind to political matters, and he began penning the Two Treatises not long after moving to Thanet House. In 1680 the late Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha had been published at the height of the Exclusion Crisis. Filmer (1588–1653) had written his work in 1648 supporting the divine right of Kings and their absolute power over the land. James I had given his support to the medieval notion that a ruler is divinely appointed (a theory designed to secure the monarch’s power in relation to the Church), but a few decades later it was given a theoretical defence by Filmer. Locke was to reply with his Two Treatises, rejecting Filmer’s theory as ‘glib nonsense’, and the evidence suggests that Locke began writing his Treatises not long after purchasing a copy of Patriarcha. In 1681, however, Locke’s patron, Shaftesbury, was charged with treason following ‘the Rye House Plot’, an alleged attempt to kill Charles and James. The jury rejected the charge against Shaftesbury, but Tory political advances prompted Shaftesbury, in the absence of any hope of a Parliament sitting to provide support to his party, to flee to Holland, where he died in 1683. Two of his colleagues opposing James’s succession, Algernon Sidney and Lord William Russell were executed, while a third, the Earl of Essex, committed suicide. Sidney’s Discourses Concerning Government (published posthumously in 1698) had argued for a right to revolt and his words were used against him during his trial; Russell had withdrawn from public life, but informers inculpated him in the Plot to assassinate Charles II. The intolerant and charged atmosphere kept Locke abroad from 1683–89, and freedom from political intrigues and duties allowed him to develop his philosophy.

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Intellectual Biography

In 1685 Charles II died and his brother James ascended the throne. The ripples from the Rye House Plot continued to upset the initially stable and sober new regime, and after the failed Monmouth and Argyll rebellions (1685) to oust James, the new monarch clamped down on those who sought to overthrow him. James subsequently handed out army posts to supporting and trustworthy Catholics, and he advanced Catholics to his Privy Council; in November he dismissed Parliament. Nonetheless, he tolerantly presented a Declaration of Indulgences permitting Catholic and Non-Conformist freedom. The motives for this remain unclear, but the Queen’s pregnancy and the possibility of a Catholic succession led Protestant leaders to consult with James’s daughter’s husband (and her cousin – both sharing Charles I as grandfather!), William of Orange in Holland. William had been fighting the might of Catholic France with much gusto and success. Accordingly, as James became increasingly unstable and a boy (another James, later known as the ‘Old Pretender’) was born to his wife, thus substantiating fears of a Catholic dynasty, William was invited over to take the throne. Upon landing in South Devon and marching toward London many of James’s officers immediately switched sides, and James fled to France. Soon both the English and Scottish Parliaments declared the de facto abdication of James and the accession of William in what is often called the ‘Glorious Revolution’ – Glorious, because it was generally bloodless, notably in England, although the same cannot be said for Scotland and Ireland. Locke had been living in exile in Holland, staying with various families and enjoying good intellectual company and conversation; he returned to England with William’s wife, Mary, and other exiles. The ousted James had lost all his military abilities and an attempt at recovering his throne via an invasion with hope of a sympathetic uprising in Ireland led to his defeat by William at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. These were certainly times of political commotion. In 1689, Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding was published, along with, anonymously, his Two Treatises and a Letter Concerning Toleration. Amendments to the Two Treatises present it as a work defending the ‘Glorious Revolution’ and William and Mary’s accession to the throne with the consent of the English people, although modern research by Laslett has dated it back to 1679–81 and the occasion of Patriarcha’s publication. Locke returned to England in poor health (he always suffered from asthma), and settled at the house of Sir Francis and Lady Damaris Masham. Damaris was the daughter of Ralph Cudworth (1617–88), a Cambridge Platonist, whose writings Locke had enjoyed and which had influenced his shift towards Latitudinarianism – a broadly tolerant Protestantism emphasizing reason. The Cambridge Platonists had rejected Hobbesian materialism in favour of a Platonic and Neo-Platonic Christianity; they claimed that moral

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ideas are innate (an argument Locke rejected), but also, while verging on mysticism, maintained a strong undercurrent of reason. Amid friends and in a politically more cordial environment, Locke published works on economics, the Scriptures, toleration, and education. In 1695 he advised on the ending of press censorship, and was appointed a member of the Board of Trade (1696–1700). His Essay Concerning Human Understanding gathered pace, drawing controversy and support and earning a translation into French in 1700. Locke died with Lady Damaris reading the Psalms to him. His death, she wrote, ‘was like his life, truly pious, yet natural, easy and unaffected’. Locke had learned much from Shaftesbury’s political views and more particularly had learned to follow what his own conscience had been encouraging him towards for years – that much in the old ways and thinking was wrong and the Establishment was not necessarily good and correct by virtue of its social standing. In his educational writings, Locke was to encourage his pupils to be aware of political cant and not to put their trust in authority. Ashley was the needy catalyst for giving confidence for Locke to push his thoughts onward with clarity. No longer surrounded by traditional institutions or by deferential customs and expectations, his thinking matured into what we would call a (classical) liberal or libertarian stance, defending the right of person and property against state encroachment and maintaining an anti-institutional stance for education.

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Introduction

John Locke’s educational philosophy as compiled in Some Thoughts Concerning Education was highly successful and influential. It retained a grip on eighteenth-century thinking both in formal educational treatises and literature, and Locke’s influence was only surpassed by the advance of Rousseau’s contributions and the rise of mass-produced and mass-consumed education in the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, Locke’s insights into the maturation and educational growth of the child remain valid as well as entertaining and insightful. He emphasized the securing of good, indeed virtuous, values in the child prior to instruction (that is, the child should be ‘educated before instructed’), and in an age that beckons a return to plurality and the importance of individually tailored learning that in turn is thoroughly dependent on an adaptable and self-confident mind, Locke’s philosophy and practical advice cannot be ignored. To expand upon and assess Locke’s educational philosophy, it is important to understand the contribution of his insights on knowledge and his theory on how we come to know about the world. In part, the fame he gained from the Essay ensured that the Thoughts were read by an intellectually sympathetic audience, but the application of his epistemology into a society increasingly concerned with education and with the child qua child would certainly have attracted a curious audience. Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding was published in 1690, the same year that he published his other great works, The Two Treatises, and, in Latin, his Letter Concerning Toleration. Locke’s writings on education are distinctly drawn from the principles outlined in the Essay, and while the connection with the Two Treatises is less obvious, analogies have been made of the advance from human innocence to maturity: in the Thoughts regarding children, and in the Treatises regarding the political life of adults. Arguably, in all of his volumes Locke is interested in getting to the core of moral agency: he believed that people were generally responsible for their beliefs and actions, and this led him in the Essay to explore the connections

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between our thoughts and external reality, and in the Two Treatises to defend individualism. In the Thoughts he expounds informally and apparently with enjoyment on the application of his philosophy to children’s education, confirming throughout the importance of virtuosity and the encouragement of gentlemanly virtues; but elsewhere a less tolerant Locke emerges in his prescriptions for the education of the poorest members of society. We shall deal with the main arguments of the Essay first before examining Locke’s educational philosophy and the issues he brings to the fore in the Thoughts; then we shall analyse the continuing education of the adult, relating it to Locke’s political thinking and his moral vision of a virtuous and Christian society.

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Philosophical Overview

Locke was an assiduous writer, who took it upon himself as a duty to explore his thoughts by jotting them down in order to follow their patterns and connections. In an early manuscript, Locke jotted down a summary of his vision of life: first, it is proper to seek happiness and to avoid misery; second, happiness consists in what delights and contents the mind, misery in what disturbs, discomposes, or torments it; third, it is therefore proper to seek satisfaction and delight and avoid uneasiness; and fourth, to be aware of short-term gains and long-term losses. Long-term pleasure thereby consists in: health, good reputation, knowledge, doing good, and a belief in heaven (Quick 1880, xxvi). To educate the mind – whether one’s own or that of another – presumes a philosophy of the world and a theory of knowledge and of how we acquire it. A philosophical system guides how the mind is to learn rather than what it is to learn. Behind all psychological theories of child development are philosophies that steer paediatric researchers, educationalists, and cognitive scientists – hence the importance of epistemological theories. Without a doubt, the scientific revolution (in which Locke’s writings played an enormous part) focused attention more efficiently on how the mind works and especially on what to look for in terms of cogent evidence and proper methods; for without the enormous changes to the parameters and direction of thinking that the scientific revolution unbridled, the child would have remained conceptually a ‘miniature adult’, having to live through what was generally perceived to be a trying and painful process until reaching adulthood. Education thus follows the philosophical paths and the grand visions produced by philosophers. When, for example, philosophers believe that life should be geared towards death and the reaching of heaven, scholars concentrate on theological works and the Scriptures and accordingly prescribe the kind of life that will ensure God’s grace, and smooth passage into the other Kingdom; when life is geared towards securing feudal alliances

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and forming as large a kingdom as possible, education typically revolves around martial virtues and the talents that are useful in promoting military and diplomatic victories; when philosophers kindle an interest in the world around (historically in the West from the thirteenth century onwards), intellectuals seek to educate scholars in the elements of the world and the laws of nature and help their minds to grasp the secrets of nature’s workings. Of course, all three – and other – educational paths could exist at the same time, competing for parental and scholarly commitment; but always in the background lie philosophical theories on knowledge and its procedures. If we take some contrasting conceptions of how we know things, we can understand where Locke stands. On the one hand, for some people the universe is an unknowable place: humanity is thrown into a confusing world and is unarmed to comprehend the ways and means of life and the universe; we are helpless to learn and therefore helpless to educate others. If we can be said to possess any knowledge, its origins and acquisition are a mystery, and its value uncertain. Of course, few philosophers ascribe to that view, which is more symptomatic of a psychological derangement than a coherent epistemic stance; yet people fall back onto elements of such a philosophy when they cannot explain causal relations between events – ‘God works in mysterious ways’ or ‘whatever will be, will be’. The latter, incidentally, is the driving mindset behind fatalism, a theory which implies that we have no control over future events whatsoever and which logically entails that teaching children or developing skills is a redundant exercise (except insofar as a fatalist will reply that the teaching is inevitable, but by then the position becomes rather silly and uninteresting). On the other hand, some have thought that not only is the world knowable but that we can possess certain knowledge of it. Philosophers divide on the origins of that certainty. Certainty may be acquired either through the senses (‘I know what I perceive’), which is called the method of induction; or certainty may be acquired through the operation of the mind (‘I know that 1 + 1 = 2’), which is called the method of deduction. Broadly speaking, philosophy students are introduced to epistemology (the theory of knowledge) with these two options: induction versus deduction, or, to give them other recognizable names, empiricism versus rationalism. They then study a group of authors ostensibly supportive of each doctrine: Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Russell, for the empiricists; Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, for the rationalists. Most philosophers will argue that the universe is understandable to some extent, but they disagree on how we come to know and to what extent we can be certain of our knowledge. They retain a sceptical stance and stand ready to criticize or to point out the logical or epistemic problems in the theories of those who claim certainty. Scepticism has played a significant

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role in Western philosophy, driving the search for greater clarity rather than destroying the possibility of any knowledge. Sceptical philosophers argue that we can never know anything for certain, because our senses may mistake what they encounter, because appearances and reality differ (‘things are never quite what they seem’), or because our mind functions with socially created linguistic models that are removed from the objects they refer to, and hence are highly prone to distorting the reality to which words allegedly refer. Scepticism in turn spreads out along a range of logical possibilities, from those theories that claim that we can never know anything about the world for certain but can only make probability statements, to those that believe that we can know some things for certain (either inductively or deductively or through a combination of both). Rationalists are sceptical to the extent that they doubt the certainty of induction; empiricists are sceptical to the extent that they doubt the certainty of reasoned arguments. Both in turn may critique infallibilism, the doctrine that some tenets (such as those of the Catholic Church) are to be held as epistemologically sacrosanct, and instead argue for fallibilism – the argument that humans are likely to err both in the use of their senses and in the use of their minds. For John Locke, the universe is knowable to some extent: but there are deep mysteries about its physical nature that we may never understand and our abilities will never rise to understand God. We can be certain of what we sense, for external entities press upon our senses and indicate their existence – seeing with our own eyes is the starting point; but what the external entities are and how they relate to us and to other things are secondary-order issues – that is, secondary to the primary order of experiencing them. In a manuscript, De Arte Medica, he noted that, ‘the beginning and improvement of useful arts and the assistance of human life have all sprung from industry and observation’ (Quick 1880, xxvii). Sensation and reflection upon sensation ‘are the fountains of knowledge from whence all the ideas we have, or can naturally have, do spring’ (Essay, II.i.2). Yet Locke controversially asserts that we can barely be said to possess choice over knowing that something exists externally to our minds: the impressions I encounter (while awake) force themselves upon me and produce ideas (images) in my mind. But once I begin thinking about those impressions afterwards, I lose contact with the irrefutable certainty I once possessed of them. For Locke, most of the world that we experience is not mysterious: our senses tell us that things exist and we can be certain of that experience, such as whether it is painful or pleasurable; but uncertainty creeps in quickly, for we cannot be certain about the ultimate workings of nature. Even though some of the particular scientific problems of Locke’s time have been cleared up (e.g. the nature of the elements), it is still true to say that today we do not know how many things work: for example, physicists struggle to understand the workings

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of quarks or other sub-atomic particles, or the existence and role of dark matter in the universe, while biologists debate how life began and the finer details and mechanisms of the evolutionary processes. Locke insists that the world is knowable initially and primarily through the human senses; human reason (the working of the mind) may then augment sensorial knowledge, but because human reason depends on conventional language to assist its employment, our higher knowledge (the realm of abstraction) is increasingly built upon flimsy and contrived apparatuses. Logic can produce certainty between mentally constructed ideas (e.g. if X > Y > Z, then X > Z, whatever X, Y, and Z are), but the mind cannot proceed to logical analysis without experience. But is all knowledge gained through the senses? Some claim that knowledge is innate – that is, we are born with either particular or prepositional knowledge. Others state that our reason, unaided by experience, provides us with knowledge or accesses knowledge that we have residing in the brain’s subliminal or subconscious departments. For example, Plato’s Socrates in the Meno dialogue argued that we are born with particular or general conceptions that either show themselves to our understanding when we are ready, or that we need to cultivate and pull out as we mature. Plato claims knowledge can be drawn out of a person because it is already there, and the pupil has merely forgotten or not accessed that which they know. Knowledge got there prior to birth, Plato argues, for it resides in the world of the Forms or Ideas, which our souls inhabit before they are reborn in a physical human. Teaching thus becomes a matter of remembering rather than learning as such. Platonic innatism is thoroughly rejected by Locke and by other philosophers who are styled as empiricists. Locke argues that knowledge comes from the senses, and if the senses have not perceived an object then the mind cannot possess any knowledge of it. The mind can certainly possess an imagined object (for example, a purple bee, based on coupling together the idea of a bee and the idea of purple, both of which the senses have experienced), but the components are dependent on having experienced the distinct objects in the first place. Rationalists reject the validity of the senses: they maintain that the senses are open to delusion and mistakes that the mind’s internal application of logic is not. Logic and deduction can be man’s only valid source of knowledge. The French rationalist Ren´e Descartes, whom Locke read and enjoyed (although he disagreed with him), argued that he can only be sure of himself and of God: such knowledge is prior to anything he can understand of the external world, which his mind accesses via the axiomatic understanding that God would not deceive him concerning the existence of an external world. Rationalists link to nativists, whose modern proponents

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(Chomsky, Fodor) claim that the human brain is structured (or has evolved) in such a way that it possesses a common structure for understanding the world and for forming language and ethics, for example. Locke would not disagree with the general gist of nativism, as he remarked on evidence of dispositional traits in human nature imprinted on children; but he certainly rejects Descartes’s argument that the human mind is born with a knowledge of God – many people do not possess that knowledge unless they are brought up in a faith, Locke retorts. Indeed, the first part of Locke’s Essay deals with the rejection of all forms of innate knowledge.

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Innatism

Locke poses seven arguments against innatism. These are particularly useful for the educationalist, for they focus attention back on how we get to know about the world, rather than assuming that the knowledge is somehow in us all along, as the Socratic method claims. First, he rejects the notion of innate knowledge by observing that there is no universal assent on the proofs or propositions of knowledge. The fact that men disagree on what they know undermines the argument that they all possess innate knowledge that presumably they should hold in common. If it is replied that adult thinking and artificial social and linguistic complexities mire access to our innate knowledge, then children and idiots – those least infringed by contrived thinking – should exude pure and universal knowledge, which of course they do not. If we are said to possess innate knowledge, then how can we not notice or articulate it? It would surely have to be immediately accessible and pronounced by all and gain universal assent – but no knowledge satisfies such criteria. Looking from a different perspective, Locke adds that should all universally assented propositions correspond to innately held knowledge, then we encounter the problematic logic of an epistemic expansion: if I agree that 1 + 1 = 2, and we all accept this proposition and that this acceptance indicates an innately held truth, then we must also accept that 2 + 1 = 3 is similarly innate, and 2 + 2 = 4, etc, ad infinitum. Indeed, all particular instances of universal agreement should imply innate knowledge, which would then imply that innate knowledge expands coincidentally with each deduction or realization of intuitive connections. (Incidentally, I’m enjoying a version of this with pupils’ fashionable retorts to new knowledge: ‘I knew that’, they quip when something new is explained to them.) Second, if truths are innate, why would reason be required to fetch them out from their mental hiding places? This is one of Locke’s arguments against Descartes’s protracted meditation that concludes in his

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understanding that he (innately) knows that he exists and that God exists too. Surely, such knowledge should be easily accessible, especially the knowledge concerning God as being the primary creator of the universe. But a Socratic philosopher could reply that much knowledge that we are born with tends to get hidden or shuffled to the side by the massive confusion of specific data that overwhelms our senses from the moment we are born; or that the obvious variety in intelligence across a human population may imply that some people are better than others at accessing that which is innate in them. Locke could retort in turn that evidence of conflicting opinions on what people believe to be innate raises insurmountable difficulties for the innatist. Third, just because a person assents to a proposition does not mean that this knowledge was innate: knowledge can only come from observation, acquaintance and reflection. An intuitive grasp of the proper relationship between two or more ideas (say, ‘the morning star is the evening star is the planet Venus’) does not indicate innate knowledge but merely a new comprehension connecting previously unrelated ideas. Fourth, Locke rejects the attempt to shift innatism to supporting ‘implicit understanding’, for what kind of knowledge, he asks, can be imprinted on the mind implicitly? The shift in the argument does not get anywhere and is merely a semantic confusion, he reasons, so implicit knowledge may be redefined as either intuitive or subliminal knowledge. Intuitive knowledge (deploying Locke’s usage of the term) means that the mind may grasp a relationship between two ideas presented to it; for example, that the elephant is bigger than the mouse when standing next to one another on a level surface. Subliminal knowledge is not directly spoken of by Locke, but his theory suggests that it could be easily included in it. Subliminal knowledge may be defined as the broader awareness of our senses rather than a focused awareness. Locke speaks of a focus in learning, which suggests that he is aware of the possibility of being in a state that lacks focus; given that we can direct our minds to concentrate on a particular entity or relationship between entities, we can also assume that we can broaden our awareness to take in more things at once, although at the cost of reducing particular knowledge. For example, I may direct my telescope to a particular star region and focus on the patterns made and their relative brightness, or I may lie down in a field and take in the entire firmament above me to watch for meteorites or to attempt a comprehension of the magnitude of the galaxy. Fifth, the argument that knowledge is innate because once we are shown something, we ‘know it’, does not make sense: if a person must be provided with an impression of the idea and the words (referents) and terms to it, what else, Locke demands, is left? For example, I ask a pupil how a triangle

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may possess three internal right angles – impossible, she replies. I then turn to a sphere and construct three lines, each orthogonal to the other, and produce a triangle: here, the student’s ‘ah!’ constitutes evidence for the Socratic teacher that the theory and its application were already in the pupil’s mind, but I have had to explain the process and show the surprising result, leaving the pupil’s intuitive grasp of relations to ‘see’ the result – what can be said to be innate in such instances? Sixth, Locke contends that there are no innate moral principles. This is a direct criticism of the Cambridge Platonists, who argued that moral ideas are innate. (Remember that Locke ended up at the household of Lady Damaris Masham, daughter of the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth, whose writings Locke knew and enjoyed.) First, there is the variation of human morality across peoples and time; second, if we possessed an innate comprehension of right and wrong, we would not ask, ‘what should I do?’, for the answer would already be inscribed in our conscience. The theory of innate morality does not disappear from ethics as easily as epistemological innatism does: it is easier, following Locke’s arguments, to show that we are born without particular knowledge of anything, but much harder to claim that we are also born without moral knowledge. One of the reasons lies with our dispositional tendencies and the impossibility (never mind the moral implications) of removing human influence from a child’s life: children, as Locke noted, possess traits that encourage curiosity or sociability, for instance, which could also be extended to claim that we are genetically (naturally, biologically) disposed to cooperating with others and helping them out. This is a theory later drawn from Darwin’s thoughts on evolution and developed by the early twentieth-century Russian e´ migr´e anarchist, Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921). Natural selection, the modern argument goes, tends to advance those people who are more socially cooperative than those who tend to be antisocial; hence, in the long run, humanity is more likely to be populated with people possessing a disposition toward the good (as in their traits are attractive to others in society). Distinguishing, however, between what moral traits we are born with and what are subtly fostered in us by immediate and almost continual socialization by our family is difficult to assess. Locke sustains a powerful criticism of innate morals: human society provides enough counter-evidence to raise serious doubts that children are born possessing moral understanding. Locke may agree that we are born possessing the capacity to understand morality, just as we are born possessing the capacity to know and to understand; but again, the content is missing at birth. Seventh, and following on from the previous argument, it cannot be held that conscience innately governs our affairs either, for men obviously

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transgress moral rules, which suggests that there is no internal barrier to committing allegedly innate sins; and besides, asks Locke, why would God introduce different rules of conduct and different moral meanings into the world? That is, if human conscience is programmed to instil in our hearts the notion that to kill another human is absolutely wrong, all people will find killing or its aftermath similarly devastating – but, evidently, they do not. Some societies, or some people, do not wince at the killing of others; the application of conscience is highly relativistic and again, Locke would assert, thoroughly dependent on upbringing. Having rejected innatism, Locke then turns to discuss the problem that if ideas are not innate, then there must be a time that we can point to when ideas (particular knowledge) are not in our minds. Obviously, he argues, they are not in our minds when we are born. It is patent that they come into our minds by degree, slowly building up in the brains of children, and always our observation or sensation of the world precedes knowledge and comprehension. Once innatism is rejected, we must fall back upon the individual as the sole begetter and owner of knowledge, which sets the groundwork for Locke’s powerfully individualistic and sceptical philosophy in which he underscores the need to observe with one’s own eyes and to think with one’s own mind. In contrast, innatism lends itself to accepting what others believe is (or should be) innate in the human mind, which paves the way, he asserts, for authoritarianism and blind obedience – two moral and political tendencies that Locke wishes to curtail. From early on in his philosophical examination of knowledge, Locke is keen to draw our attention to the political and indeed religious consequences of epistemology. His Puritan background stressed the nature of the individual’s relationship with God, something that he believed Catholicism suffered for and was thus not to be trusted as a theology for civic society (nor were atheists, rebellious intellectuals, or those serving a foreign power (Letter Concerning Toleration)). Politically, he levelled his arguments against the analogous theory of patriarchy that had been published by Sir Robert Filmer, the resulting two-pronged attack in the Two Treatises, one epistemic and the other political, emanate from Locke’s empiricism and methodological individualism: we should not bow to those in political, religious, or epistemic authority but rather assert the right to see and understand for our own selves. Accordingly, when looking at the behaviour of children, we do not witness an innate or in-born depravity that must be chastized or whipped into submission like a struggling demon taking possession of the growing youth, but as the natural follies of youth committed through innocent error. This view slowly shifted pedagogic focus in the eighteenth century, but has never truly triumphed over modern variants of innatism:

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racial theories of the nineteenth century claimed ability stemmed from the physiognomy allegedly found in discrete races, and promoters of genetic theory (from 1920s eugenicist advocates down to today’s geneticist) imply or explicate that children’s ability is restricted or encouraged by their parents’ genetic inheritance.

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Ideas

Having rejected the theory of innatism as illogical and unsupported, Locke turns to express his theory on the source of particular knowledge. Locke calls the source of knowledge ‘ideas’. ‘Idea’ is translated as ‘whatsoever the mind perceives in itself’ (Essay, II.viii.8), the ‘object of the understanding when a man thinks’ (Essay, I.ii.8). The term ‘idea’ was used by Descartes and had a contemporary currency, yet philosophically it was more commonly used to describe Plato’s technical notion of the eternal Forms of which this world is a mere reflection. This semantic difference may cause problems for understanding Locke: his definition of what constitutes an idea as a mental construction or image that is reducible to external impressions is sufficiently different from Plato’s as not to be confusing, but the common use of the term does suggests a mental concoction that differs from reality, and only a strict adherence to Locke’s own definition keeps our understanding of his meaning from wandering. Lockean ideas, including that of God, must originate from the external world – that is the essence of his empiricism. No mental image, Locke establishes in his opening Book of the Essay, is innate to the human mind, thus all that we know comes from the external world perceived through the senses: ‘When he first has any sensation’ is when ‘a man begins to have any ideas’ (Essay, II.i.23). Empiricism asserts the primacy of the senses in producing and securing our knowledge of things, in comparison to the theory of rationalism, which asserts the primacy of the mind in producing and securing our knowledge of things. Yet Locke is not easily boxed into the simplistic characterization often formed of empiricists: he recognizes that epistemology is a complex subject (hence the length of his Essay!) deserving a thorough explanation, and as we move through his thinking we are assured of the complexity of topic and his extended explanation, but we incidentally gain a vital insight into the strength of Locke’s pedagogical theories. The ‘idea’ of the object that we perceive – i.e. the impression of that object made upon our senses – is, so long as our senses are in good working

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order, the only true epistemic relationship we can forge with the world: as soon as we begin to collect similar objects into mentally contrived categories, we lose that immediacy and our knowledge thereby becomes derived and second-hand. While this drives the Lockean scepticism against systems of thought that pretend to produce indubitable truths, the sceptical argument does not in itself negate the formation of a coherent body of thought, or more properly a coherent process of thinking . Metaphorically, a holistic philosophical system aims to become an intellectual sphere, whose boundaries are set by its limits and whose content is firmly held in place within its bounded regions; on the other hand, a sceptical philosophy presents itself more like a web, with connecting threads and a potentially boundless remit – it may stretch out into the unknown, with some threads working better than others to trap knowledge. Locke’s sceptical web reaches out to education: his thoughts are not hammered into the boundary forged by preconceptions of what education or children ought to be like, but his thoughts are the product of experience, observation, and especially reflection on numerous particulars. In this way, they link to his grand epistemological treatise, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , and the importance of sensory evidence – of watching children, ministering and tending to them, and of thinking about the processes that assist them to grow and to mature. So, ideas are what the mind possesses and the mind possesses them by virtue of the things perceived by one sense or more. Ideas divide between simple and complex types. Simple ideas are the images of the external world that we immediately perceive (concrete percepts), and these may in turn be distinguished between primary qualities and secondary qualities. Here we enter a minefield of philosophical controversy of interpretation and understanding, both of what Locke says and of the philosophical issues derived from what he says, so it is best to keep the description as true to Locke’s broad intentions as found in the Essay. Primary qualities are a physical thing’s solidity, extension, figure, and mobility; its secondary qualities are its taste, colour, and sounds. Both imprint on the senses but may be distinguished: i.e. we can identify a table of certain dimensions and shape, note that it is not moving (from our perspective) and then add that it also happens to smell of new varnish and is of deep oak hue; I may not care to taste it. The simple idea may evoke pleasure or pain (at various levels – it pleases my eye to see the table there, or hurts me to have my foot under its leg) and thereby give me a principal reason for action (see ‘Freedom and will’ below). Perception is thus the originating source of simple ideas. Having perceived an entity, we may then retain an impression of the object in our mind and recollect it later at will. How good we are at recalling an impression depends on our mind’s abilities – and that recollection evidently varies

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across a population suggests to Locke that people’s ability or potential ability has been stamped on us. Locke thus defines ‘ignorance’ as the inability to recall the impression and ‘stupidity’ as the slowness in recollection, both being dependent upon what we would now call our neurological hardware, and thereby naturally limited. From the ability to retain and recollect simple ideas we form the skill of discerning between ideas, in which we compare them, enlarge them, abstract them, and compose them according to our reflections. I may compare the present table upon which I write with the kitchen table and note how they are similar (shape and texture) and dissimilar (colour and smell); I may then entertain increasing the size of them in my mind to wonder about changing them for smaller or larger tables and what advantages may accrue to my internal decoration; but I can also abstract from them certain characteristics which help me identify other objects as ‘tables’ and distinguish them from objects that are not tables, such as chairs, beds, cabinets, etc. The primacy of simple ideas provides Locke with the basis of educating young children, as we shall see. The mind must experience external objects in order to have knowledge, and consequently, the wider its experiences, the more the mind has to work on. The human mind does not stop at the impressions it receives, however. It is not a passive receptacle, which some philosophers charge Locke as proposing: no, perceiving and retaining impressions we share with many animals, but the human mind does not rest– once we begin discerning between impressions, we enter the epistemology of complex ideas. Complex ideas are the product of compounding simple ideas, the bringing of two or more simple impressions into a new form or an abstraction from them. This is when clarity in meaning becomes crucial, for once we leave the realm of simple ideas of sensorial impressions of concrete external things that we can point to and say, ‘that is what I see’, we enter the world of mental images that may or may not relate directly to the originating impressions we’ve experienced. In our thoughts we may make compounds of percepts (things we’ve perceived), combinations of them, or relations between them. For instance, we perceive duration acting on things, and work out a measurement of time (the day, or part of the day), from which we are able to abstract a notion of eternity – an infinity of days; we may also seek unity in and across things (‘a desire most intimate to our thoughts,’ Locke notes, echoing Aristotelian thinking on man’s driving curiosity). Complex ideas, Locke continues, permit remembrance (more than just recollection), reveries, attention to something, or intention to study; we discern that which produces pleasure and pain, and from them we form our ideas of good and evil. The ethical product is entirely mental – I

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judge something to be evil on account of the evil that I understand that it produces – but note how Locke emphasizes the consequences of an action: in his educational writings, Locke is concerned with the purpose and use of learning something and is thus often characterized as broadly consequentialist or utilitarian, but such a characterization, as often, misses out on the complexity of Locke’s thoughts on morality, for, as we shall see, he puts great stress on the development of character and virtuous behaviour. Similarly, Locke’s employment of complex ideas generates a deeper philosophy than simple empiricism, which asserts that the contents of my mind are wholly the product of physical impressions upon the body. The Lockean mind is certainly passive to the external percepts encountered (I cannot help sense things); but then reflection upon that content begins, and it is at this juncture that Locke’s philosophy of knowledge deepens, and inevitably problems rise. For instance, Locke’s argument seems to suggest a physical determinism between the outside world and the mind that is questionable. The external world may impact upon my form (eyes, body, tongue, olfactory or aural nerves), but I may not be present or focused on the flow of sensations; modern psychological research shows how selective our attention towards the external world may be, but common experience (and reflection) available to any thinker exposes the weakness in Locke’s assumption here – I may have sat in the same position for a long while, but only now, when I turn my attention to my leg, do I realize that I’m in pain. Hence, a person is aware of what he or she chooses to focus sensory attention on. Locke’s position would also imply that I am aware of everything which my senses detect and which may therefore be recalled at will. Consider, what is in the room at present? Only if I shift focus from the computer to the things around me do I perceive them as percepts, otherwise they remain unaccessed. There is evidence that Locke would agree with the need to focus on sensations for them to become impressions, for he recognizes that children are easily distracted – i.e. they can shift focus from their studies, which implies that they are not taking in the ideas presented to them. Accordingly, he acknowledges that attention to study must be gradually increased over time: analogously, we can deduce that the same is true of concentrating on one’s environment. When the eyes are open though, we cannot but know what they see, he argues, which is different from when we are studying the object, for then our attention does require more of an effort to sustain its focus on its details (Essay, IV.xiii.2). To think is to be conscious of thought, which implies that ‘no man can be wholly ignorant of what he does, when he thinks’ (Essay, II.i.25). Such a theory presents a strong prescription of responsibility, especially for the adult, whom Locke contends is fully mature enough to take complete

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responsibility for his life and his actions. The child’s mind is thus seen as developing an understanding of the working of his mind; but his educator, while permitting childishness, should not remove the imperative of respecting the reality from which ideas are drawn and of focusing the mind. But an obvious rejoinder to Locke here is: ‘where are we when we are not thinking?’ Asleep, he would answer, or in a reverie or daydream, when we permit our minds to freely associate ideas. Arguably, he would have to agree that at such times a man may be wholly ignorant of what he does, which returns our critique to the role of focus – a daydreaming child or man is not focused, and therefore not observing with his mind’s eye, as it were, the flows and connections of the mind, a conclusion that I do not think Locke would disagree with. The distracted child, he recommends in the Thoughts, should be quietly brought back to the topic at hand. Despite the physical determinism that Locke’s primary and secondary qualities of objects are supposed to possess, he rejects any mental determinism that we must think about that which we have experienced. The individual possesses complete volition of choice in thinking: the mind determines the will, not the external world. A man may feel uneasy, but unless his will desires it (or avers, fears, envies, etc.), he will not act; he is thus in complete control of his passions. Locke repeats Stoical and Puritanical thinking here that the passions are to be thoroughly subjected to the rule of reason: men may be weak, or be narrow in their thinking, or pursue wrong desires and so choose wrongly, but emphatically a man can control his emotions, and naturally this becomes a central theme to the Thoughts on Education. Yet once he thinks, man works on the impressions that he has in his head. He must seek to ensure his mind works well, but the nature of complex ideas implies that error and muddle-headedness are highly possible. His complex ideas will be real and adequate insofar as they refer to and relate to actual referents (e.g. I claim that this table is larger than that table – I can go and re-measure them); but they will be inadequate once they move from the original representation gained by the senses (I believe that my dining room table will fit comfortably in this room, but I forgot to bring the measurements); and they become fantastical once they mix impressions into the mind’s own creations (the table tried to eat me!). Herein is the source of human error: error creeps in when the mind raises complex ideas upon simple ideas, for only the latter refer directly to real existents. In turn the ties between complex and simple ideas are affected by: a poor education that does not teach the maturing child how to make more probable associations or to test the validity of complex ideas (i.e. not teaching the child logic or the role of evidence); an uncritical acceptance of traditions; partiality to a theological, political, or moral cause; and the deployment of jargon – i.e. coined words that do not refer back to entities.

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The Second Book of Locke’s Essay examines the nature of ideas; he builds up an impressive and subtle epistemological argument concerning the origin of knowledge and the working of the mind, and we find a similar hierarchy in the education of the developing youth. Naturally, the argument attracts philosophical criticism beyond what can be done justice here, but which must be noted for the discerning reader (Berkeley, for instance, and later Kant). The next level to Locke’s theory of human understanding involves the use of words – the subject of the Third Book of the Essay.

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Words

In Lockean philosophy, a word stands for an idea that I have in my mind. This implies that it may stand completely independent of others’ words if I am not socially active, in that I may call the things that I refer to by any sound I wish, but such linguistic isolation is not conducive to enjoying company; so most words that we use, Locke notes, come down to us through customary acceptance and use. Neologisms, the new noises I may produce to refer to something in my mind, cannot be forced upon people, he argues; which implies that he is immediately fully aware of the limits of human reason to explain all that is in the mind and the complexities that humanity has already gone through to converge on to commonly accepted terms for things. Words can refer to simple ideas, abstracts contrived for communication, or they may attempt to refer to the real, underlying substratum of a thing. The first is straightforward: if I say ‘dog’, you look to the dog presently sitting on the couch. The sound, ‘Mr Hobbes’, refers precisely to the sleeping dog on the couch – the nominal term intimates the real term; for if I say look at Mr Hobbes, you will look at the dog called Mr Hobbes and no other (unless you have forgotten his name). But if I say think of a dog, I am reaching for an audible symbol that encompasses all types of dogs that we have both seen, and the image of a dog in your mind may differ from the image I have in mine. We may then sketch the ideas of our dogs and compare them accordingly – sketching is a skill that Locke highly recommends, for it ‘helps a Man often to express, in a few Lines well put together, what a whole Sheet of Paper in Writing, would not be able to represent, and make intelligible’ (Thoughts, §161). We can agree, so long as our sketches are understandable, that we have both drawn dogs even though they may be of different types. When we mix the qualities of substance that we refer to, we produce a complex idea. Locke often deploys the substance of gold as an example: yellow body, certain weight, malleable, fusible, and solid all refer to the

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substance of gold, as we perceive it. The real essence is beyond our ability to know, he argues, referring to what we now would define as its atomic structure. (But what do we know beyond that? On Lockean analysis, we still face presently insurmountable limits to our knowledge of the universe’s substratum, of what we may now conceive of as sub-atomic particles or strings, for instance.) Abstract words however do not have to refer to a particular thing. For example, ‘murder’ represents an action that assumes a particular kind of killing, but one which is different from ‘manslaughter’; such words, Locke notes, are contrived for the purposes of communication (‘’tis the mind, that combines several scattered independent ideas, into one complex one’). Communication (and the making clear of our own ideas in our heads) is the goal of language, and again, because such words are artificial, they loosen the ties between that which we wish to communicate and that to which they refer. Mathematics, on the other hand, has pushed our ability to understand the workings of the universe by simplifying the terms necessary for description of physical phenomena. Locke appreciated the drive to formulate complexity into as simple a language as possible, and in his later years he worked on an educational textbook with Newton for some of Locke’s pupils at the Mashams’ house. Philosophical (i.e. including scientific) use demands precision in language, but Locke is fully aware that refinement is not necessary in everyday conversation. So when communicating our thoughts to others, we must ensure that our words are used precisely. In teaching children, Lockean advice drawn from the Essay would be to maintain as simple a language as possible, to avoid confusion both in communicating their ideas and for comprehending the content of their own mind. Arguments should likewise be kept short and appropriate to their age; the teacher, it is implied, should ensure children’s minds are as well connected to simple ideas as they can be. Our understanding of words thus begins with the particular – the young child recognizes sounds referring to everyday things and people; as his mind matures, he is capable of forming an abstract – that ‘man’ may refer to any instance of the people he encounters and of course people whom he does not meet; from ‘man’, he may climb the mental ladder to encompass man and animals into the abstract ‘living thing’ and from there to ‘life’, which includes the plant kingdom, and finally ‘thing’ or ‘entity’, to include all the items that we are capable of encountering, observing, and perceiving (compared to things we do not, such as states of mind, God, beauty, etc.) A child moves from particular to abstract words long before he knows what the meanings of abstract words are, Locke comments in the Essay (III.v.15). We also intuit the differences and similarities between abstracts when we compare them in our mind; intuition for Locke does not refer to some

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mystical connection between entities, but the obviousness that the mind sees between entities, e.g. that humanity is different from animality. The explanation of how abstract terms are contrived from particular ideas allows Locke to offer his solution to the medieval problem of sorting things out according to their genera and species, ‘which makes such a noise in the School.’ (Essay, III.iii.9) The problem of defining an entity rests on describing what characteristics are typically found, such as for man: ‘solid extended substance, having life, sense, spontaneous motive, and the faculty of reason.’ But because we are defining a thing with the use of several other words, which in turn are loose definitions of what they refer to, our language cannot provide a concise definition that the ‘Schoolmen’ sought, Locke reasons. Universality is merely an invented term and not the essence of a subject; it refers to the abstract idea of an entity, but the true essence remains unknown to the human mind. People also have a tendency to deploy words fashionably and with little recourse to their original ideas; this leads to an obvious hindrance in the pursuit of truth, but also may lead to conflict (Essay, III.v.16). Appropriately, Locke hopes that he may do humanity a service by pointing out that resolving errors of communication lies not in the realm of defining absolutely correctly the essences of things (a result beyond the ability of the human mind) but in precisely defining what is meant as best as possible and securing words’ attachment to the things that they represent. Abuse of words comes from using words that do not stand for clear and distinct ideas or using them without distinct meaning. Clarity of communication can only come from paying strict attention to what is said: we need to use general words in our communication, so ‘all we can do, is to collect such a number of simple ideas, as by examination, we find to be united together’ (Essay, III.vi.21); the boundaries between abstract species are completely man-made. Hence, we should always reflect upon what we assert but also we should ensure that we proceed logically. ‘To think well . . . he must think in train, and observe the dependence of this thoughts and reasonings, one upon another’ (Essay, III.vii.2). Rhetoric sows confusion and obfuscation, he adds, and in the Thoughts he stresses how pointless it is for the young gentleman to learn such arts.

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Knowledge

When the human mind extends its vocabulary of things and deploys abstracts and mixed ideas to communicate thoughts and to explore the world of self, other, and reality, it begins to gain knowledge. Knowledge, Locke defines, is ‘the perception of the connection or agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas’ (Essay, IV.i.1); interestingly, it is ‘neither wholly necessary, nor wholly voluntary’ (Essay, IV.xiii.1), which means that if I choose to perceive something, I cannot but perceive it. I can close my eyes when you say, ‘look!’ and thereby avoid knowing what it is you wish me to see, but once my eyes perceive the object, I necessarily know it. If knowledge were necessary, there would be no differences between people – just as there should be no differences between a bank of computers all programmed with the same software, each possessing exactly the same inputs as the rest. But neither is knowledge wholly voluntary, for if it were, many people would choose not to know anything at all (or very little), he adds. Actual knowledge, recall, is thus given to us when we perceive an object; I can honestly say that I perceive the mug of steaming coffee, that it is giving off a familiar aroma and is hot to touch, etc. Habitual knowledge is that which Locke calls those truths that we store in our memory, regardless of whether there are or were proofs of the true connection between them. Most of our working knowledge depends on habitual knowledge of course, as there is very little to perceive compared to what has been perceived. The division between immediate and recollected knowledge can be further distinguished between intuitive, demonstrative, and sensible knowledge. Sensible knowledge informs us through pain and pleasure as to the nature of the thing impinging on our senses – a needle hurts, a rose is pleasant to smell. Intuitive knowledge occurs to us when we compare two ideas – we grasp the connection (or lack of) between two entities that we pose in our mind or in front of our senses. Demonstrative knowledge (reason) takes the most effort, for it requires a focused attempt to prove the

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intuitive connection between each step of the argument, until a proof is produced. The extent of our knowledge depends on what we thus experience and form as ideas in our mind, producing connections between them using our senses (pain, pleasure), intuition, and reason. Ignorance, in contrast, stems from the want of ideas, a lack of connection between them, or no effort made to examine the ideas in our mind. Hence, a pupil may not have seen a horse, so we show her a picture of one, or take her to the stables to see living horses. Now she knows in the sense of possessing an image of a horse; she may forget that image (Locke’s definition of stupidity) or only recollect it with effort (Locke’s definition of being ignorant). If she does recall the image, she may compare it to another beast such as a cow and thereby produce the intuitive connection that the two animals differ in some respects and are similar in others: this is habitual knowledge. On the other hand, if we look at a limiting action, a lack of effort on her part leads her never to examine what she saw in the horse, such as categorizing it according to its mammalian nature, or vegetarian diet, or its domesticated status: the data sits isolated and unprofitable in her mind. Locke continues with a criticism of Scholastic logical games: axioms, such as ‘A is A’, and ‘lead is metal’, are trivially true and have only a limited use, he comments; rather than a tool kit of trivially true relationships, what we need to expand our knowledge is possession of clear ideas and the adoption of good methods of inquiry. Mathematical propositions certainly provide a good way forward to clarify our moral notions, he noted in the Essay (III.xi.16), but we will always hit limits to what we can know, as the underlying nature of substances are beyond our ability to know. Despite that, we need to be able to judge matters, for many connections that we must make are not perceived by us but are rather presumed. When certainty fails, we must use probability. Probability in turn is governed by observation, frequency, the constancy of experience, the number of credible testimonies, and the opinions of others. Such knowledge must pass through what Locke calls ‘degrees of assent’, and because most of us do not have the time to survey the proofs implied or needed for the knowledge we possess, we thereby rely much on habitual knowledge and the testimony of others. Reason ought to be employed to check the validity of our knowledge, and by this Locke means the discovering and finding of proofs, regularity of experience, perceiving the connections between ideas, and deducing the right conclusions. Reason will fail if our ideas fail, or our ideas are obscure, or there does not seem to be an agreement between them, or we use false or dubious language and form false principles. We are thus liable to err when there is a want of proof, a lack of ability to

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discern proofs or of the will to make the effort to use them, or we misuse probability. What limits most people’s knowledge and reasoning include time, laws restraining free inquiry, an inability to carry a train of thought, a refusal to use proofs, a refusal to admit to a probable truth, or the deployment of fallacious reasoning. Of course, our knowledge is hindered when we stop inquiring; but on trivial matters, Locke accepts that it is reasonable to go along with what others say. Except when it comes to judging – judgement should never be given up to a third party, who may be wrong; however, Locke admits that most people do not produce opinions, they stick to a party philosophy or to what they have been taught by others, or what their interests entail. The contrived nature of our knowledge leads Locke to conclude that the truth is purely a verbal and mental product. This is because certainty of truth is drawn from an agreement of words, which are in turn derived from purely mental concepts and to some extent reflect the original ideas we have or have had of the impressions made upon the senses. What can be taken as a certainty of knowledge stems from an agreement of ideas, and we may or may not make the connection, or be able to. The characterization of Locke’s theory of knowledge as emphasizing the tabula rasa nature of the human brain has been somewhat skewed by the reading that the human brain is homogenous, and therefore all that separates people from one another in terms of their skills, and hence their earning potential is education. Indeed, Locke’s opening statement in Some Thoughts would apparently back that up: but that would be to ignore the pertinent comments he makes on people’s differing abilities to recall ideas, recall them clearly, to form and to understand connections between ideas, and to judge them. More importantly, Locke’s theory of knowledge underlines the all too frail limits to human knowledge; not only are most of our linguistic concepts artificial and at least once removed from the original impressions that produced ideas in our minds, but they may also be put together, as we have seen, haphazardly, indolently, or with more consideration to dogmas learned early in childhood, or to adult party or sectarian interests. We are also prone to stopping our intellectual enquiries (Essay, IV.xx.16), which entails that we remain responsible (morally so) for the beliefs that we possess: we may choose not to think them through or to consider alternatives. Our abilities may differ on how well we may follow through and therefore judge a chain of reasoning, but we are all (except the physically handicapped) capable of perceiving the objects from which the fountain of all knowledge initially springs. Again, this underlines Locke’s commitment to overthrowing all vestiges of authoritarian sources to knowledge – the Catholic Church’s doctrine of infallibilism, for example, or Filmer’s

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assertion that the monarch is the father of us all and can therefore treat us all like his (epistemologically challenged) children. There is, accordingly, a strong egalitarianism to Locke’s epistemology, for he rejects all sources of alleged privileged authority that would claim knowledge may only belong to a certain class or a specific individual.

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Criticism of the Essay

Locke’s Essay has produced and still produces much professional criticism and analysis. For example, commentators have noted that his definition of what defines a simple idea changes, and that his general analysis of knowing what a simple idea is appears to require a greater mental operation than he gives credit. For example, if I hold a tennis ball and tell the young pupil that it possesses a solidity (one of Locke’s primary qualities of a simple idea) that would suggest prior knowledge or understanding of an abstract concept: that of solidity. It is an important criticism, which Immanuel Kant sought to resolve by postulating mental categories by which man cannot but understand certain aspects of the world (such as space and time). In Locke’s defence, he argues that children pick up abstract concepts before they understand their meaning. Therefore, the child may respond, ‘ah, that is what solidity means’, just as he or she can understand the difference between big and small by pointing out several examples of big and small objects before introducing the more subtle analysis of, this object is bigger than that object, or that thing is smaller than this thing. In the first book of the Essay, Locke rejects the plausibility of innate knowledge, that is, the theory that the human mind somehow possesses knowledge independent of any experience of objects and which is somehow instilled in the mind by either God or nature. This is not the same argument as rejecting human dispositions to understanding, for Locke certainly follows Aristotle in noting that we are a curious species (Conduct, §24): we can accept the disposition to know, but Locke thoroughly rejects the possibility of possessing innate and particular content – i.e. knowledge. Locke stresses the role that first-hand evidence plays in initial learning, which is then supplanted to include comparing objects with one another; only later does reason click in at the conscious level to permit the mind to extrapolate from what is known by the senses. In principle, abstract reflection and logical arguments should always relate back to the immediate objects of perception that we refer to in thought and speech; but once we introduce those intermediaries

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of representative words and language, we necessarily lose to some extent or other the connection with the source of all proper knowledge – sensorial experiences. When we turn this thinking to education, we can surmise that the higher level of thinking that our minds can attain (depending on individual proclivity and ability) is always dependent on the deployment of our senses and then the application of the mind to what we see. A pupil who does not experience the things he wishes to discuss can only gain an impure understanding of them, just as an adult mind can only have a poor understanding of red wine if he’s never tasted it but only seen photographs of it or read poetry describing it. Locke criticized the rhetorical lessons that boys learned in schools on this ground: it was pointless for them to discuss many of the issues, as they had not lived sufficiently to know what they were talking about – just as today, state schools in England encourage pupils to discuss social and moral problems, of which 14 to 16-year-olds will possess hardly any experience; the apparent goal is to encourage young people to be politically minded, before they have any sense of what political issues imply and usually without any knowledge of law or constitutional arrangements. The misdirection of education that worried Locke has only changed its particulars. Locke was also, as we have seen in Part 1, a physician. It is the body that senses the external objects of the world and the mind that forms images or ‘ideas’ of the contents of that world: a necessary condition for good learning is thus a healthy body (a sound mind in a sound body, as Locke quotes the Roman satirist, Juvenal [first to second century AD] in his opening to the Thoughts). Knowledge will be distorted or missed if the body is not healthy, for a sick body will reduce the capacity to perceive and therefore the ability of the mind to understand. Much of Locke’s attention in the Thoughts is on the workings of the body, and had he lived today, he would have been gripped by modern psychiatric research, which explores the connection between bodily (brain) damage and perception or reasoning skills. Others have sought to drive logical wedges between his arguments. For instance, for good communication to proceed, the words that I utter must fall on your ears and provide you with an understanding of my meaning, but the communication of my mental idea (the image I present to my own mind) may fail. Locke cogently claims that what I intend to get across to you is different from that which you understand; this is an everyday problem in communication, which the use of language, being the product of constant interaction and convergence onto agreed meanings, tries to minimize. Vague or misleading words are costly and in communicating ideas, we strive to reduce the costs: if I say, ‘Pass me a pen’ and you pass me one out of a dozen lying on the table, I can hardly criticize you for your

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arbitrary choice, but if I say, ‘Pass me that pen,’ I am obviously referring to a preferred object and would have to be more precise in which pen I mean. The simplicity of such exchanges underlines the potential costs of weak language – the costs rise considerably as our endeavours and adventures become more complex. Recently (2003), a surveillance probe for the planet Mars crashed into the planet because the probe’s manufacturer and the mission control team were using different units of measurement; the cost of the miscommunication was in the order of US $125 million. History is replete with similarly disastrous stories, especially in warfare when the pressure on good communication is heightened but also more likely to fail. Another logical problem is as follows: what I have in my mind and what I communicate to you may differ, so that which I utter may have little relation to that which I am entertaining in my mind. Indubitably, I am capable of uttering words that may not relate at all to the ideas in my mind – actors do this as a profession. If I am speaking words of love but really thinking about my work, I am being disingenuous both to myself and to my beloved, which Locke would find extraordinarily deceitful. Proper communication fails if my mind is ‘elsewhere’; adults, Locke notes, learn to disguise the workings of the inner mind and so may get away with such insincerity, but children are more easily read and thus can be taught to avoid using mind games. Finally, (although certainly not exhaustively in terms of the debates generated by Locke’s Essay), Locke’s empiricism is not so empiricist as initial commentators presented it. An empiricist is one who stresses the importance of the senses as the source of all knowledge and rejects any form of innatism or deductive knowledge. Yet as we progress through the Essay an increasing role for rationalism is unfurled – one that is not so far removed from Descartes’ project. Locke recognizes that if we are to communicate complex ideas carefully and precisely and demonstrate conclusions, we could do worse than to follow mathematics and its language and method. This was something that Plato had stressed in asserting the importance of learning geometry, for he argued (following the Pythagoreans) that the world could be understood through geometrical analysis, which is akin to what Descartes (and also Locke’s friend Newton) sought. What sustains the distinction between the Platonic-Cartesian rationalists and Locke and Newton is that the latter (well, more specifically Newton) insisted on testing mathematical theories scientifically. Descartes presented an armchair physicist, as it were, that Locke and Newton would reject. Nonetheless, Locke’s importing of rationalism into his project has created much critique. Having discussed Locke’s thoughts on knowledge, we can turn to his pedagogical advice to the gentry raising their sons and daughters.

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Locke’s Theory of Education Locke’s published thoughts on education were taken from a correspondence with friends, Mr and Mrs Edward Clarke; Mrs Clarke was a relation of Locke and the family lived in Somerset, where Locke often returned to oversee his rented properties. The correspondence began in 1684 and was initially published in 1693 under the humble title of Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Naturally, Locke adapted the letters for publication, but the immediate focus of his thoughts had been the Clarke’s son, Edward. Given the vast record of Locke’s notes, letters and works, the interested student can pursue in much greater detail the circumstances and actual correspondence and history behind the publishing of his ideas (e.g. Axtell 1968, Yoltons 1986), while this section outlines the themes of Locke’s writings, touching on his correspondence where appropriate, and explores the deeper connections and implications of his philosophy. The premise to Lockean education is the securing of character before any positive instruction in the various disciplines. In the opening sally of the Thoughts, Locke insists that education defines character : ‘of all the Men we meet with, Nine Parts of Ten are what they are, Good or Evil, useful or not, by their Education. ‘Tis that which makes the great Difference in Mankind’ (Thoughts §1). By changing the educational environment (particularly the behavioural constraints and expectations governing a child’s development and maturation), the child’s natural tendencies can be gradually channelled into better forms of behaviour and into virtues worth cultivating for his or her eventual maturation into adult society. ‘I imagine,’ he writes, ‘the Minds of Children as easily turn’d this or that Way, as Water it self’ (Thoughts, §2). Yet the apparent strong behaviourist thesis claimed at the beginning of the Thoughts is watered down substantially by the recognition of individuals’ inherent traits: ‘God has stamp’d certain Characters upon Men’s Minds, which like their Shapes, may perhaps be a little mended, but can hardly be totally alter’d and transform’d into the contrary’ (Thoughts, §66). Combining the apparently contradictory arguments, Locke advises that we work with what traits the child has to ‘make the best of what Nature has given’, and for that the individual pupil’s character should be observed and taken into account when instructing, for ‘to attempt the putting another [character] upon him, will be but Labour in vain’ (Thoughts, §66). One aspect of his work that some modern commentators note is that Locke does not provide a systematic, holistic philosophy of education – his thoughts were the product of response to friends’ requests for advice, albeit perhaps with an eye on publishing an educational treatise (Quick 1880, p.xxxvi). Some thereby argue that he does not have much to say in the way

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of prescriptive advice to a modern audience (Yoltons 1986), which would imply that all we may enjoy as modern readers is the Lockean argument for the importance of connecting education and society. Educationalists who enjoy Plato’s Republic like to foster the argument that education is vital for the formation of a civic society – it has become a common theme in educational philosophy; Locke in his turn stresses the moralizing purpose of education, which fits in well with his political philosophy and which appeals to the strong educationalist tradition that likes to see education as having a social purpose of some sort. Reading the Thoughts will ensure that the reader notes well the civic function of education; but a broader reading of Locke’s work will assure the reader of a stronger civic purpose, namely the obligatory school attendance of the children of the poor to educate them somewhat but also to develop a work ethic in what would normally be a life of idleness. But to dismiss his writing in the Thoughts as being too focused on the children of the middle classes or contemporaneously bound in seventeenth-century ethics is to miss out on Locke’s obvious talent in understanding children and the problems they impose upon households, as well as intuiting what kind of character is better suited to their ultimate profession or station in life. Particulars may change but the general principles of educating a human child remain; after all, Locke himself correctly recognized the useful advice that the Romans could offer sixteen centuries later (cf. Part 4). His own advice and observations that we can learn from come from his own experience of what his country had to offer in terms of one of the best schools (Westminster), University (Oxford), as medical practitioner to the century’s best doctor (Dr Thomas Sydenham), as member of the intellectually vigorous Royal Society, and as resident and tutor to several families.

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Aristotelian Roots

Broadly speaking, we can put Locke in the Aristotelian vein of philosophy, as compared to the Platonic vein. The two visions – while being highly connected in many respects, given Aristotle was Plato’s pupil – provide a useful beginner’s guide to dividing much of Western philosophy. Plato’s philosophy envisioned a separate sphere of Ideas or Forms, from which the particular entities (or phenomena) on this earth are drawn and hence are merely reflections. For Plato, there is an Ideal everything – an Ideal Man, Woman, Horse, Table, Government, Law, and Education. Of course, there is much more to Plato than this, but Locke rejected the Platonic metaphysical duality implied in many of the dialogues – the notion that there is this earth and that there is also the universe of Ideas. Aristotle also rejected the Platonic vision and was in many respects one of the first systematic scientists; his leaning was towards biology and he was an avid collector of plants, and his ethical and political philosophy sought to explain the highest purposes to which we should aim (Nichomachean Ethics, I). Aristotelianism unfortunately drifted into an apologetic school of followers (with a few exceptions) that repeated rather than expanded on the master’s thoughts; this typical sociological phenomenon was repeated when the works of Aristotle were rediscovered by Europeans in the thirteenth century (they had been actively read and looked after by Arabian scholars following the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire). In universities and then in schools, Aristotelianism (adherents calling themselves Peripatetics, after Aristotle’s early followers in Ancient Greece) evolved into a curriculum of expounding syllogisms (three lines of logic – two premises and a conclusion) and disputing the meanings of words, in what Locke and others argued was a vain attempt to discover an entity’s essence, the underlying, unchanging substratum to the universe or to particular elements. Locke was certainly, and apparently pleasantly, surprised when he actually got round to reading Aristotle in the original, for he found none of the nitpicking pedantry of the ‘Schoolmen’; unsurprisingly, he reminds his readers to read works in their original. Being a Lockean

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scholar, I can hardly disagree: what I hope can be gained from this critique is a systematic overview of Locke’s main and relevant thoughts, for they are often repeated or collected in a less than systematic way (particularly when we compare then with the wonderful organization of the Essay). The scientific revolution that was getting underway in Locke’s midst – much of it in the society in which he circulated – was arguably truer to the original Aristotle than many, in the revolt against Scholasticism, may have realized at the time. Of course, the great thinkers of the century were advancing science and scientific thinking far beyond anything Aristotle or his supporters could have imagined, and revolting from the Aristotelian school of disputation, logic, and rhetoric; but they followed the early protoscientist in his application of reason to the world and, especially in political thinking, they embraced civic individualism. This is the idea that the individual is the most important being (rather than ‘society’, as it is for communists, socialists and communitarians of all colours and persuasions), and that for the civic life to proceed smoothly and peacefully, individuals should aspire to a virtuous life. Virtue ethics also has some origins in Aristotle’s Nichomachaean Ethics, in which, when read closely we can note the similarities to Locke’s own thoughts on morality; but Aristotle’s notions of virtue were expanded on and enter mainstream Western thinking courtesy of the great Roman thinkers and orators (notably the Stoics), whose writings Locke knew very well from his studies at Westminster and Oxford. Locke follows suit in arguing that the good life is necessarily social (Aristotle: ‘man is a social animal,’ Pol: 1.2), and that the good life entails the pursuit of a flexible, culturally centred ethic of guiding principles (virtues) on how to act. Such codes and expectations of conduct typically have a culturally relative content to them: the Romans had noted the relativity of many of humanity’s ethics (after all, their Empire expanded across much of Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa), but they also noted that all peoples tended to have a few common codes of conduct – that murder was universally wrong, for example. Accordingly, the virtue ethicist claims that beyond a core of essential rights or duties that all possess (or should possess) and that become part of the international law tradition, what is then required of the individual will depend on social station and contemporary, local expectations, which become part of the national law codes. Thus we read in Locke’s Two Treatises of the inalienable right to self-ownership that is due all people, and the consequent right not to be aggressed against by any other. Once a minimum code of conduct is justified, how should a people act toward one another, beyond respecting each other’s right not to be aggressed against? Enter Locke’s formal exposition on education – highly particular indeed, and targeted to a friend’s child, yet the breadth and depth to his Thoughts reminds us that Locke’s

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political philosophy cannot be easily boxed (or dismissed) as offering no vision of civic life, and that it is not without use in modern society. For Locke, civic life begins and ends with the health and state of the individuals comprising it, and how they relate to one another. Locke’s political philosophy is a classic defence of individualism, so unsurprisingly, his thoughts on the cultivation of the child pursue a method designed to foster individuality. In contrast, socialist thinkers see society as a whole and separate entity, without which the individual is nothing; socialist (or ‘progressive’) educational programmes seek to smooth out individuality in favour of a thoroughly socialized person, i.e. one willing to give up his or her own interests in favour of the collective’s ideals. Locke, along with most individualists, would agree that without society an individual could barely exist, but he rejects the holistic or communistic vision that relegates the individual to a mere cog or atom or limb or processor (various analogies have been deployed through the ages). The individual is born to parents, and they have absolute (and in Locke’s time unquestioned) and inalienable rights over their child until he or she is of age, upon which time their child becomes morally, legally and politically their equal. The unconditional right over children does not worry Locke, for he optimistically avers that the parent naturally will not abuse his or her power, for ‘God hath woven into the Principles of Humane Nature such a tenderness for their Off-spring, that there is little fear that Parents should use their power with too much rigour . . .’ (Two Treatises, II.67). Once they are mature, that power ends (although the offspring are encumbered with the natural duty to respect and if necessary care for their parents), and the individual becomes morally and politically free. In turn, the Lockean realm of adults is to be absolutely free of interference from authorities. Indeed, Locke’s political thinking in the Two Treatises takes us close to anarchism, but he steps back and accepts the need for a modicum of government to insure against those people who would invade and aggress against others’ property and lives. The government is to be a libertarian or minimal state restricted to protecting law and order – and it should do very little beyond that. Hence the state should have nothing to do with education – except, as we shall see, in the case of dealing with the idle poor, for whom Locke had very different plans: but for now we shall follow the more internally consistent lines to his thinking. To the modern reader, accustomed to government largesse, Locke’s laissez-faire assumptions have perhaps to be underlined. It was not that long ago that government intervention in education did not exist – full state education, or what in effect has been the nationalization of schooling, is on average barely a century old across the West. Gradually, the mainstream political assumptions of the West changed over the twentieth century to

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invert the older, traditional assumption that the child belonged absolutely to his or her parents, or in welfare cases to the parish; in the first half of the last century, political thinkers sought to use the growing power of the state to engineer society for the better – national rather than parochial welfare programmes, and the socialization of resources were instituted, backed by growing bureaucracies to direct and monitor state intervention, sometimes for the sake of a public good and other times for intervention’s sake. Following Plato’s ancient recipe (an educational programme that he had borrowed and adapted from militant Sparta), socialists and statists enamoured with social engineering demanded that children were to be educated along lines wholly directed to the benefit of the state or to the goals that officers and politicians dreamed of. In modern times, successive governments have mandated intrusions into children’s lives and the format of their education that Locke would not have understood, despite his own appeals for obliging the local poor – the nearest he would have come to learning of such practices would have been in the annals of Ancient Sparta, or possibly of the tyrannies of Turkey and the East. Hence, if we compare the Platonic vision that still sustains ‘progressive’ educational philosophy, we can better understand Locke’s radical implications for education then and today. For Plato, the state is to be used to engineer the best society, one ruled by philosopher-kings whose wisdom ensures that all are looked after in a manner most befitting the peace and stability of society. Educational programmes are thus to be employed in reproducing as far as humanly possible the Ideal state. Of course, Plato’s vision is idealistic in the common sense of the term, and Plato was realistic in his own understanding of contemporary politics, but the ideal that education ought to serve the state’s interests, or the perceived interests of its officers, has been an incredibly influential theory, which has resurfaced in Western educational thinking in the past two centuries and become attached to other dominating philosophies (such as Hegel’s vision of the state as the embodiment of the people and of God, and to which the people cannot but belong and obey). In Locke’s time, only the German reformationists sought to wield the state’s power to educate children. In a weaker version, Platonic education is to be used for helping to produce a better society (rather than assist the better working of government) – such is Socrates’ more humanistic and more humble vision, it could be argued. And who would reject the vision? Even Locke, in his personal musings, advanced a Platonic Utopia (Atlantis) in which moral guardians would intrude into the lives of the villages. Individualists such as Locke are often implicitly or explicitly criticized for assuming that education serves no other purpose than to produce more capable individuals, without any consideration for how that may impact on

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society ‘as a whole’; society, critics summarize, is hence deemed irrelevant or at best neutral by individualism. This is an unfair criticism and skewed representation of individualist thinking: most individualists recognize the truth of Aristotle’s ‘man is a social animal’, but they stress that the individual should possess political and legal primacy in civil society, rather than being sacrificed to, or demoted by, other considerations such as economic growth, war, the planet, or the group defined in a variety of forms (race, religion, class, etc.). When the individual is relegated in political thinking (and hence in educational thinking), not only are particular individuals made worse off, according to individualism, but so too is society. Although Locke was initially a supporter of monarchical intervention in political, theological, and educational matters, he later realized that such meddling causes no good and much strife: politically, man must be free from political intervention. Moral intervention was another thing altogether: it was right to interfere morally in another’s life and its decisions, not only in the lives of children but also in those of adults. It was natural for Locke to consider the role of the gentry to regulate local mores, just as it was right, despite his religious toleration, for the state to prohibit any religion (such as Catholicism) or philosophy (such as atheism) on the grounds that serving a foreign crown (the Pope, for instance, for Catholics) or not believing in God were thoroughly dangerous morals – dangerous to the good and peace of society. But within the normalized boundaries of a God-fearing Protestant nation, man should be politically free. Later sympathetic readers have merely ejected the intrusive and selective morality of John Locke in favour of a more consistent Lockean philosophy. Today, barely a week passes in modern English society without some educational initiative being announced by politicians – a cultural and political phenomenon that Locke would have been astounded at, and would probably have recalled analogies and impressions of papal tyranny to his seventeenth-century Puritanical mind, and the monarch’s attempts to control students’ lives and curricula at Westminster and Oxford. While his consistency wavers in favour of contemporary prejudices in his minor writings, a strong implication of the Two Treatises and the Thoughts was that Locke could not countenance state intervention into education, for education to his mind is a purely family matter. The child is born to parents (and he emphasizes ‘parents’ over ‘father’ (Two Treatises, II.52)), whose duty is then to ensure that their child is healthy and educated (ibid, I.93; but contrast with II.69 where Locke asserts that the child’s education ‘belongs to the Father’). This may involve sending the child to school, but the moral choice belongs solely with the parents, rather than with a bureaucracy of distant officials.

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The Platonic vision of education was ameliorated by the emergence of Humanist thinking and the Renaissance. In the sixteenth century, Humanism gradually replaced theological teaching to concentrate on learning what the ancients said – or rather how they said things, for what they said was relegated in the systematic curricula produced over the following centuries. The Humanists did not lose the connection between education and its social role, for in resuscitating the language of the ancients, they desired to re-create the virtues and glory that was once Rome or that was once Greece. Arguably, the intellectual power of the Church was waning (compared to the Middle Ages), and the revival of the classics may have been considered an important complement (rather than substitute) to religious education. Increasing numbers of thinkers were turning their attention to the secular world, following the rediscovery of the ancient texts (notably of Aristotle), which encouraged intellectual progress and economic growth. Humanist education thus had in mind the revival of all that was good about the ancient past but now intimately connected with a Christian life. Locke’s writings on how a child should be educated do indeed have their links with his political libertarianism, but if we assume that the latter is held as a given (after all, the extent of the state then as compared to now was very small), then we may see more profitable links with Locke’s psychological theories of human happiness than with his political and social theories: Locke envisions an Aristotelian pursuit of the good life, certainly, and that pursuit happily coincides with the proper use of reason and the mind. Aristotle had argued that the best pursuit is the pursuit of the mind and intellectual activity, with which Locke agrees in principle, and follows Aristotle in giving the prescription depth: the mind can only go on what the individual experiences, and the more an individual experiences the more knowledge he has to reflect on. Moral and intellectual excellence, Aristotle had argued, are derived from instruction and not nature (Nichomachean Ethics, II.i); thus the importance of early training for Locke. Education and study thereby deepen character and understanding, and in turn teach the pupil how to associate and put ideas together well in his or her mind; when the mind works well, the individual is, we can surmise, psychologically balanced and contented – able to understand better the world around and to engage effectively in society. On top of the Aristotelian foundation, Locke also drew heavily on the Humanist tradition of recognizing the innate worth of human life and hence of human pursuits, but sought to lift it from the Scholasticism and pedantry it had fallen into in its love with classicism. The pupil ought to be well-rounded following the Renaissance ideal, but things ought to be studied not for their own sake (as the Renaissance educators would have it), but for the purpose of living life in a commercial and changing society.

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Here I am deliberately broadening the Lockean vision, which we must recall in Locke’s writings was initially intentionally narrow and focused on the maturation and education of the young gentleman (and only incidentally the young gentlewoman); but lifted from the specific advice that Locke intended for his friends, we can enjoy a perspicacious collection of thoughts on children’s upbringing that may certainly retain its relevance today. Modern society is characterized by change, and although the alterations are much more obvious to present generations, Locke’s awareness of the need to be adaptable are implied in his educational ambition of fashioning virtuous men and women who could be at ease in any situation. We can also recognize in Locke’s general educational thinking the calling of the ‘Protestant work ethic’ – that the young man should be skilled and industrious, and idleness should be sufficiently and constantly undermined in order to secure a good habit of diligence and hard work, a plan which he believes should be forced upon the indigent and idle. For socialist critics of capitalism (notably the Marxists), such an ethic is necessary for the working or development of a capitalist system that Locke justifies in his Two Treatises with the emphasis on private property. Private property, hard work, and more importantly saving and investment in machinery are indeed preconditions for economic growth, but whether a free society orients its attentions towards progress or not stems from what the millions of individually acting people desire – how they view their own lives and futures; for Locke, political freedom was much more important than whether the interaction of similarly minded Protestants produced economic growth. Material growth for its own sake Locke would have considered as a gross materialism unbecoming the virtuous Christian; while he was well aware of the beneficial effects on prosperity resulting from private rather than communal ownership (cf. Two Treatises), the emphasis is on the incidental effects. Much more important for Locke was the formation of a virtuous individual.

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Education’s Purpose

Given his philosophy of knowledge, Locke can only argue that ‘education’ is an artificial concept, a word that brings together various and varying methods of teaching, study, and learning that revolve around improving mental and physical abilities. Locke does not define education as such, but such a working definition is reflective of his epistemology; indeed, the Lockean concept of education must be porous, as it were, for Locke strongly criticized the Scholastic attempt to define entities as if the definition invoked the essence of the thing considered – such attempts lead to unnecessary and eternal wrangling and are suitably demonstrated to be useless by Locke, once concepts are realized to be human contrivances for understanding more than one entity under a single word. Since the word ‘education’ is definitionally porous, Locke’s pedagogical philosophy must be similarly so: it could never be encapsulated in a single, simple, or internally consistent doctrine, just as, the closer we look, any conceptual word must overlap into other ideas and concepts and must be amenable to the growth of our knowledge of other kinds of education. With all concepts there are recognizable similarities: what you define as educational will usually have elements in common with what I define as educational, and where we differ or introduce new principles or particulars so our definition may expand accordingly. Our communication helps both of us get nearer a better understanding of what education is – closer to a small ‘t’ truth, rather than a large ‘T’ truth as in Platonic idealism. If the Lockean concept of education is porous or elastic, Locke’s disapproval of contemporary education is less so. Seventeenth-century education was beginning to reach further among the population, and Locke’s critique is strongly levelled at what was obviously becoming a disjunction between useful and useless learning. England was experiencing the beginnings of economic expansion as its markets and industry grew, and accordingly the demand increased for relevant educational services to teach the youth the perceived requirements of their future responsibilities; yet the conservative

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drag acting on educational thinking was (and remains) powerful indeed, and the criticism of highly capable minds barely altered the pedagogic momentum. A similar conservatism in the top schools was seen in the nineteenth century, schools which maintained a strict adherence to the inherited classical tradition despite – or in spite of – the growing demand for vocational courses (notably in engineering). In the centuries prior to Locke’s era, education had been thoroughly attached, directly or indirectly, to the Church, and a child who actually attended school was educated to become a working member of the clerical community: the Humanistic renaissance (and economic expansion) provided an alternative to theological studies – the critical capacities of man could be turned to study this world rather than the mysteries of the divine. (In a broad sense this too is a characterization – a closer look at any era shows greater variety than is often expected from initial considerations.) But the alternative Humanist revolution was soon captured by more pedantic minds, keen to instil in children the particulars rather than the spirit of the ancient world, in the regimented discipline of schools: to instruct rather than to educate. Schools, which would be familiar enough to the modern eye, of classes, curriculum, rewards and punishments, existed; but Locke was no enthusiast for the children of his patrons and friends. Typically, by Locke’s time, children of the upper classes and gentry were being instructed by a full-time tutor for part of their education at least. That tutor, a live-in servant, would be a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge, and because of the religious requirements of the Oxbridge colleges at the time, would be a clerical servant at some level or other. When of age, the boy (not the girl at this time) may have been sent on to a public school, the culture of which Locke wished to secure his friends’ children against by keeping them at home. Many of the lower classes attended schools – often for free, paid for by local patrons, guilds, or the Church. In Tudor times, schools were legion – the Humanist revolution began to supplant religious teaching with classical learning. There were cathedral, collegiate (attached indirectly to a cathedral), guild, hospital, monastic, chantry and grammar schools. There were free schools, some founded by laymen, for the local children. Grammar schools taught the trivium of grammar, logic, and rhetoric, which Locke was to thoroughly reject as a waste of time. Interestingly, the schools’ books are similar to what Locke recommends in his Thoughts – including Aesop’s Fables, to encourage reading in the young pupil, with older readers being introduced to Cicero, Sallust, Terence, Ovid, and so on. Schools for four year olds, called ‘petty schools’, taught children, if they did not know already, how to read. This was effected with a hornbook and a transparent parchment placed over the book’s letters of the alphabet to be copied: the child first learned the alphabet and then

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its syllables (the phonetic method), just as Locke was to advise. The child’s learning of the ABC (in a book called the ABC with the Catechism, mentioned incidentally by Shakespeare in Two Gentlemen from Verona, II.i.22), was intimately connected with the catechism, the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments and other religious tracts. Alongside the ABC, the child had a Primer , which also had liturgical passages to copy, all of which was in English after Henry VIII’s reformation of the Church; this was later replaced by the Book of Common Prayer , whose political content – the notion that the state should possess the theological right to impose a common form of prayer across the entire kingdom – was to prove so contentious in the seventeenth century. After elementary schooling, the pupil passed to a grammar school, where his Primer would have given him a foretaste of the curriculum to come. The emphasis is particularly on the ‘him’ here, for girls may have attended petty schools but they tended not to go to the grammar schools. (The few erudite and scholarly ladies of the Tudor era tended to be aristocratic women with access to their own tutors.) St Paul’s School in London became an influential school for the developing post-Reformation ‘Humanist’ curriculum. It was re-founded by theologian John Colet, who brought his Dutch friend, Erasmus, on board to help flesh out the curriculum: Erasmus wrote a grammar and catechism book for the school. The grammar schools were free to selected pupils, being funded out of ecclesiastical rents or other forms of patronage. The pupils learned a strict regime of memorization, copying, and grammar exercises; the St Paul’s curriculum caught on and became the general standard fare of the boys’ grammar schools. The classical-Humanist curriculum passed on into the seventeenth century and down to Locke’s era, and through to the twentieth century. Schools varied only slightly in what they offered: masters retained flexibility in which authors they used, but on the whole the culture precluded not taking the classics. Hebrew and even Arabic were added for brighter students, but the chief purpose of learning the classics was to imitate the style and hence the mentality of the ancients. Students had to speak only in Latin (usually on pain of punishment), and could be challenged to orate on extempore themes in an ancient tongue. Locke’s headmaster at Westminster, Richard Busby (see Part 1), earned the reputation of being one of the best Greek scholars in the land, and he would insist that the boys learned their Greek without Latin notes to help them. Locke’s contemporary at Westminster, the poet John Dryden, recalled that Busby also had the boys write English verses, which was less usual. But the traditional schools only proffered selected excerpts from the classical authors, and their curricula remained narrow. In his own writings, Locke, along with other educational critics, sought to break the mould and to offer a broader,

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more relevant curriculum, which had purpose and retained a great element of fun. Having fun while learning is a message that Locke later stresses in the Thoughts; at the public schools of the day – and down to the recent present in England – fear and the disapprobation of peers were the great motivators for many pupils. The primary aim of contemporary education was to break the will of the child and to subjugate it to his elders and superiors. Similar thoughts on the breaking in of hunting hounds or horses were applied to children (no one seriously questioning whether the traditional, violent methods of breaking in such animals were in fact efficacious!); after all, these animals were valuable to the gentry, and as children became more to be looked upon as children needing an education, it is not surprising to hear a similar design to break the ‘rebellious’ natural will of the young boy or girl (Stone 1990, 116). Whipping with a rod or birch twigs was common practice in all schools, and a boy’s naked buttocks would be struck until they bled; another instrument was the ferula, a flat piece of wood expanding into a pear-shape with a hole in the middle, which was struck against the hand or mouth and designed to produce a severe blister.St Paul’s Dr Gill, and Westminster’s Dr Busby were notorious floggers, but flogging and punishing children for academic lapses was not the aim of Humanist pedagogy: Locke later asked, ‘Why . . . does the learning of Latin and Greek need the rod, when French and Italian needs it not?’ (Stone 1990, 116–19) Punishment and fear were the mainstay of education both at home and at school for the Reformation era, which sustained the teaching methods of earlier times despite the foment in other intellectual circles. Only in the late seventeenth century, essentially with Locke’s influence (although he was not alone in voicing criticism of deploying punishment and fear to motivate children), did pedagogy slowly change to look at the child as a child rather than a sinful, wilful, wild, animal or miniature adult. Locke’s purpose for education alters substantially from breaking the will, to cultivating a capable and independent mind. Locke, as we noted above, rejected examining the ‘essence’ of education: instead, we should ask what is its purpose? For Locke it is to cultivate a well-bred, healthy, virtuous, religious gentleman or gentlewoman, whose thinking abilities and knowledge reflect his or her unique dispositions and temperament, and ‘whose proper calling is the service of his country’ (‘Some Thoughts Concerning’, 398) Reading, writing, and learning are necessary, but not the chief purpose of education, he argues (Thoughts, §147), and few are naturally inclined towards academic excellence – too much learning is for the university rather than for the world, he bemoans (Thoughts, §94). The pupil should be primarily taught to be sociable and to be thoroughly independently minded: but learning takes second place to forming virtuous qualities.

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Education should also take place at home under the eye of a professional and suitable tutor, which means that schools are rarely to be advised – education is a family not a public matter (cf. Letter , 54, in which Locke presumes education is no business of government: the belief ‘that parents should not have the government and education of their own children’ is a source of political oppression and hence of sedition – although for a contrasting mood, see ‘But not for the poor’, below). Besides, since no two children are alike, the same method of instruction cannot be used – each pupil requires individual attention (Thoughts, §265). Such is the radical purpose of Locke’s educational philosophy and it derives from his broader philosophy, especially his important reflections on knowledge and politics, and from his experiences as a scientist and physician. From his exposition on education’s purpose, we can note how Locke’s thoughts connect to his greater philosophy. A man’s exposition on any applied topic emanates with more or less logical coherence and consistency from the deeper convictions that he possesses concerning the nature of the universe, and how he argues that we come to know about it. That is, philosophically speaking, his prescriptions will derive from his metaphysics and epistemology – the study of what is and of how we know things. His thoughts on ‘what is’ and ‘how we know what is’ form the foundations of applied subjects such as ethics, political philosophy, and of course educational philosophy. Hence a consistent thinker’s ruminations on particular and applied topics should connect fluently back to his fundamental metaphysical and epistemological assumptions. In the writings of Locke, we generally discover a collection of central tenets that relate easily with one another (especially for his post-Oxford writings), even if some particular tenets hang incoherently as reflections of his own peculiar prejudices or those of his time. More importantly, we enjoy the expansion of a scientifically motivated philosophy, one that seeks solid foundations for thought and finds the boundaries or limits to man’s knowledge. Locke sought truth – he had it written on his epitaph: that was his sole ideal guide. Emphatically, it was not his intention to form a complete or holistic philosophy, of which he was sceptical. He was not a system builder, and indeed his position on the relationship between reality and knowledge precludes forming such a holistic conception of thought and action. Rather, Locke was sceptical of all such systems, which reeked of Scholasticism to his way of thinking; his focus both in the Essay and the Thoughts is on the particular entity presently viewed, whether it is an inanimate object or a nineyear-old child, and his philosophy of knowledge stresses the importance of process – of observing and adapting one’s theories to the facts of the matter in hand. Locke’s thinking is thoroughly sceptical: that is, unless the evidence of the senses and/or the validity of one’s reasoning supports a conjecture,

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it is to be doubted until new evidence is forthcoming or rejected. As we expand and deepen our experience of the outside world, we are better able to evaluate new information that we encounter, but only if we are sufficiently primed to think critically. Naturally, this is one of the purposes of education, and one that we shall focus on later. The order of Locke’s educational philosophy may be now introduced: first the inculcation of faith; then gentlemanly conduct and virtuous behaviour (‘breeding’); then one may proceed beyond the academic basics to scholarly learning if it is appropriate to the pupil’s abilities and interest (Thoughts, §134). Learning is always to be relegated to reflect the particular and various aptitudes of individuals: all may strive to become faithful and virtuous gentlemen and gentlewomen, but not all can ascend the heights of scholastic achievement, nor would Locke wish it so. Locke’s educational philosophy logically begins with his thoughts on faith.

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Faith and Religion

Despite Locke’s strident claims for the primacy of reason and experience in his writings, and therefore the emphasis on what we would now call the scientific and secular (free-thinking) mind, he does not reject faith. This only comes out towards the end of the Essay and in various comments in the Thoughts, but its force in Locke’s philosophy should not and cannot be ignored. A child must learn first and foremost that there exists a God and that the world, and all that is in it, is dependent on an omniscient deity: faith precedes all action and knowledge in the world. Yet Locke, being a Latitudinarian, argues that for the mature mind all that is held as religious should be amenable to rational analysis, for God’s universe is rational and has no room for the irrational. Reason takes precedence in epistemology. All knowledge, he argues, rests upon the existence of God, a God who created the world and humanity. This argument cannot rest upon an innately knowing principle, but requires human reason to understand. A child does not understand ‘God’ or His acts, and knowledge of God is certainly not innate (Essay, I.iv.8); knowledge of God comes to him later and must be taught. In Book IV of the Essay, Locke argues that faith and reason (science) are compatible, a position that remains popular with many of the great thinkers in science from the sciences (cf. Stephen Jay Gould’s writings): they make room for God and for science, and keep the two philosophically separate. Faith and reason continue to conflict in the modern era, and Locke, experiencing the commotions of his own century, was all too aware of how powerful religious sentiments could lead to continual conflict. However, Locke’s arguments, which reflect his theological Latitudinarianism, stress the need for faith to be acceptable to reason, for only when people uphold reason and rationality can the conditions for peace be fulfilled. Locke distinguishes between the two media for knowledge thus: reason is ‘the discovery of the certainty or probability of such propositions or truths, which the mind arrives at by deduction made from such ideas, which it has

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got by the use of its natural faculties, viz. by sensation or reflection.’ Faith, on the other hand, is ‘the assent to any proposition, not thus made out by the deductions of reason; but upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from GOD, in some extraordinary way of communication . . . revelation’ (Essay, IV.xviii). The two epistemologies apparently oppose one another – reason cannot accept anything that is not obtained from the senses or the workings of the mind, whereas faith asks us to suspend our rational faculty: how can the two abide together? For Locke, the two may be bridged: reason cannot assent to anything that is unreasonable; and faith cannot convince us of anything that would contradict our knowledge. Therefore, God would not ask us to put our faith in things unreasonable. Some matters such as the rebellion of the angels from God’s rule warrant our faith – they can neither be proved nor disproved, but revelations of God’s word demand a more inquisitive, scientific inquiry. Revelations, according to Locke, must be rational, and the method of discerning God’s revelations from the spurious mutterings of the deranged must be sorted out rationally. He summarizes his position thus: ‘Nothing that is contrary to, and inconsistent with the clear and self-evident dictates of reason, has a right to be urged or assented to, as a matter of faith, wherein reason hath nothing to do’ (Essay, IV.xviii.10). It is a controversial theology indeed, and not one that goes without reply either then or now; but Locke realized that the world should be a peaceful place in which reason and reasonable behaviour between peoples rule – and this cannot be had, he notes, when men turn to irrationalism and believe in the impossible. Such people are like those we find castigated in Locke’s Two Treatises, in which he describes aggressors as having forfeited their rights to life and liberty for their belligerent invasion of another’s property and life: in the Essay, he writes, ‘this crying up of faith, in opposition to reason, we may, I think, in good measure, ascribe those absurdities, that full almost all the religions which possess and divide mankind . . . So that, in effect religion which should most distinguish us from beasts . . . is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts themselves’ (Essay, IV.xviii.11). Locke also criticizes religious zealots for putting their enthusiasm (emotion) before reason and God’s revelation. Although the older Locke (i.e. after he leaves Oxford) defends religious freedom (except for Catholics, and Muslims who serve foreign princes), he retains a severe and mocking dislike of the religious zealots that the seventeenth century produced. At university, he commented sarcastically on the Quakers and their refusal to doff their hats; while later arguing for their freedom, he condemns their emotive and self-assured preaching. Enthusiasm negates both reason and revelation ‘and substitutes . . . the ungrounded fancies of a man’s brain, and assumes them

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for a foundation of opinion and conduct’ (Essay, IV.xix. §3); such men feel the hand of God working in them and cannot listen to reason. Religious enthusiasm motivates men much more than reason or revelation; accordingly, while their freedom to believe is to be tolerated, they are nonetheless dangerous men. Remember that Locke is writing in an age that had seen persistent religious war and persecution: the sixteenth-century Reformation movement, which saw the separation of the Protestants from the Roman Catholic church, unleashed a round of brutal oppressions (notably the St Bartholomew’s Massacre in Paris), and these conflicts continued into the seventeenth century but were complicated by political concerns – the Thirty Years’ War (1608–48) and the British Civil Wars (1642–50) divided along national, religious, and political lines in complicated and shifting patterns. Several key thinkers of Locke’s era were blaming religious factionalism for the conflict (e.g. Hobbes), as Locke indeed argued while at Oxford; but some also realized that the state either could not or should not insist on enforcing a religious monopoly, and that people should be free to choose whatever faith they desired to follow. Religious toleration was in the air – and had been since, among other writings, Erasmus’ satirical Complaint of Peace, which condemned Christians for attacking their brethren. Yet Locke was very much a man of the Protestant faith – a Puritan of upbringing and a Latitudinarian of maturity, who conceived liberty in Protestant terms only. Catholicism should not be tolerated by the state, and accordingly his educational teachings were not designed for Catholic families. In Catholicism, Locke saw the rejection of individual authority in favour of papal authority. This was a common objection of contemporary Protestant political writers, but Locke also stressed that Catholicism undermined the epistemic independence of the individual: instead of believing what is seen with the individual’s own senses and reasoned with the mind, he or she is asked to delegate knowledge to authority. This is conducive to a slavish mentality and consequently a political enslavement, he intones. Thus, matters of faith are personal, private even, and should not be attached to political authority. In this Locke was being thoroughly Protestant – more so than many of his countrymen, but decidedly less so than Quaker contemporaries. The gentleman of good breeding that Locke wishes to cultivate should have an ‘imprint’ of God on his mind from an early age (Thoughts, §136).A strong and indelible belief in God should thus precede knowledge in anything else that science and philosophy have to offer. Locke advises that the notion of God should remain simple and that the parent or teacher should not go into too much detail – detail encourages a child to believe that God is like himself (i.e. it encourages anthropomorphism), which lends itself to silly ideas and notions, which, in turn, once they are understood

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to be limiting and ridiculous, promote atheistic thoughts in the maturing and inquisitive mind. Locke appropriately does not go into detail on this account either: it should suffice that the pupil be taught to pray morning and evening with prayers apposite to his or her age, and be taught basic religious duties to satisfy our ‘curious Enquiries into his inscrutable Essence and Being’ (Thoughts, §136). God should be revered and loved as the supreme creator and benefactor of the universe, but here Locke draws a pragmatic and significant line: in matters secular, the mind should strive to fulfil its potential, but in matters religious Locke thinks it better if men accepted a vague notion of the omnipotent and omniscient creator – after all, God is incomprehensible. The pupil’s particular religious education of learning the Gospels and Biblical stories is ordered alongside other learning (see below); all that the child needs to know is that God is the source of all that is good. Locke feared atheism. In an earlier Essay on Toleration he called atheists ‘wild beasts’, and he knew from his readings of travellers’ tales that there were peoples around the world who professed no knowledge of God and used such evidence to support his refutation of the theory that man is born knowing God. Yet he seems all too aware that his epistemology and scientific pursuits could lead to atheism, should they not be checked by an habitual and imprinted belief in God from an early age. In the Essay, he writes: ‘yet perhaps we should hear more than we do of it from others, did not the fear of the magistrate’s sword, or their neighbour’s censure, tie up people’s tongues; which, were the apprehensions of punishment or shame taken away, would as openly proclaim their atheism as their lives do’ (Essay I.iv.8). Now in his political thinking, Locke was withdrawing the right of the magistrate to enforce religious adherence; and that, together with the patent fragmenting of Protestantism into competing sects, surely impacted hard on Locke’s conscience. Descartes’ argument that we possess (or can possess) an idea of the Perfect Being, and that this consequently establishes the truth of God’s existence does not attract Locke, nor will it silence atheists: faithful men are too apt to conceive of God in their own way, some ways poorer than others, but different ways all the same (Essay, IV.x.7). In an early essay in 1676 while working with Ashley and using a version of Pascal’s wager, Locke argued that the atheist has nothing to gain and all to lose: a godless world is incomprehensible, he wrote, as the atheist must forego the promise of everlasting happiness in favour of annihilation. A choice in favour of the latter Locke cannot fathom ‘(Atheism’); but apparently he can fully sympathize with the predicament of someone who pushed their free-thinking that far: ‘And where is the man to be found that can patiently prepare himself to bear the name of whimsical, skeptical, or atheist?’ (Essay, I.iii.25). Later in the Essay, Locke rests his own argument for the existence of God as His being an eternal being, for there can be

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nothing more absurd than a universal nothing ; and being eternal, God must also be a thinking being who created all of the existing things and living beings. If, Locke counters, our mind cannot comprehend that a creator can create something out of nothing, then we must humbly accept the mind’s limitations and not try to emulate the mind of God with our relatively puny abilities (Essay, IV.x.19). God is the extension of all the qualities, causes, powers, consequences, and relations stretched by the human mind to infinity and perfectibility (Essay, II.xxiii.34). Hence the need to keep the idea of God as simple as possible in teaching and perhaps a little beyond the child’s comprehension – for there it will remain throughout adulthood. Despite the apparent fear of atheism, Locke certainly implies that children are atheists and would continue to grow up to be, if they were not given the imprint of God from an early age.A later thinker, D’Holbach, put Locke’s implication more bluntly: ‘All children are atheists, they have no idea of God’ (System of Nature, 1772). Possessing no idea of God means that children are atheists (atheism means ‘without God’, which is different from ‘denying God’, for the latter implies that there is a God to deny, whereas the former means that the person possesses no idea of God, that the word or sound does not mean anything to them, just as ‘Thryowph’ has no meaning to you – or to me, for that matter). If we are born atheists, in the proper meaning of the word, why would we then need to possess an idea of God? Societies that Locke was aware of and commented on existed without a belief in God, and the ancients whom he often quoted and relied on were pantheists – were they wrong in their beliefs? Indubitably yes, is Locke’s reaction: not only could the political state that he envisages not permit Catholicism, it could not permit atheism either (it was in fact illegal to support atheism.) The prejudice against atheism was very strong in the seventeenth century – and indeed was carried right down to the twentieth century in England. In the splintering of religion following the Reformation and the ensuing scientific revolution, some intellectuals were logically heading towards atheism, but held themselves back for fear of reprisals. Unsurprisingly, ‘atheist’ was a term of abuse that could be branded against any person extolling unorthodox views, or generally against opponents. Name-calling (or the fallacy of ‘ad hominem’, technically speaking) does not keep a good idea down, and one can detect that some of the theories labelled and chastised as being atheistic certainly possessed an internal logic what would soon lead men to atheistic conclusions: the path that finally led for secular atheists to come out of the political closet was laid by Christian thinkers in the seventeenth century, and Locke was certainly one of them. Locke’s empiricism and rejection of irrational religion gave credence to those who sought to distance themselves even further from theology in favour of free-thinking. A friend of Locke’s, Anthony Collins, wrote a Discourse on Free-Thinking in

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1713, arguing for the application of understanding to propositions and the search for good evidence to back them up: it was not long before the Bible was targeted for critical examination (notably by Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827). Locke was sincere in his religion and could not abide atheism; he was not alone. Thomas Browne (1605–82) claimed: ‘For atheism is the greatest falsity’; the members of the Royal Society, according to member Joseph Glanvill (1636–80), sought to advance science but also to defend religion against mechanistic atheism (the mechanistic part being a none-too-subtle criticism of Thomas Hobbes, who had been written off as an atheist). Ironically, Locke the empiricist philosopher resorts to asserting God’s existence as a given for young children. Once it is there, the implication goes, it will be hard to dislodge; second, his proof is highly reminiscent of Descartes’s proof of the existence of God, that is, a rationalist insistence that there must be an eternal God because the concept belies its own proof. Locke would have been highly aware that once we begin focusing our minds on the natural world, our reasoning begins to reject mysterious explanations – and thus far, Locke went along with the implications, for they reflected the Latitudinarian belief. Ancient naturalists such as the Milesian philosophers Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes had presented to the world the possibility of a godless philosophy – once myth is rejected the only contender for its replacement is rationality, which demands men think about the world for themselves and pursue the truth as they see it rather than how it has been passed down through Scriptures or priests’ incantations. But Locke could not surrender his religion – he composed several works on Christianity and died reading the Psalms: was he being hypocritical? No. One interpretation may go as follows: like many scientists in the following century, Locke was leaning towards deism, which asserts a belief in God as the creator of the universe and of life, but rejects the notion that he regularly intervenes in human or even natural affairs (that is, once He had created the world, He left it alone); but we can surely understand his pressing worry that without an early indoctrination into a faith, the child would probably never gain a faith. A second interpretation may go as follows: like St Thomas Aquinas, Locke agreed that philosophy and faith should live in two separate spheres; where the latter treads on the former’s jurisdiction, then it should be ready to be examined in reason’s light – otherwise, we accept the articles of faith on faith, for they are beyond our comprehension.

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Breeding

Once the notion of God is imprinted on the very young mind, he or she should be bred well – learn the graces and deportment requisite of his or her station in society. Society is, of course, to Locke, hierarchical, and generally speaking reflective of occupation and birth. His thoughts on society are highly conservative rather than egalitarian, as other and later libertarian thinkers were to learn towards. The conservative thesis on hierarchy is that men possess differing abilities, and they fit into stations that reflect those abilities in terms of how the rest of society view them, according to a host of barely definable criteria but including responsibility, trustworthiness, engagement in the body politic, connection to other similar families, and so on. An obvious, albeit modern, criticism levelled against Locke’s educational theory is that it pertains only to the landed middle class of this country – it does not reach out to the lower orders and only touches on the higher orders of society incidentally: bourgeois in emphasis, its class partiality renders his work too narrow for more than a curiosity in educational history. For the egalitarian, who sees all people as morally equal, this prominence Locke gives to breeding may seem amiss or antiquated. Indubitably, Locke could not accept the egalitarian vision: a conversation with neighbours, he quips, is sufficient to show that all men are not equal, and his comments on the untrustworthiness of servants underlines his conservative outlook (which is highly reminiscent of Hobbes’s distrust of his fellow man). The ignorant servants, Locke warns, meddle in matters they do not understand (Thoughts, §11); they can be a mean, unbred, debauched sort of people who place their happiness in strong drink and who are apt to frighten children with horror stories (ibid, §191); they must be carefully watched for the effect they have on the child (ibid, §19, §68), for they are foolish and perverse (ibid, §59), clownish, vicious, flattering and mischievous; servants can diminish parents’ authority by cajoling children suffering punishment (ibid, §69), and thereby they set a dangerous and ill precedent (ibid, §89). Generally, servants are

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useless (ibid, §90) and get in the way of education (ibid, §107). Children should be kept away from servants, he advised his cousin Mary Clarke in their correspondence. People are born into families that have varying levels of civic responsibilities and their children may maintain themselves in that station or ascend or descend, according to how well they manage their own affairs once they reach maturity. For Locke, this is a given characteristic of society (English and perhaps broadened from his experiences to include European) that cannot be overturned by political overtures to the contrary. Individuals may rise and fall, but the notion of social status will always remain: hence his concerns that mixing with the ill-bred would lessen the chances of maintaining the proper sense of virtue and dignity of gentle breeding. Born to middling gentry and introduced to Westminster through patronage, Locke would have been very aware of the importance of good breeding – appropriate etiquette; no doubt he would have been sensitive to the consequences of a failing in friends’ behaviour, for in his reflections on what the young pupil should be taught to avoid and thereby form a better and productive habitual distaste of immorality or negative traits, he presents an acute understanding: good breeding will always outshine knowledge. The modern reader of Locke, or any philosopher for that matter who turns his attention to applied issues such as education, should be aware of fashionable schools of criticism. For a good part of the last century, Marxist analysis (recently supplanted by alternative and increasingly strained formations in the guise of post-modernism) coloured a good deal of critique. For Marxists, the world is sharply divided into antagonistic classes and writers are accordingly boxed according to their class allegiance. There may be class traitors – those who reject their own class background in favour of another (of which, ironically, Marx and his friend Engels were certainly two), but broadly speaking, humanity followed the cause and interests of their class. Locke would accordingly be boxed into the bourgeois class and all his thinking reduced to petty-bourgeois philosophy (as the Marxist damning insult went) – designed for the interests of the middle class and none other. It is a rather limiting critique; Locke would certainly have recognized differing classes but would have rejected the ideas that the membership of these classes was somehow closed, and that class interests were mutually antagonistic and irreconcilable except through revolution. In Marx and particularly his followers, he would have heard echoes of the ‘religious enthusiasts’ of his own era, and the political philosophy of the communist Diggers. But then as now, class in England should not be considered a fixed caste in which children automatically gained their parents’ station in life; the feudal order always possessed some flux, and its demise following the

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economic and political repercussions of the Black Death in the fourteenth century permitted greater sociability. Since the English class system was not rigid, neither can we complain that Locke wrote specifically for the life and expectations of rigid social life: he knew that his readership was fully aware of the potential for social decline and hence the need to ensure that their children at least maintained the nominal status that their birth gave them. Thus, if we are to assess the education of the child in a mobile and flexible society, we should pay attention to the effects on their chances: will their education enable them to deal confidently with their peers or not? To instil good breeding in offspring is Locke’s primary aim for the Thoughts, rather than what they should be taught, for how long, and to what level. In many respects, it is the education of the finishing school – the well-polished, wellmannered youth possessing those qualities that will ensure ease of social grace and thus preservation or even ascension of station. Certainly in the Thoughts, Locke’s target audience is the English gentry class; but the contemporary readership and market should not restrain how his thinking may be lifted from its context to apply to a different culture and time. His Thoughts were initially written for landed gentry and later published for the literary classes of the country – the lower orders were generally speaking not book-buyers at the time, or at least there is no good evidence to the contrary; hence much of what Locke emphasizes is on the bringing up and education of the young gentleman and gentlewoman. At the end of the Thoughts, he reminds his reader that the young aristocrat would require a different set of instructions (Thoughts, §212); would this be similarly true for the lower gentry or upper echelons of the skilled and manual classes, who happen to read his book? In many respects, Locke’s writings on education and the need for good breeding would have been highly profitable in the nineteenth century and the era of self-help and social ascendancy, when education was increasingly available and expected of the poorer classes, supported by independent and church schools (prior, that is, to the intervention of the state). Supporters of his pedagogic methods can draw on its principles for general education, and ignore his writings’ particular prejudices or target market. The first principles of good breeding – and indeed of Locke’s entire educational programme – deal with the health and constitution of the young child. Healthy foundations are Locke’s foremost concern: ‘A sound mind in a sound body’ is the opening moral of his Thoughts. For the guiding principles of bringing up a newly born child, Locke deploys his historical and classical learning, as well as the advice and prescriptions of his medical experience working with Thomas Sydenham. A child should be brought up to be hardy and stoical in body, able to endure fatigue, travel, and disease,

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and this programme is best effected as soon as the child is born. The luxuries available to the middle and gentry classes, Locke warns, should not be used to soften the child’s body with food delicacies and soft furnishings; rather the family ought to look at the ways of the yeomanry farming class, whose children are brought up closer to nature and grow up to be vigorous. Parents should aim to help form a robust constitution by avoiding overdressing them in cold months: their bodies, and particularly the head, should be able to withstand the cold and hence increase their immunity to coughs, colds, and catarrhs; they should wash their child’s feet in cold water – getting them used to increasingly cooler temperatures – and when outside they should play in what we would now call sandals. The same treatment should also be used for girls, Locke adds; his experience of midwifery would no doubt have been instrumental in his advice to bringing up young girls to make them healthy mothers. Of course gender differences require different emphases, but ‘where the Difference of Sex requires different Treatment, ’twill be no hard Matter to distinguish’. In a letter to the Clarkes (February, 1685), he advises that girls should be kept out of the sun and should take their early morning walk before the sun rises, but that their necks and heads should not be covered while indoors. But Locke is reluctant to pursue more advice: ‘having more admired than considered your sex,’ he writes to Mrs Clarke, ‘I may perhaps be out in these matters, which you must pardon me.’ If girls are to be chastised however, it ought to come from the mother rather than the father. The Roman educators, and particularly Horace, are Locke’s guides for ensuring strong and healthy children. All children should be encouraged to play outside often and they should learn to swim; Locke notes that the Romans believed that only the ill-educated could not swim. The mantra of fresh air and exercise retains its force throughout the ages, and researchers today continue to support the beneficial effects of what the ancients knew. ‘[Children] should be hardened against all Suffering’, Locke writes (Thoughts, §113). Critically, children should develop good habits that will improve their bodily and mental strength. The power of habits is a primary theme that runs throughout Locke’s Thoughts. Customary action – habit – Locke stresses in the Essay as providing the vital policy for training children from a young age: ‘Custom settles habits of thinking in the understanding’, and ‘those who have children . . . would think it worth their while diligently to watch, and carefully to prevent the undue connexion of ideas in the minds of young people’ (Essay, II.xxxiii.7–8). This begins with the workings of their bodily constitution. Locke draws on his experience of children’s toileting to advise that, ‘a great influence upon the Health . . . is . . . Going to Stool

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regularly’ (Thoughts, §23). Here custom may come to the aid of the parent: by training the child to sit at his potty from a young age and at the same time, he can be induced to go to the toilet conveniently and regularly; he observed that children are often reluctant to go to the toilet, and become constipated as a result. Changes to older children’s habits should be introduced slowly and new regimes developed slowly and insensibly: far better for parents to begin properly with the new born. Diet should be simple, and meat should be avoided until they are between two and four years old – a vegetarian diet, Locke notes, is better for curing diseases. They should be given plenty of bread and be taught to chew it well; snacks should be plain bread, which they will, by custom, learn to enjoy. People are made gluttons, Locke observes, by custom: ‘You cannot imagine what Force Custom is: And I impute a great part of our Diseases in England, to our eating too much Flesh, and too little Bread’ (Thoughts, §14). Although regular toileting times should be encouraged, regular feeding times should be avoided, otherwise the child will become peevish. While mild alcohol was part of everyday life in the seventeenth century (remember, water was not to be drunk, for it often contained disease-producing microbes), stronger drinks were to be assiduously avoided, and servants’ predilections to tempt children in this regard carefully guarded against. But so too were many fruits to be proscribed – especially those conducive of softening the child’s stool (for soft stool was indicative of a soft mind, he observed). Children should thus be kept from peaches, plums, and melons, but encouraged to eat apples, pears, strawberries, and cherries. A child should be allowed to sleep as much as his body requires, but it is better for him to be awoken early, so he naturally goes to bed early too – that way, he can allow his body to indulge in the benefits of sleep, without permitting access to late night parties and ‘debauchery’. While the growing child may be allowed less sleep according to their individual temperament, the bed must not be soft and he or she should not be allowed to become accustomed to the same pillows: changing where and how they lie abed will accustom children early to the different beds that they will use when they are older and travelling. If they fall ill, medicines should on the whole be avoided: nature should be allowed to strengthen the child’s body. If medicine is required, children should be allowed ‘poppy water’ (laudanum) and should avoid eating meat to get better. This medical minimalism reflects the philosophy of Sydenham, who was reluctant to minister medicine in mild cases, believing that nature would encourage its own healing. A child’s clothing should not restrain their movements or development. Many children would have been swaddled in Locke’s time, and he relates

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this kind of bodily restraint to the practise of binding Chinese women’s feet. Nor should his or her clothing be luxurious – this is particularly advisable for young girls, whose parents dress them up and call them a ‘little Queen’ or ‘Princess’, which thereby induces the child to learn vanity and consider her presence of self to reflect purely in the admiration of others as she is seen by them – not a value Locke can support at all!

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Nature/Nurture Debate

In simplistic discussions of child development a dualism is introduced to get us to consider the main developmental influences: the caricature presented is often that between ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’. That is, nature is said to produce our characteristics sufficiently that nurturing can only augment what is already there, if it may be said to have an effect anyway. Nurture, in contrast, is said to be the essential ingredient in a child’s maturing and eventual makeup, regardless of biological inheritance – and thus the child’s character becomes amenable to educational and environmental change. Most philosophers who write on the subject, when looked at closely do not divide either one way or the other: they recognize the complexity of causation when examining human affairs. Locke is similar, although he is often read as producing a theory of knowledge and of child development that rests fully on nurturing: his famous use of the tabula rasa (blank slate) concept, penned in drafts but not actually published in his major works, indeed suggests that the child enters the world completely mouldable by the influences that may be imposed by parents, friends, school, and others. From what we understand of his Essay, what Locke claims is that the child is born without particular knowledge of anything – that can only come from experiences; yet Locke also recognizes certain dispositions or what he often refers to as ‘temperament’ as being innate to the individual child (compare Thoughts §1 and §66). Nature imprints as much as do the habits and good breeding afforded the child by his parents and social environment. Nonetheless, because the child is highly malleable – like ‘wax’ (ibid, §217) – Locke is logically concerned for securing the best environment for his or her early growth, given innate tendencies. Arguably, Locke’s education bridges the modern dualism of nature or nurture. As children possess natural inclinations, this implies that it would be easier to work with some children than others, which is certainly born out in experience. To ascertain best the natural tendencies of the child, Locke advises that the tutor or parent clandestinely observes him at play; Locke

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astutely points out that if the child knows he is being watched, then his behaviour will be different. At the time, the scientific method was in its infancy and the members of the Royal Society were collating the requirements of impartiality and replication for conducting scientific experiments on elements; but even today the human sciences, although seeking to emulate the neutral procedures of the laboratory, often forget that the observed targets may alter their behaviour. Locke’s commonsense approach is commendable, for it shows that his understanding of children is deeper than the caricature sometimes presented of infinitely plastic minds and bodies that he is often described as claiming. For instance, if a child possesses contrary inclinations – i.e. tendencies that are unproductive or counterproductive to learning – then Locke recommends that he should be watched to see what does interest him, and if it is playing a game he should be then made to play that game under strict monitoring for a specified time period, as if he were in lesson time. If the child’s attachment to play is very strong then he should be made to play continuously until he becomes desirous of a welcome break; at that point, he may be ‘allowed’ to return to his books or study. Locke contends that a child’s disinclination to study is often symptomatic of having been turned off learning at some stage, usually by having his curiosity curtailed at some point. This is a useful reminder today when we look upon a classroom of ‘bored’ teenagers, who in state-run schools typically have had most of their curiosity dulled or terminated by various factors that Locke would condemn: having to follow a specified and political curriculum, being forced to take subjects that they have no talent or desire for, being mixed with children whom their parents would not otherwise have them socialize with, and facing teachers many of whom are not virtuous or good role models and who may bully implicitly or spend time controlling unruly classes rather than teaching. Whenever a counterproductive tendency is observed, Locke thus recommends the employment of reverse psychology to encourage the child back to more productive and virtuous pursuits. The guiding ideals remain to breed the child well – to encourage the child to live up to a range of virtues mentioned throughout the Thoughts, which divide between sociable and unsociable traits. Unsociable acts – such as lying or rudeness – are to be immediately chastised, but not with the rod: physical punishment is to be used only as a last resort, so the most effective method is to show, and to exaggerate if necessary, the shock that such behaviour has on others. The child may be motivated by pain and pleasure, but these basic drives are extendable into being motivated by shame and reputation. As long as all members of the household go along with disgracing the child, he or she will soon

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learn what behaviour is acceptable and what behaviour is not. Humans, he argues, will follow their desires, or that which gives them pleasure, but those desires are not necessarily conducive to moral good. Pleasure – the great motivator – should thus be trained, otherwise its interests will be anti-social, unproductive, or short-sighted.

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Freedom and Will

The caricature of ‘nature versus nurture’ is similar and connected to the popular dualism of freedom of will versus necessity. If character and choice were determined by nature (or genes in modern thinking), I would possess little freedom of choice; on the other hand, if character and choice were completely free of determining causes, then each act that I make is a free one. Locke views children’s minds as ‘easily turned this or that way’ – impressionable and easily swayed by other people and the guiding hand of a parent or tutor; hence the need to encourage them into good habits and to bar them from ill influences until they are thoroughly mature and self-confident. Does this imply that children are not free? Locke takes issue with the free will versus determinism debate to argue, as have others, that the typical dualism presented rests on a semantic confusion. In the Essay, he divides freedom from will to argue that one’s freedom depends on the ability to move freely, without obstacles or hindrances. A man locked in a room is not free; a paraplegic is not free to walk. The will is a power or faculty of choosing or preferring; freedom, or liberty, is another form of choosing or preferring. Where the will provides a preference for one action over another, liberty or freedom defines the ability to act. The will, he argues, is not free: ‘a man in respect of willing . . . cannot be free’ (Essay, II.xxi.23). That is, faced with a choice, a man cannot but choose one over another, even if the one chosen is in fact inaction. This may seem a strange conclusion, but the proceeding arguments clarify his thinking: the will is not free, for it cannot but choose X over Y – Locke is defining the will as a faculty that cannot help but choose when choices are presented, just as the stomach must begin digestion once food is eaten; so the problem regresses further – what determines whether I choose X or Y? The mind, Locke answers. So long as I feel uneasy in my situation (whatever the particulars), I will have a motive to choose and to act. If I am perfectly content and feel no unease, I have no reason to act. Behind willing, therefore, is desiring – if I desire a change in circumstances, my

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will is necessarily active. My desires are motivated in turn by the pursuit of happiness and the aversion of misery. The good is typically what pleases us, so we will tend to pursue those things that are pleasurable; however, we must understand what it is that will please us. Knowledge of the good is not sufficient in itself to prompt us to action (as Aristotle had observed); rather, our action is stimulated once our desires are activated. Moreover, the mind has the ability to suspend or delay pleasure: we may forego immediate pleasures as they present themselves in favour of more distant pleasures that we understand are more conducive to our happiness. But the importance of the mind in Locke’s argument takes on a vital role: a man who cannot restrain himself from pursuing the immediate pleasure can hardly be said to be free – his acts are determined by whatever happens to fall in his way; the hedonist (pleasure seeker) is thus close to living in misery and slavery – enslaved to his passions. Locke thoroughly rejects the hedonist view: ‘Nor let anyone say, he cannot govern his passions . . . for what he can do before a prince, or a great man, he can do alone’(Essay, II.xxi.53). So far as a man deploys his reason to judge what is in his interests the freer he becomes. The objects of our desire are purely subjective – only I can say what pleases me, for only I know what in fact does please me. Herein lies a problem, for if I act only when I am uneasy, and my will operates involuntarily as it were – that is, given a choice, it wills one over the other – then my choice should be pleasing to me. By Locke’s definition it is: I would not have chosen X if X were not more preferable to Y. But people make mistakes – they choose courses of action that are inimical to their pleasure and happiness: how can this be so? Locke answers that a man may be in pain and therefore confused about what constitutes his proper interests – disease, starvation, or torture twists the mind’s ability to judge properly. Or a man may make a wrong judgement about his future happiness; while he cannot misjudge the difference between present and immediate pleasure and pain, he can obviously err about the pleasure accruing to him in the future. This is also connected to a weakness of the mind (which Aristotle spoke of in the Nichomachean Ethics, and which he termed akrasia, or incontinence of will): the man misjudges the future consequences of his present action, or mistakes cause-and-effect relations, or completely misjudges the outcome due to ignorance or inadvertency. Because we can err, there is all the more need to ensure that we judge well and that we think through the consequences of our actions (and those of others); more importantly, we are capable of presenting different interests to our minds – experience teaches us new pleasures (and pains); fashion, customs, and poor education often present wrong notions of pleasure that the active mind should correct. In other words, we return to the critical role that education plays: teaching the young mind to be aware, increasingly so

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as he or she matures, of the more distant consequences of actions as well as encouraging them to experience a range of pleasurable activities that they might not otherwise engage in, and of course to reflect well on what we do, bearing in mind, Locke adds, the ultimate happiness that is to be found in heaven for the virtuous. The child will produce his or her own tastes and determining structures of happiness that effect the will: it is thus pertinent to ensure that the child’s mind is able to consider those pleasures effectively, by teaching the child to forego immediate pleasures and to control his or her appetite and passions. Once the body is strengthened and maintained well, the child’s mind is prepared to be similarly strong and able. A regime of stoical austerity, influenced by Roman thinking, underlines Locke’s advice for the parent: a child will learn ‘by Degrees’, as he often puts it, to control and check their physical needs and emotions and gradually to ensure that their mind is in control of their desires and appetite. On all occasions, the mind should be ‘disposed to consent to nothing, but what may be suitable to the Dignity and Excellency of a rational Creature’ (Thoughts, §31). Keeping in mind that the Lockean purpose of education is to form a healthy and well-bred individual who masters his passions and furthers his reasoning powers, we can turn to his specific advice on educating the child.

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Early Education

A child’s early education implies what should be inculcated and developed in the young mind of the baby and infant. While Locke spends much effort in explaining the principles of early education, they are better thought of as the foundational principles with which education begins and which should also sustain the maturing child’s instruction and scholastic training. The emphasis of Lockean pedagogy is getting the foundations sorted properly from the beginning – it makes the parents’ job easier as well as ensuring a relatively painless education and maturation for the child: The main thing to be consider’d, in every action of a Child, is, what influence it will have upon his Mind; what habit it tends to, and is like to settle in him; How it will become him when he is bigger; and if it be encouraged, whither it will lead him, when he is grown up. (Thoughts §107) Locke’s educational philosophy is imbued with psychological insight and can be considered generally behaviourist in its assumptions. His Thoughts are highly prescriptive and detailed, but always demand that the parent or tutor look at the pupil as thoroughly unique. It is often assumed by those with a smattering of Lockean philosophy that his pedagogical instruction presumes the child possesses a blank mind upon which his or her nature may be defined by his or her experiences and hence education. Locke, we recall, rejects innatism, the argument that we are born with particular arguments or ideas: but this does not in turn imply that we are without unique ‘Natures and Aptitudes’ (Thoughts, §66). In present-day thinking, we often describe the brain as being similar to computer hardware, and the mind as being similar to software. The analogy has its uses, but we do not have to assume that all newborn babies’ hardware is the same, or, consequently, that all developing differences are a result of variations in education. Such an argument implies that the present differentiation in results and outcomes in life is solely the product of the wrong

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educational software, and hence, such differences could be removed by ensuring all are given an equal education. This is the argument that ‘progressives’ in educational philosophy adhere to: that education could actively reform society and improve the lot of all, given the right software and inevitably the right programmers. When we read Locke, we find similar impressions (nine-tenths of the differences between men are a result of their education, ibid, §1); but then again his observations of young children both as a medical practitioner and tutor, as well as an avid observer of human life in general, impress upon him the patent diversity of natural dispositions and therefore talent. There is no contradiction in his arguing that we are born without ideas but with general dispositions – the two aspects of our mind are sufficiently different. Ideas originate in our sensorial perception of the world – they are particular and unique to the unique entities that we perceive; however, tendencies and dispositions are general aspects to our character and are mainly independent of experience. Education’s purpose is to produce civility and virtuousness in the maturing child, but just as it cannot change a man’s biological inheritance, it can do little to change his temperament: indeed, a child’s educational programme ought to adapt to his temperament, which is why Locke favours one-on-one tuition rather than group or school instruction for his target audience. Today, the science of genetics has shed some light on some aspects of ‘what Nature has given’ (ibid, §66), and which way ‘the natural make of his Mind inclines him’ (ibid, §101) as Locke put it in the seventeenth century: yet when faced with a pupil, we can only, as Locke advised, resort to observing what he or she is good at, what is a struggle, what he or she has an aptitude for, and hence adapt the tutorial or programme accordingly. Such dispositions, beyond an innate human tendency to curiosity, include whether the pupil be fierce, mild, bold, bashful, compassionate, cruel, open, or reserved. When the pupil’s temperament conflicts with educational requirements, Locke advises against direct conflict or a list of rules for the pupil to follow; instead, such propensities should be harnessed as well as possible ‘and turned to good purposes’ (ibid, §102). The best way to see the pupil’s natural proclivities is to observe him or her in free play; that way the tutor will learn how his thoughts lean and ‘when, as he grows up, the Plot thickens, and he puts several shapes to act it’ (ibid, §102). The tutor needs to be aware of the innate love of dominion that all children possess to some extent or other. Children living together often strive for mastery, and that should be stopped (ibid, §108). Cruelty and mastery can only prove detrimental both to learning and to the development of a virtuous youth, who should understand deference, complaisance, and civility. They often have an innate drive to be cruel to animals (ibid, §116), which should never be allowed to flourish. The child should learn to abhor killing

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and suffering unless it is for some nobler purpose (and Locke includes hunting as being of a nobler purpose), and if they are given animals as pets, then they must be given all the responsibility of looking after them. Never should they speak condescendingly to their social inferiors; they can maintain their superiority without being patronizing in their tone or domineering in their voice. The desire to dominate begins early in a child’s crying for attention; of course, they may cry prior to being able to speak, as it is the only method available to them to present their needs to the world, but such crying is distinguishable, Locke observes, from the cry to assert their will (ibid, §104). From an early age, such crying is to be ignored or shamed (ibid, §111), and this can be assisted by never satisfying the child’s particular demands. Their complaints against other children should not be listened to, unless the complaint is an obvious breach by another, when the latter should be privately pulled aside and spoken to, not in sight of the complainer. Once the notion of God is gently and abstractly instilled in the young mind, thoughts turn to how the child ought to be bred – how he or she ought to be brought up and in what values they ought to be encouraged. Foremost, the child should learn to respect and be in awe of his or her parents. The impression that a parent should make on a child ought to be a powerful one, and if done correctly, the child will grow up respecting, perhaps even fearing, his or her parents. Ideally, a frown from a parent should ensure the child’s compliance, and such submission can be encouraged from the beginning, for it is harder to obtain as the child grows older. The fearful impression is to be relaxed as the child matures, until eventually the parent may look upon his offspring as independent, mature, and equal adults. ‘Honour thy mother and thy father’ was, of course, indoctrinated into children as something so morally necessary and unquestionable that its breach was a heinous crime. Children were taught their catechism in church ‘to love, honour and succour my father and mother, to submit myself to all my governors, teachers, spiritual pastors and masters . . .’. That duty towards parents ended once a child reached adulthood, as Locke emphasizes in the Two Treatises, but rather than accepting a complete severance of filial ties, Locke encourages parents to gradually bring their child up to become their friend and equal. Good breeding implies developing a virtuous character. Virtue Locke defines as ‘the Knowledge of Man’s Duty, and the Satisfaction it is to obey his Maker, in the Hopes of Acceptation and Reward’ (ibid, §61). He cannot have too much of good breeding and it should take precedence over knowledge of specific academic disciplines (ibid, §94). That is, in Locke’s opinion the mature adult will gain more from his or her virtues – reputation – than specific knowledge. Locke uses the term ‘virtue’

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as a collective noun for praiseworthy or laudable traits, as well as a trait in itself – a person can be virtuous, wise and learned, for instance. The general term reflects public approbation of one’s reputation (or condemnation of it), and is found in all societies of men: the details of what constitutes virtuous behaviour will be different though, for they reflect the tastes and fashions that have developed in that society (Essay II.xxviii.10– 11). ‘Reputation, he cannot have too much’, he advises (Thoughts, §94). A virtuous person is held in esteem by others, whereas a vicious person (full of vice) is held in disgrace. The young child is to be taught to be virtuous through filial and social applause and disapprobation, and is to be encouraged to sustain those virtues as they mature and when they can be severely tested. The term ‘virtuous’ also suggests a host of laudable traits that are to be encouraged and upon which reputation stands: self-denial of appetite; wise; reasonable; prudent; sober; discreet; reverent toward, compliant and supple with parents; industrious; modest; humane; friendly; civil; respectful; graceful; possessing good-will to others; courageous; steadfast; proficient; generous; observant; honourable; brave; grave; kind; compassionate; temperate; tender; diligent; curious; well-bred; proper; deferential; liberal; just; goodnatured; benign; inquisitive; complaisant; courteous; foresightful; humble; self-assured; and easy in company. On the other hand, vices include: drowsy; debauched; indulgent; dissolute; violent; vain; emulatory; liar; excuser; intemperate; timorous; tame; slavish; low-spirited; flatterer; foolish; perverse; affected; ungraceful; clownish; unbred; vicious; rude; possessing ill-turned confidence; malapert; trickster; sheepish; ignorant; cheat; rough; pert; sluggish; obstinate; rebellious; disobedient; refractory; wilful; proud; conceited; brutal; pedantic; buffoon; rustic; fawning; loose; extravagant; sauntering; idle; unpolished; dominating; querulous; covetous; unjust; cowardly; cruel; mischievous; haughty; contemptuous; deceitful; elusive; supercilious; inconsiderate; impertinent; listless; lazy; sluggish; wanton; careless; cunning; negligent; disrespectful; censorious; captious; forward; and disingenuous. To produce a virtuous character takes time and effort, but the pay-off is worth it; ‘vertue is harder to be got, than a Knowledge of the World’, Locke asserts (ibid, §30). The morality of virtue is the morality of the gentleman; but this is not the dandy that the eighteenth century produced, which Locke would have condemned for arrogance and affectation, which he could not stand. A gentlemen should be a man of principle, ‘to have knowledge of a Man of Business, a Carriage suitable to his Rank, and to be Eminent and Useful in his Country according to his Station’ (ibid, §94). A universal knowledge is not necessary and therefore not appropriate to a man of business, but he should expend effort learning how to judge ideas, and

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this can be gained from a study of civil society, laws, and history (‘Some Thoughts Concerning Reading’). Although a good deal of emphasis in Locke’s Thoughts concerns the gradual suppression of whimsical emotions, Locke encourages play and free expression. Children are ‘tender’ – they must have their play and their playthings and must not be hindered from being children (Thoughts, §69), and thereby must not be looked upon as miniature adults, as earlier thinking in the fifteenth century held. A glance at some of the portraits of children prior to the eighteenth century often retains the ideal of the miniature adult, dressed like mother or father and expected to behave accordingly – even in sexual play. Humanist thinking, emerging in the late fifteenth century, rose to challenge the conception of children as adults, and Locke follows suit. Looked upon as potential adults, certainly, but more importantly as specific beings of certain abilities and dispositions, the focus turns to the child qua child, rejecting both the long Aristotelian legacy of a child as a sub-rational, animal-like being, and the Augustinian legacy of the child as innately sinful. In this regard, the Thoughts are revolutionary – not that others had not argued the same before, but the impact of Locke’s writings were critical in assisting the ascendancy of a child-centred education that ensued in the eighteenth century. But Locke’s vision of what child-centred implies is different from today’s, in which the child is somewhat held to be a focal point of family life and the source of innocent wisdom, who should even be consulted on complex matters (the implication is that the child’s innocence gains him or her access to innate knowledge that adults have lost or forgotten – and, of course, Locke rejected innatism). For Locke the child is a child – lacking experience, knowledge, and wisdom, and especially lacking in virtue and maturity of understanding. Yet the child is innocent – Locke has thoroughly rejected the doctrine of innate ideas and so the doctrine of original sin, the Augustinian notion that we are born evil, must also fall: this was particularly controversial and later Rousseau got into difficult political trouble for asserting man’s innate goodness. Man makes his own evil in this world, and God may judge him accordingly in Heaven, so it would be wrong to castigate a child for a presumed evil; the child will err and temperament may incline him to less virtuous acts, but they must be nipped in the bud early on by inculcating a strong sense of shame and disgrace in the child. Lying should never be tolerated; the parents’ reaction must be at first one of horror and shock, then if the lies continue, Locke advises that they increase their displeasure, and, if necessary, resort to beating the child. Lying is thoroughly inconsistent with being a gentleman, as are the deployment of excuses, which should be met with shaming the child. Tricks and cheating are symptomatic of the child not using his reasoning properly and

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are to be suitably discouraged. Of course, the child must be allowed to slip and to err, but the tutor or parent must keep an eye on the formation of habitual behaviour that will become increasingly difficult to alter. Pain and pleasure motivate human behaviour, Locke notes often: but he is not a proponent of strict hedonism, which claims that that which is good equates to pleasure. Instead, pain and pleasure can be reflected in disgrace and esteem, which reflect parental and later societal judgement of a person’s acts. The threat of force dwindles in a child’s mind as he grows more able to withstand physical punishment, but the esteem or disapprobation of his parents and their circle is more likely to subtly and effectively motivate virtuous behaviour, especially when it is accompanied by other disagreeable states (ibid, §60). If a child acts reprehensibly, he or she should not be chastised publicly in front of others (friends, family, servants), but should be pulled aside and told off privately, in ‘sober, grave, and unpassionate Words’ (ibid, §62). Never should the parent show the child passionate anger and beat them or tell them off while flushed with anger (ibid, §83) – recall the emphasis that Locke places on the impressions that can be made on the young and malleable mind. Children will reflect the culture and order of their home, and hence it is best always to be justified in punishing, as well as virtuous and reasonable in other acts. However, good behaviour or acts should be commended publicly to ensure an asymmetrical incentive to do well, and to avoid bad behaviour. As they mature, they will gain a reputation, which is the nearest measurement and reflection of a person’s virtue. Emphatically, Locke eschews the use of corporal punishment. The use of the rod is counterproductive (it teaches violence, cruelty, revenge, and to rejoice in harm) and if overused accustoms the child to physical rather than moral punishment, the latter being more important to develop. Children who are often chastised ‘seldom make the best Men’, he observes (Thoughts, §43); its use can break the child’s spirit and render them useless as adults: ‘such a Slavish Discipline makes a Slavish Temper ’ (ibid, §50). Nevertheless, punishment should be there as a last resort – a child should never be rebellious, and any sign of it should be countermanded immediately; where a scowl and filial ostracism fails to have an impact on the child, and all other ruses to show displeasure have failed, then the parent is justified in beating the child: but if the parent must resort to violence, it must not be half-hearted or permit the child to retreat in secret triumph but be thorough and total, until the child’s will collapses into perfect submission. Evidently, such judicious use of force, Locke argues, should be sufficient to ensure parental authority is regained; failing that – and one of Locke’s friend’s sons apparently was uncontrollable – a strict disciplinarian school should be sought to alter the child’s culture of disobedience and

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rebelliousness. The emphasis though is on beginning a child’s development properly – allowing them full childish play within the limits of parental control. Again, there is a strong echo of Locke’s political sentiments in the Two Treatises; the initiator of aggression – a single man or a group of people – who breaches the peace of civilization ought not to be tolerated at all. The aggressor forfeits all rights and, when defeated, is wholly under the power of the victors to do with him as they please – to execute or to enslave him. To avoid a child being raised to become such an aggressor, we can surmise that Locke’s advice possesses the added depth of teaching the child morally by ensuring that he or she does not submit to a whimsical life of demanding that others obey their commands. What can undermine the parent’s attempts to instil in their child a sensitivity to shame and disgrace (and honour and approbation when they do good deeds) are other children or the family’s servants. If a child has lied, for example, the servants should not be allowed to countermand the harshness of the parents’ voices with soft words: they too should reflect the parents’ demeanour to drive home for the child how awful the ill deed was. The greatest threat to parental authority lies in the counterproductive and countermanding acts and words of others, which underlines Locke’s scepticism of the benefits of sending the child to school or socializing them into mixed company. Of course, today relatively few parents possess servants; but increasing numbers are turning to tutors who may work for an hour or more each week to complement mainstream education, and such tutors, for Locke, would, more importantly, have to reflect the parents’ requirements and expectations. Danger to their moral upbringing always lies in the child’s company: since children are so impressionable, to maintain a sense of continuity and consistency, their company ought to be assiduously watched by parents – which is another reason Locke counsels against sending the young child to school, where he can learn all manner of mischievous, impractical, and wicked behaviour. By humouring a child’s whims (liberality and indulgences), a dangerous precedent is set, which later inevitably bemuses parents as to why their child is disruptive. If the young child cannot master his appetite, then the maturing adult will hardly be able to resist tempting pleasures, or suffer necessary pain for longer-term gain (e.g. exercise, medical attention, or study). Locke’s thoughts here are particularly apt today, when children are permitted to disrupt adult conversation, and their education is designed to appeal to their whims (rather than their pleasures), and teenagers (who were not designated as such during his time, but whose class can certainly be identified by his descriptions), become diffident or rude. Bending to the young child’s whims acts to corrupt their nature, and parents ‘wonder

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afterwards to taste the bitter Waters, when they themselves have poisoned the Fountain’ (Thoughts, §35). He compares the effects of a lax attitude towards children with the raising of horses or dogs, and asks his reader to realize how difficult it is to untrain an unruly horse once it is set in its ways by an ill-considered education: ‘having made them ill children, we foolishly expect they should be good Men’, he summarizes, and having indulged their every whim they soon grow to hate their parents when they latterly attempt to enforce boundaries of permissibility. Similarly, a child should not be rewarded for being good or for doing their chores or studies. Rewarding a child with money will encourage them to seek material benefits in life and hence to place their happiness in material things, and teaches them pride, covetousness and luxury. For a philosopher who is often considered to be a vital thinker in the capitalist tradition, it may seem strange that Locke urges against materialism and covetousness; but that is a result of a misconstruing of free market capitalism (or libertarianism) by opponents, that it necessarily implies or requires a ‘grasping’ individualism. While it certainly recommends individualism, only in caricatures drawn by opponents does it recommend an empty selfishness: a closer look at most capitalist thinkers (as opposed to nihilist ‘egoist’ thinkers such as Max Stirner) will expose a much deeper expression of the moral order expected or necessary to the capitalist order. Locke, who in the Two Treatises impresses upon the reader the pre-eminence of property and the beneficial consequences for peace that private ownership entails, certainly does not assume moral teachings can be left out of human life, or that they should encourage selfish, thoughtless profit-seeking or a cultural materialism. Locke is foremost a Christian libertarian: the individual should be free to choose his form of religious practice but is not absolved from living a moral, civic life. Primarily, the early education of the child is to teach him or her to control the appetite and passion, and thereby the child learns to direct his life according to the mind and reason; their minds and bodies should be strong, healthy, and vigorous, and be capable of discipline and hardship fit for later adult life. Accordingly, to avoid softening their self-discipline from an early age, parents ought not to submit to the child’s specific or peculiar whims and should even show a disdain for a specific request: the child may ask for food, but not for roast meat (Thoughts, §106), Locke counsels, for the latter leads to bending parental authority to the child’s material wants, and of course the educational programme Locke is developing requires the child to learn – from the cradle – how to suppress the appetite and passion in favour of the mind’s authority, with the parent effectively acting as the controlling force of reason and gradually pulling away as the child matures to take more responsibility for choices. The child should look

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upon his parents as his Lords, as awesome presences to be honoured, an impression that is gradually to be lifted, Locke reminds the reader often, as the child matures, in order to permit a slow development into mutual love and friendship. The strictness of the child’s early education is not designed to make life unpleasant but rather the opposite. A child should be free to express himself in play and activity commensurate with his or her age but should never be indulged; that way he or she will mature well in innocence and delight, respecting parents and developing confidently. A child who is indulged or punished randomly or overly cannot amount to a strong person, Locke warns; so permit them their childishness within the safety and boundaries of parental authority, which always should be reasonable and understandable to the child. Approval and disapproval generally should be used to encourage the child to be virtuous, but these should not collapse into a system of rules and regulations. Children forget rules very quickly – they do not understand them either, and beating or chastising them for things they forget or cannot understand undermines the principle of developing autonomy and rationality. There should be plenty of positive reinforcement, and principles of good behaviour should be kept to a memorable minimum and learned through practice rather than explicit memorization. From what we can gather, the emphases in Locke’s teachings on education are behaviour and forming useful and genteel habits from an early age, and the formal side of education certainly takes secondary importance; nevertheless, once a child can talk, he or she can be taught to read, Locke advises. ‘Reading is for the improvement of the understanding’ (‘Some Thoughts Concerning Reading’), and eventually enables the maturing pupil to judge matters better than he or she would otherwise. Importantly, learning to read ought from the very beginning to be seen by the child as play and a time of delight and recreation, or as a reward for doing something else. Here Locke presents some ideas which we are familiar with today. The alphabet can be learned by adding letters to toys, such as dice, to make learning the letters like a sport or play. Such toys and other contrivances can help children learn to read while they think they are playing; as the phonetic sounds of the letters are learned, they can easily be added to each other to introduce the syllables. Children should be read to a lot, particularly Aesop’s Fables or Reynard the Fox, especially if it has pictures in it. In fact, Locke produced his own picture version of Aesop’s Fables in his later years. The importance of pictures reflects the origins of knowledge that Locke speaks of in the Essay: without an image to accompany a story or a description of an object, teaching is in vain. He does not know what other particular books may be of use, but the general

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principle is that they should be endearing to the child and have pictures in them. Recall that Locke stresses the fundamental importance of forming a belief in God in the youngster. Once that is formed, the child may learn the Lord’s Prayer by heart, the creeds, and the Ten Commandments, which are best read to him and repeated often before he learns to read; but most of the Bible is beyond the young child’s abilities to comprehend and such early Bible study is liable to put the child off. Yet, many Biblical stories are sufficiently engaging for children: the tales of Joseph, David, Jonathan and some plain moral tales should be explored. Once the child can learn to read English well, he or she may then learn to write it. This begins with learning how to hold the pen right, which should be mastered before pen is put to paper; the child should copy an engraved plate of the alphabet, beginning, in Lockean fashion, with a large font then slowly decreasing the font over time. Initially, the child can go over the letters printed on a page. Locke did this exercise with the Furly family while staying in Holland. When the child can write sufficiently well, he or she may then be introduced to drawing, which Locke commends as a useful skill to have, as it especially comes in useful when travelling to capture an impression of a place. ‘Diagrams drawn on Paper,’ he notes in the Essay, ‘are Copies of the Ideas in the Mind.’ Language, we know from everyday use, can sometimes not convey our internal thoughts, and as the origins of our thoughts are external entities, a drawing can better explain that which I have ‘in mind’. If the child is capable of telling good stories, then he or she should be encouraged to write them out (Thoughts, §189). As they improve in writing letters, they should be taught to use simple language, and to express themselves clearly, without any incoherence or roughness. Such are Locke’s thoughts on what we can define as early education: he, unlike later thinkers, does not define them according to age ranges as such, for the child’s development is gradual and flows from one level to the next almost imperceptibly and at a pace defined by the individual child’s abilities and temperament. Locke would have found the modern mainstream method of grouping children according to age in the same classes an absurdity: after all, he has some highly critical comments on the schools of the time, when pupils were in mixed-age classes and given work to suit their abilities (at least such was the ideal). Forcing children into agebased classes implies, on Lockean criteria, a gross ignorance on the part of the schools’ policy makers: it flies in the face of patent evidence that children mature at different rates. The rationale for dividing children so was statistical evidence that, on average, children of a certain age tend to be capable of certain cognitive abilities; that grouping the age range together also permits the teacher to enjoy economies of scale in broadcasting the same information to 30-odd children should also not be overlooked. Locke

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would have us question the statistical averaging of children into one collective lump: children in the outlying data would sufficiently render the exercise pointless, but even if all 11-year-olds were similarly homogeneous in cognitive ability, which Locke would reject, it would not follow that they would all be of a similar temperament and could learn as easily or otherwise as each other. So when we read the Thoughts, we should be aware that Locke does not make any age divisions based on average cognitive ability, and refreshingly so – hence the tentative titles I deploy here refer to the very broad stages of education that Locke implies rather than spells out.

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Middle Education

Once the foundations are sorted the child should be accustomed to parental authority. Parental authority acts as the guide for the developing mind, which eventually matures to an equal, adult level: parental mastership should always be obvious to the child (Thoughts, §80). His or her health is robust; play is natural; expression within the bounds of morality is liberal; and his filial respect total. Now his middle or more formal education may commence, without parents losing sight of the importance of maintaining the strict adherence to guiding and acting as role models for their children. Recall that Locke’s essential concern for the pupil is that they grow up to be virtuous men and women, hence the foundational elements to their formal education reflect that overall goal. The contrast is that which was found in the schools – the Scholastic system of educating boys in Latin and Greek and the principles of rhetoric, which Locke condemns as useless and thoroughly counterproductive. More important than a short-lived smattering of ancient tongues, a child should learn how to hold him or herself in society, how to deal with people of all backgrounds and stations, and how to rely on his or her own resources and mental and moral strength, rather than become dependent on the thoughts and instructions of others. Reason teaches us that we should prepare children for what is useful in adulthood, ‘rather than to have their Heads stuffed with a deal of trash, a great part whereof they usually never do . . . think on again as long as they live’ (ibid, §94). There is a superficial paradox here: that we should be instructed to be free and independently minded. The paradox collapses once we recognize that Locke’s educational principles are for children, whom he defines as incapable of proper moral choice until they are fully adults. Good habits of youth promote good habits in adulthood, and if our society is to enjoy the company of independently minded people who would not transgress morality or trespass on our rights to pursue life and happiness as we see

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fit, then we must promote such values in our children. That is one of the core values of Lockean education; it does not seek to mould children into obedient or slavish adults who would be easily manipulated by the strong and tyrannically minded, but he envisages a peaceful society of moral equals who are taught to think and more importantly to judge matters by themselves. Children possess different temperaments, but they can all learn to hold themselves well in company and to disparage neither others nor themselves. Experience of adult and good company is critical for the hometutored child; otherwise, he or she is likely to become ‘sheepish’ or once of age to fall into a bad life of temptation. Similarly, the child should be accustomed to sober, discreet, and wise company. Formal education for the middle years (as I am somewhat defining them here) begins with the teaching of manners; or, as with much that Locke advises, there is no beginning as such but a continuity accustoming children to behave properly in the contexts and company into which they are permitted. Manners may be better learned by example, rather than teaching them a set of rules to learn by rote (later a fashion common to the nineteenth century and which had the effect of producing fashionable cliques, commensurate with classes, that Locke would have abjured). Good manners, learned by example, are thus not to be had by allowing children to mix with ill-mannered people: children are to be taught slowly and according to requirements about the evils and pitfalls of life through instruction and explanation rather than through exposure. To expose them to lasciviousness or promiscuous and lewd behaviour would undermine the teaching of virtuous behaviour: on this Locke is emphatic. The mature child (teenager) can be made aware of life’s dangers, but they should not experience them: ‘We are all a sort of Camelion, that still take a Tincture from things near to us,’ he notes. ‘Nor is it to be wonder’d at in Children, who better understand what they see, than what they hear’ (ibid, §67). Thus they should be kept far from untrustworthy servants and their inappropriate conversation, tales, tricks, and drink (ibid, §19, §60), as well as from late-night adult parties. To fail to keep children innocent is to lose them: ‘all the Rules in the World, all the Correction imaginable, will not be able to polish them’, he warns (ibid, §67). From early on, children are to be taught to share their toys. Teaching them to share is to teach the virtues of generosity and to avoid covetousness; covetousness and having ‘in our Possession, and under our Dominion, more than we have need of, [is] the Root of all Evil, [and] should be early and carefully rooted out’ (ibid, §110). If they act unjustly towards others, then the child should be made to do without. Play is highly recommended, but it is better for children to learn how to make their own toys or to fashion imaginative toys out of objects around the house and garden, than to

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demand ready-made toys that are marketed well. Buying the child toys will only encourage them to want more and more (ibid, §130); nevertheless, Locke recommends the purchase of games and sports that encourage physical activity – racquets, croquet sets, etc., to which we would add footballs, baseball bats, etc., which enable a child to strengthen their coordination and agility. Dancing is highly important to Locke: it teaches children to hold themselves well and with grace, and thereby it provides them with a confidence that adults will respect (ibid, §67, §196). Good bearing assists the child to have manly thoughts and avoids the child collapsing into an embarrassing clownishness that can only enfeeble his esteem. However, music lessons Locke believes are a waste of time: the pupil gains a moderate talent at the expense of much time and effort that would be better used otherwise, and the company of musicians he could not advise. It is much better for the pupil to gain exercise in riding, which provides the young boy with skills that are useful in peace, and if necessary, in war. (Recall, Locke’s father was in a cavalry regiment, but also consider that the essential means of transportation was the horse). Hunting, one of Locke’s own pursuits well into his later years, is an excellent pastime, for it demands early rises and is a healthy outdoor pursuit: ‘the early rising, hard riding, heat, cold and hunger of Huntsmen, which is yet known to be the constant Recreation of Men of the greatest Condition’ (ibid, §206; ‘Thus’, 297). With regards to martial pursuits, he prefers that boys are not taught fencing, as it leads to an habitual presumptuousness and ease of entering a fray with other skilled fencers in dangerous challenges and duels. Much better that the lad learns to wrestle. Locke counsels against attempting to mould children according to set rules and patterns or becoming upset at immature carelessness. Maturity will iron out childish slips of tongue or grace; he notes that children are often berated for their parents’ embarrassment in society, but such infrequent lectures will not assist the child to learn. Only the experience of good company can subtly teach the child to bear him or herself properly in adult company, which the pupil should be properly exposed to in the gentleman’s house. The child needs to be taught to be sensible about fear. Fear is a monitor against that which threatens us, and Locke wishes the pupil to be aware of fear and to use it appropriately, that is to possess fortitude and apply their reason so as not to endanger themselves needlessly by thoughtless cowardice or rashness. (We hear echoes of Aristotle’s ethics of the golden mean in Locke (cf. Nichomachaean Ethics)). To gain a mastery of fear, the young child is to be kept from fearful influences, such as horror and ghost stories (Thoughts, §138), for such images imprint deeply on the young mind and often cannot be countered or diverted even by the mature

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adult mind: Locke notes evidence of adults who have been scarred by fearful incidents when young, which he argues underline his theory that the impressions of childhood are indelible and character-forming. If a child gains an irrational fear of something, he or she should be gradually accustomed to the fearful object; they should be taught never to fear the night and hence should avoid servants’ stories and tales that would invoke their fright. When studies are commenced, they should always appeal to the child’s innate curiosity and the tutor or parent ought to carefully observe what it is that entertains the child’s mind by watching them at play and using their natural inclinations to assist learning. Lockean learning should be fun – in this he is in earnest. Too much learning is dry and impractical and of little use to the young pupil, he remarks; neither should learning follow a routine – if you ask a child to play with his toys at the same time every day, it will soon become a tiresome burden. Learning should be pleasurable, and the tutor should observe what delights the young mind as well as keeping aware of changes in temper, aptitude, and inclination in his pupil: a child will learn three times as much when he is ‘in tune’. Apart from a high level of distractedness, Locke observes that children are prone to several erring tendencies: forgetfulness, unsteadiness, a wandering of thought, and inadvertency. These faults do not need a severe rebuke, merely a gentle word to encourage the pupil along a more productive path, partly to gain the pupil’s affection, but also because the child is erring innocently. In the early years, the child learns how to read, then to write, and then to draw; as his or her skills increase, the pupil should learn how to draw in perspective and perhaps learn short-hand (ibid, §161). Foreign languages can be introduced very early on: as soon as the child can speak, Locke says, that it is time to begin learning a different language. They do not need to learn the rules of grammar but merely should be spoken to, so they can pick up the language implicitly and without too much conscious deliberation. Accordingly, the pupil should not be forced to learn but encouraged in his natural curiosity. When a child’s natural curiosity has been stymied, we find them playing silly games (ibid, §118), Locke observes, which today could read as indulging in computer games or getting into trouble at school. As the child ages, he or she should be taught gradually to master any inclination not to study, for in adulthood we need to be able to discipline ourselves to work when we often do not feel like it. As instruction progresses, the child’s mind should always be appealed to – enthusing it to pursue one subject and then another with delight, but also to shrug off mental sluggishness in order to employ its reasoning faculty. The tutor is thus encouraged to explore a variety of topics (in contrast to the narrow curriculum of the schools of logic

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and Latin); that way he may deploy subjects that will entertain the child’s mind according to the pupil’s changing aptitudes and inclination, for the child can think on only one thing at once and is liable to distraction (ibid, §167), but all the time stimulating the mind and the child’s ability to assert rational control over his temperamental dispositions and changing moods. It is a ‘pain’ to keep a child’s thoughts on one thing, but rebuking them for their natural distractedness is counterproductive. Since children are capable of discerning what are chores and duties, their education, ideally, should be sufficiently varied and pleasurable that they do not similarly consider their work as onerous. Learning needs to employ the great human motivator, pleasure (ibid, §76). Ideally, a child should see little difference in what adults define as play and what adults define as learning: the two should intermingle for the child, so that learning is as pleasurable and playful as the free expressionsuiting games. This complements the child’s innate love of rationality: ‘they love to be treated as Rational Creatures sooner than is imagined’, Locke notes, and they love being able to achieve what they could not before. But this does not mean that the young mind can follow a complex chain of reasoning – explanations should remain brief and to the point and appropriate to their age and abilities. Children should not be put off with fantastical explanations or lies if the tutor or parent cannot answer their question; the child should endeavour to find out for him or herself, or if it is to a question that is inappropriate for their age, then they should be told that it is inappropriate knowledge rather than fobbing them off with something deceitful or unsuitable. Although he tends to criticize curricula that are heavy on memorization, the use of the memory has its use for Locke. It is useful for children to have a healthy memory, which can be cultivated through the use of memorizing short sayings from which they can draw wise understanding; for that they can be given something to memorize each day, but remember that those best at memorization (actors) do not always make the best company. A problem that may arise is if the child balks at learning or becomes idle. Children generally do not like idleness, and this can be harnessed subtly to encourage their curiosity and love of learning (ibid, §129), but some children do fall into laziness – no doubt Locke is referring to older, teenaged children, whose love of learning can often diminish and a listlessness set in. Idleness Locke cannot abide, and he believes adults also hate to be unemployed, preferring to make up games to entertain themselves (ibid, §205); but the cause of idleness must be worked out. If it stems from a desire not to study, then the pupil can be encouraged back to study by watching him or her at play or free expressive curiosity and adapting their studies to suit their desires; if the child merely wants to play with their toys, then

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they should be made to play with them for a long period, following a strict routine until they become bored and begin to see their lessons as a relief. Otherwise, if it is sheer indolence (a ‘damp on his mind’), then Locke advises physical exercise and work to get the pupil into the habit of doing something (ibid, §126), or what we would call raising their energy levels so as to be able to become more active generally.

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Scholarly Education

Locke went to school at what we would now consider a late age of fifteen, but of course much of his learning had already been completed at home either under his father’s or a tutor’s guidance. Possibly he attended a local ‘petty school’ for young children, but there is no evidence. School was Westminster, a prestigious grammar school that took boys in from the age of ten and followed the by then traditional Humanist-classical curriculum. For most people, Locke believed that the classics and especially the art of disputing in Latin or Greek were generally a waste of time, a time which could be better spent learning more profitable skills that will be of use later on in life. Yet we have noted that Locke rarely writes off pupils’ dispositions: he never fully rejected the classics curriculum, especially as the classics provide so much to learn from – they were to play a part in his thoughts on education, but more restricted to those with a scholarly bent or more mature mind. Much preferable to sending a child to school, Locke recommends that parents, as we have seen, should employ a tutor to teach the child at home. The tutor ought to be well-mannered, well-bred, and well-educated, and in this no expense should be spared, for the child’s education is the most important investment parents can make. A tutor should be chosen in the same meticulous manner that one would choose a wife for one’s son (ibid, §92); the tutor is to act as the parents’ trusted guide. The tutor’s learning should be broad, so he can encourage the child in whatever direction the pupil’s inclinations lean, and should promote an independent confidence, so the pupil is eventually able to pursue higher studies in his preferred subject areas. The tutor should also be worldly wise, so he can teach the maturing pupil the tricks, hypocrisy, and games that others may play on him or her; explain how to read the motives and intentions of people; and describe the ways of his country and the ‘true State of the World’ (ibid, §94). Home-schooling gives the parents and tutor the opportunity to keep the child innocent and virtuous, while a school education is likely to teach the impressionable child the world’s vices; he or she certainly should not be

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kept in ignorance, but learn insensibly and by degrees (a favourite phrase of Locke’s). Take away his moral education too early, and the pupil is likely to fall into dissolute and extravagant activity. Moral education for the maturing pupil is less learned from superficial reflection or much reading than by the effect of enjoying the experience and observations of a trusted man or tutor; the tutor should explain the traps and follies of his age, encourage an awareness of others’ motives and their possible duplicity. To protect the pupil from the evils of the world, he should be taught knowledge of the vices properly, slowly opening his eyes as to men’s ways, so ‘he may be precaution’d’. The tutor thus should act as a moral guide as well as educator to the pupil. Teaching inevitably involves an element of moralizing. It cannot be separated from instruction, for the teacher acts as a guide and shows a method of behaviour and of learning that is implicitly or explicitly deemed appropriate: he or she becomes a role model – the problem, for Locke, is how effective that guidance can be. It is most effective when the teacher is a virtuous man or woman (female teachers were becoming prominent in Locke’s time; he refers to a known speciality of women teachers focusing on foreign languages (ibid, §165; Crawford, 1998, 324); but the most diligently minded school master is far removed from the Lockean ideal, for he could not follow the exploits or developing characters of the many boys under his jurisdiction in a school (Thoughts, §70). All a school teacher can do is to instruct the pupils in their books; the forming of their characters requires a constant attention that only home-schooling can provide. Schools inevitably cannot reproduce the intimacy of family values, and parents, Locke warns, should not expect a school to cater for their particular requirements: a school is a system to which the child must adapt, rather than the other way around (ibid, §170). (This is particularly true today, when a child in England must fit into the system of a national curriculum.) If a child must be sent to school, then the school must of course be suitable: school can encourage boldness and there he can learn the ways of the world certainly, but Locke remains highly critical of sacrificing ‘your Son’s innocence and Vertue, for a little Greek and Latin’ (ibid, §70). At school, they are not likely to learn the virtues of justice, sobriety, generosity or industry – rather, they learn to be rough with one another and go in for pranks and ‘well-laid Plots of Robbing an Orchard together’ (ibid, §70). In his criticism of schools, Locke follows Montaigne, who railed against public schooling: proper home education may produce relatively bashful or retiring daughters, but that does not make them less knowing or less able; education should build the youth up into an adult through conversation, and a home-schooled pupil exposed to his family’s commerce and social activity is less likely to become stuck for conversation compared to an intelligent school-taught lad of the

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same age, who only knows how to debate in the foreign languages and to cajole with children of his own age. Throughout the Thoughts, Locke condemns the schools’ curriculum of learning the ancient tongues and having to present, as he did (successfully) for his scholarship. Why, he demands, can’t they ask a pupil to present in English? And it would be a good exercise to accustom the young man in having to speak in public as an adult if he were exercised regularly in spontaneous speeches on random topics. Advanced learning is introduced as the pupil’s aptitude readies itself, but the aim here is not to sustain a dependence upon the tutor but to promote self-learning. The pupil should be introduced to a variety of topics and helped to gain the love and discipline to enjoy higher learning, but by that stage, the pupil should progress beyond the tutor’s abilities as his inclinations take him. Studies should be designed to stretch the pupil’s faculties and to keep him from idleness; but once his mind is afire with specific curiosity, the pupil should become less reliant upon his or her tutor than books from the appropriate discipline. Locke often questions the usefulness of learning the ancient languages, but if the aptitude is there, the pupil may learn all that he or she needs from Greek and Latin in a year, rather than the several years wasted on the languages in the schools (ibid, §147); this may be effected through speaking to the pupil in Latin rather than wasting their time and losing enjoyment through the memorization of grammar and its rules (ibid, §165). If no one can speak to the pupil in Latin, then the pupil ought to translate simple and well-known passages from Latin into English and back again; again, Locke recommends using a book that the pupil is familiar with, such as Aesop’s Fables. The essence is to keep the pupil in good humour, so he should not be bogged down by rules and rote memorization – grammar is for the higher study of the adult (ibid, §168). Knowledge of grammar is not necessary for conversational language, but only of use for those who would write or practise rhetoric in that language – Locke reminds his readers that the Greeks and Romans did not learn other languages. Practising translations Locke recommends as the most effective method of learning a foreign language; a particular idea he had was of translating the Gospels daily (ibid, §177). But really Greek should not be learned unless the pupil is destined to become a scholar rather than a man of business (ibid, §195). As the pupil’s education proceeds, we are reminded of the original general ambition: to produce a virtuous, wise, well-bred, and learned gentleman or gentlewoman, who can remain confident and principled in society and converse easily with people of various backgrounds. Virtue stems from the foundational principles of Lockean pedagogy; wisdom comes with maturity,

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and it is the teaching of foresight and application of the mind to one’s business. To become wise, the child must be taught against using cunning, which the ignorant use rather than learning how to cooperate and use their minds productively. Good breeding ensures against sheepish bashfulness, or an arrogant sense of superiority; it produces a decency and gracefulness in looks and manner, voice and gesture, and teaches the pupil to avoid making anyone feel uneasy by his or her conversation. It smoothes roughness, and avoids contempt of others and impolite censoriousness and captiousness of others. Civility and virtue tend to personal happiness and ease of social intercourse. Locke does not place much emphasis on learning refined social etiquette, so long as the pupil is respectful to others – for instance, in being taught not to interrupt others and show off their particular talents. So in conversation the pupil should be taught how to show respect, esteem, and good will, but this does not mean that they must agree with everything that is said, for that ‘would be to take away the greatest Advantage of Society’ (ibid, §145). Independence of mind is a higher virtue than merely agreeing for politeness’s sake. A humorous addition to Locke’s prescriptions is that the maturing young man should be put off becoming a poet. If he happens to be good at rhyming, Locke asks the parent to consider, what sort of company may his child be thinking of spending his time in? (Implicatively, not good). But he is not condemning poetry per se, for Locke read much poetry (his favourites being Blackmore, Moli`ere, and Butler); what is amiss is that the young poet would be avoiding the responsibilities of his station – a man of business could enjoy poetry, but typically did not write it, is the apparent conclusion: after all, there’s no money in it, ‘’tis a pleasant Air but a barren Soil’, Locke quips. However, Locke never completely rejects the possibility of any form of latent talent in his pupils: if the pupil shows an obvious talent, then that is not to be disregarded, but he ought to be immersed in the classics so he does not make a bad job of his own attempts. The modern equivalent would be the youthful budding rock star, who idles his time strumming the guitar or banging the drums without putting in the sufficient effort required to gain a working competency in music – an unpleasant air and barren soil indeed. The maturing pupil should also engage in mathematics, geography, chronology, history, and geometry. Geography exercises the eyes and memory in discovering places on the globe or on maps; maths leads easily on from geography. Of maths: ‘a Man cannot have too much of it, nor too properly’ (ibid, §178). His studies in arithmetic should parallel that of geography, learning about parallel circles, lines of longitude and latitude, and then onto the constellations

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and knowledge of the solar system. Maths should be practised daily, for it will become such an important part of business later on; it is also an excellent introduction to abstract reasoning. From maths, geometry may be introduced, and the first six books of Euclid should suffice, unless the pupil has an inclination to go further. Chronology teaches the pupil an awareness of history, putting people and events in their proper times and countries, from which a pupil may be introduced into the formal study of history, which is more properly the study of the grown man. Here the Latin authors are indispensable. They inform the reader of virtue and reputation; from Cicero’s De Officiis, the maturing mind can be introduced to more recent authors such as Pufendorf and Grotius, who will teach about the affairs of nations; when studying law, the pupil should read about constitutional law rather than the particularities of legal cases. As grammar is introduced, the older pupil can take up rhetoric and logic – to reason well, Chillingworth should be consulted and studied (Religion of the Protestants, 1638). The introduction to science poses a problem for Locke. He is apparently all too aware that a scientific education can lead to atheism if the pupil is not taught faith early on. The exact workings of science lies beyond our ability to fathom, Locke notes, so it is important that the pupil has a foundation in belief before attempting the specifics of contemporary science. Science offers no certainty though, which means that the pupil should examine the various schools of thought; but Locke adds that the atomists do make more sense than the Aristotelians, and that more profit can be had from reading the works of those actually engaged in experimentation than the pontificators and conjecturers of the old schools. Incidentally, he recommends Newton’s Principia, whose maths may certainly beyond the average ability but which is still an exciting book expressing the laws of the universe in the simplistic, unambiguous language of maths. (Recall that Locke and Newton later worked together on making a young person’s guide to Newton’s principles for the Masham’s children.) Interestingly, Locke suggests that the maturing young gentleman should learn a trade. He should be introduced to several, to see which appeals before learning one in particular. The benefits are that a skilled trade is educationally beneficial in itself and promotes a useful skill. Locke is thinking of carpentry, animal husbandry, wood-turning, perfumery, ironmongery, varnishing, engraving, brass work, cutting and polishing stones, or gardening, for instance, to counteract the sedentary skills of reading and writing. Recall that fresh air, exercise, and use of the limbs are vital to the youth’s education. Similar to his criticism of music, Locke cannot condone learning to paint, as too much time is spend in a sedentary manner; the young gentlemen should be kept away from gambling, dice, cards, and drinking,

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as so much time is wasted on such unproductive pursuits; but if the parents balk at the idea of their gentleman son learning a vocational skill, then he should learn accounts and assist the family in their book-keeping. In all formal education, Locke warns against trying too much too quickly; the child should be carefully introduced to new knowledge gradually, so that it may ‘settle well in their Heads’ (Thoughts, §178). Above all, the pupil must be encouraged to read sources in the original (as I would you, reader!), and to make his or her own deductions from what is read – commentaries in the classics are reflective of laziness and pedantry. In experiments, the pupil ought to make his own observations, rather than copy another’s. As studying accelerates, the pupil ought to logically organize his notes and material to distinguish easily between subjects. It was fashionable in Locke’s time to go on a Grand Tour of Europe; Locke toured with Caleb Banks during the years 1677–79. A Grand Tour is to be held back from young pupils until they are old enough to appreciate the tour and learn the ways of the world, without being too old to feel frustrated in a tutor’s company, which he believes will happen for the over 16-year-olds (ibid, §212). At this age, they need parental and friendly authority more than ever to ensure that their passage into adulthood is securely virtuous. A tutor should accompany the younger pupil, but when he is sufficiently mature the pupil should tour on his own. A tour of foreign lands will open the young person’s eyes to the differences in culture and human nature. As their child grows, a parent should gradually begin to address the child as a man or woman, which will encourage the child to raise his thoughts above his childish pursuits; the parents should not withhold from discussing monetary matters, which will teach the growing youth responsibility. The older student, whose calling is the commercial world, should spend time learning how to assess ideas, to consider what makes some ideas or connections worse than others. In the Essay, Locke reminds the reader that much unreasonableness is imputed to education: such an idea does not get to the heart of the matter, he notes, but it is important to consider for the maturing gentleman, and the tutor and parents should ensure that the pupil does not improperly connect ideas together. For instance, frightening a young child with stories of goblins and sprites will imprint an indelible and unproductive association on the mind (Essay, II.xxxiii.10). A good way to ensure against unclear thinking is to understand language and words – hence the older pupil must continue to enlarge his knowledge and improve his manner of speaking through improving the sharpness of his mind by reading authors who write well (Tillotson, Cicero, Quintillian, and Boileau, he recommends) and authors who reason well (Chillingworth, Cicero, Terence, Virgil, Livy, and Caesar). For the continued study of morality, Locke

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advises in his Study to read the New Testament and Cicero; for political theory, the pupil is guided to Hooker, Sidney, Pufendorf, and to his own Two Treatises (but of course, he does not let on that he is the author – it was published anonymously); he can learn of government by reading his friend’s, James Tyrell’s, History of England; he should peruse geography books and travel books frequently; and to gain a knowledge of men, he should read Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Buy`ere’s Characters, Juvenal, Persius, and Horace. For diversion, Locke recommends dramatic poetry and one of his favourite works, Don Quixote. The end of study is knowledge and the end of knowledge is practice or communication, Locke writes in his short essay ‘Of Study’ (see below). It is hard to study anything for its own sake, given the daily bustle of life: ‘it therefore much behoves us to improve the best we can our time and talent in this respect, and since we have a long journey to go, and the days are but short, to take the straightest and most direct way we can’ (‘Of Study’).

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But Not for the Poor

So far the emphasis on Locke’s educational theory has followed the thoughts and principles adumbrated in his published Essay and Thoughts, for it is these works that went on to influence generations of thinkers and educationalists and which still retain philosophical attention. I have also hinted on a less libertarian strain to Locke that also needs addressing, notably his traditional conception of and designs for the poor of the parish. We have already noted his suspicions towards servants, from whose bawdy conversations and hindering superstitions the child is to be kept; but his minor essays and scribblings elucidate an intolerant side to Locke. The children of the labouring poor are a burden to the community and are usually idle until puberty; their idleness constitutes lost labour to the parish as well as a distracting drain on the impoverished family that begat them. Accordingly, Locke ‘humbly’ proposes a new law to set up a Working School in every parish, which three to 11-year-olds are obliged to attend unless they are otherwise employed. This will allow the mother to find useful work as well as inculcate a good habit of industriousness in the children that will keep them ‘sober and industrious all their lives’. This in turn will relieve the parish of its welfare payments to the idle, which is usually spent on the alehouse rather than on keeping the family in good abstemious order. The Working School’s costs will be minimal. Materials and the master’s salary can be taken out of the parish funds, but once the school is operative, Locke intends that the children be used to help it make a profit by using local craftsmen to teach them skills, such as knitting and other forms of basic manufacturing to sell. Local master craftsmen can then draw upon the school for young apprentices, who would be bound to the job until they are 23. At school, the children can be brought into religion, which otherwise they would not experience; they may be given bread and water, and gruel heated by the school fire in the winter. The benefits to the parish are immense, Locke argues: reduced welfare payments; diminished idleness; the cultivation of religion and a working

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ethos among the poorest; and a school that is capable of paying its own way. But these are not the only musings that Locke has on his plans for the poor. In his ‘Atlantis’, a tithingman closely keeps watch on the morality of the village, while runaway children are to be whipped and beaten and even conscripted into the navy. The poor are incapable of entering Locke’s liberal world of freedom for all from paternal authority; later writers in the Classical Liberal vein were to iron out these inconsistencies and demand liberation for all people, but Locke held onto some skewed prejudices of the time. Fortunately in some respects, he did not intrude much into the education of women, for if he had done so in a manner that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was to a few decades later, he may have lost the admiration or attracted the sharp animadversion of women writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft; as such, Locke bowed out of the debate, which in itself may be said to show a lack of concern for the plight of women. He does criticize mothers though for constraining girls’ physical development with restrictive clothing and, by spoiling them, creating pride and materialism, and he laments that girls’ games are not more useful to them (Thoughts, §152), and observes that girls are quite capable of learning a language much quicker than boys when they have a governess who speaks French to them, rather than the boys who experience having to learn the grammatical rules: ‘I cannot but wonder, how Gentlemen have over-seen this way for their Sons, and thought them more dull or incapable than their Daughters’ (ibid, §166). Unlike the view ´ of women we get in Rousseau’s Emile, Locke generally held women in good esteem; the plain wisdom of a country gentlewoman is compared to the silliness of philosophical disputants (Essay, IV.xvii) and he maintained a long and intellectual friendship with Damaris Masham.

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Political Man and his Education

The aim of Lockean education is to cultivate a virtuous adult, specifically a gentleman or gentlewoman, but also a vision of confident and competent adults who are reasonable and independently minded. This is the ideal – but to what extent does Locke believe that this ideal reflects the perfectibility of the human species? Locke was relatively cynical of the abilities and virtues of most people – consider his remarks on the wiles and dissoluteness of servants – but a description of current affairs does not rule out a prescription for future affairs. To assess Locke’s own conception of the beneficial repercussions of his educational system, we need to appreciate the ideal of perfectibility in Western thinking. Perfectionism claims first, that certain forms of human activity are intrinsically worth more than others, and second, that these values ought to play a role in conduct towards others or in political activity. Human excellence ought thus to be promoted in morality and/or political programmes. Locke, we see, retains notions of perfection in his vision of political man but retains a realistic understanding of human nature that keeps him from extolling a utopian vision of completely perfect and nice people. The Greek ideal of human nature, which was passed down through the ages to be reborn in the Renaissance, was to seek individual perfection – both moral and physical, and although various authors emphasized one aspect over the other, generally the Greeks sought a unified personality. Education was thus to be organized to train the youth to reflect the ideal man: Plato outlined a system of education that the perceived three great classes of men’s abilities would naturally fall into; Aristotle agreed on the natural limits to some people’s abilities (noting that some were born to rule over others), but encouraged the able to pursue the highest form of living – the life of the intellect. The Romans were less sanguine about human perfectibility: the Stoic ideal sought to uphold dignity and virtuous behaviour and intellectual activity while the vagaries of the world and its politics were to be shouldered and shrugged off; accordingly, a strong element of stoicism became attached to Christian thinking, with Boethius’s Consolations of

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Philosophy and Augustine’s City of God acting as two of the seminal connections between the Roman and Christian world. From Greece to late Rome, the ideal of perfectibility in man transmuted from a vision of secular man, healthy in mind and body and striving to be the best and godlike, to a vision of devoted man, whose mental focus was the life beyond in the arms of Heaven. The Renaissance rekindled the Greek ideals in art, architecture, poetry, and in education. The focus of perfectibility in the sixteenth century returned to more Hellenic and earthly goals, but the Christian elements were of course not lost. The atheistic Nietzschean u¨ bermensch is not yet on the horizon: man could live a productive, skilful, accomplished, dignified, and devotional life according to Renaissance thinkers. The Renaissance culture of Italy spread out across Europe as evinced in the classical architecture of grand buildings and sculpture that sprang up in the wake of its ideals; yet, Renaissance man was not completely a copy of the GrecoRomano inheritance, for in invigorating a curiosity for the past, the culture unwittingly perhaps invigorated a curiosity in the present. Gradually we see a new mindset emerging, one in which we recognize modern thinking and familiar conceptions of man and the universe, notably the proto-scientist. By Locke’s time, the mixed ideals of perfectibility had been somewhat tainted by the horrendous wars of his century, leaving the universities and teachers extolling the wonders of the ancient civilizations – except now, Puritan activists sought to extinguish the study and love of the classics in favour of a return to simple Christianity and the devotion that the earlier Christians were assumed to have possessed. A few sects emerged that experimented with perfectionist communities, typically emphasizing the role of grace (God’s gift of eternal salvation) in human affairs. The Puritans believed in the perfectibility of Christian man, if he were to live a life fully committed to the teachings of the Bible. But the various splinter groups and sects that evolved from the Reformation disagreed on what aspects should be taught or emphasized. Some claimed that living a sinless, good life would gain a man or woman entrance into heaven; others, following the Calvinist vein of theology, believed that an elect had already been chosen (i.e. Calvinists), while others were all going to sweat in Hell. The ideal of Puritanical perfectibility had an impact on their teachings and sermons of course, but elements also became part of the later socialist and communist philosophies of man’s perfectibility under an egalitarian, property-less commonwealth. For Locke, in contrast, God is perfect, not man (Essay, II.x.9). Perfect happiness can only be attained by angels, he argues (Essay, II.xxi.50); moreover, he rejects the Puritan perfectibilist visions as too extreme and idealistic, and as not looking at man at how he is – hence according to Locke human perfectibility would be apparently beyond our capabilities. The purpose of

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education is certainly not to make perfect children, ‘but to open and dispose their Minds as may best make them capable’ of turning their reasoning to any subject they choose (Conduct, §18). Elsewhere he does hold that a limited perfection can be found in ‘a careful and constant pursuit of true and solid happiness’ (Essay, II.xxi.52); this pursuit is to be effected through a religious and virtuous life (Essay, II.xxi.62). The Aristotelian ideal seems to be invoked again (that intellectual pursuits form the path to man’s perfection and happiness), from which two issues emerge: we cannot ignore the Puritan element that the individual is responsible for his own salvation and hence perfection, nor can we ignore the limitations that Locke places on our ability to sustain virtuous and intellectual behaviour. The business of everyday life diminishes our ability to relax and contemplate the world, but Locke also reminds us that our knowledge of the world can never be perfect (e.g. Essay, II.xxiii,12, but generally passim), which is what we should expect from an empirical philosopher. Lockean perfectibility lies more in the region of forming an adaptable and agreeable character of independent mind and respectable reputation. The notion of perfection, on Lockean analysis, implies cultivating a particular (a child) into an abstract; and since abstracts are mere inventions of the human mind, perfectionism reduces to a contrivance far removed from the actuality of human life and would be as tortuous, ineffective, and counterproductive to follow as constraining babies in swaddling clothes. Except Locke does not completely reject rationalism, which produces such clearly marked ideas that may stand independently of reality and thereby guide the human mind and action. When comparing ideas in my mind that fit together perfectly, I can deduce a truth. For instance, I have in my mind an image of three lines joined together to produce a triangle; this kind of creation in my head needs no more additional information to perfect it. Accordingly, Locke does periodically raise man’s intellect to the heights that Aristotle would have cheered: ‘The right improvement, and exercise of our Reason, being the highest Perfection, that a Man can attain to in this Life’ (Thoughts, §123). Also from this rather Cartesian respect for mathematical ideas, Locke conjectures whether morality can be perfected in a similar fashion using the clarity of definition and meaning that can be found in mathematical reasoning (Essay, III.xi.16). Linguistic problems begin with children learning poorly the meanings of words and using them arbitrarily; they continue this custom into adulthood, and so are intellectually handicapped in seeking truths (Essay, III.xi.24), and therefore the potential for people to act properly and virtuously is diminished by their weak linguistic skills. The natural sciences are for the same reason restrained from progressing, as practitioners will be using different terms for the same ideas, or the same

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terms for different ideas. Locke’s solution was wishful – there should be a scientific dictionary: ‘But a dictionary of this sort, containing, as it were, a natural history, requires too many hands as well as too much time, cost, pains, and sagacity ever to be hoped for; and till that be done, we must content ourselves with such definitions of the names of substances as explain the sense men use them in’ (Essay, III.xi.25). Fortunately, eighteenth-century exponents of Locke’s ideals – the French Encyclopaedists – put in the effort to produce a comprehensive encyclopaedia (if a little biased in their explanations); this has of course been followed by the great encyclopaedias (e.g. the Britannica) and specialist dictionaries galore. Locke’s other dream of minimizing misunderstandings in moral language by putting ethics on a more mathematical footing, although it has had a brief flourish in Bentham’s utilitarian calculus and some economists’ writings since, has not been achieved, and even if men were to agree on the nature of the good as equating to say, ‘a peaceful co-existence between all men’, that would not stop some people trying to disrupt the peace by imposing an alternative vision of life on others. Social life is not going to attain a morally perfect idea while human thinking is not only fallible but also uses epistemologically fragile language that is so open to misinterpretation, as Locke’s philosophy indicates. Nonetheless, the ethics of virtue that Locke supports do encourage a human and limited perfection – the virtues outlined above represent society’s approbation or disapprobation of an activity, the words impacting on the consciousness, especially if the child is taught early to recognize the punishing and ostracizing effects of parental scowling. To be held in disgrace is to be relegated in social consideration, whereas to be applauded for virtuous acts is to enjoy the elevation of one’s reputation in social standing. Men are likely to err, and children especially so and (more importantly) innocently so: hence the importance of the virtues and their moralizing language in training the maturing mind to understand the social mores as well as the notions of right and wrong. A later philosopher, Immanuel Kant, was to secure his moral philosophy on reason’s explication of duty; an act was a duty if reason explained it could be universalized and reflected the categorical imperative of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. For Locke, while the notion of duty is practicable in social life, it is so only because the act is connected to the great motivators of human action – pleasure and pain, and their more complicated extensions, approbation and shame. This implies that human moral life is as fragile an enterprise as human understanding: to do good requires an understanding of the supplementary pleasure involved in doing the good, for without that desire to so act, I will not act. It follows that there will be no reason for me to pursue the good, if

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I have not been brought up to be virtuous – if, for example, the family or broader social environment I lived in did not consistently express dismay when I erred or committed a vice. Without a knowledge of the social power of the several virtues and vices – of how they may progress or relegate my station and standing in life – I become amoral, and thereby I become a danger to others and to social peace. One would expect that this argument would lead Locke to espouse a doctrine of forgiveness against those who trespass, but he does not. The mature adult becomes wholly responsible for his actions and beliefs. An underlying and emphatic theme to Locke’s educational programme is the moral development of the child into a virtuous adult, and while he or she is developing we can excuse and forgive the mistakes the child makes; the justification of the excuses dwindle as the child matures, until there can be no excuse. Once the child is of age, the parents’ job is complete, and the adult stands morally alone (Two Treatises, II.55). In developing his criticism of Sir Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, which supports the rule of a monarch over the population as a father to his children, Locke presents his libertarian philosophy and ideal civic society. Filmer asserts that ‘every Man that is born is so far from being free, that by his very Birth he becomes a Subject of him that begets him’, which Locke rejects in favour of the weaker assertion that all that a child owes is honour, not subjugation. Filmer, he argues, does not provide any proof or justification of such dominion except to say that the act of begetting a child gives the father title over him and that title is absolute – as a monarch possesses the power of life and death over his slaves. If, Locke humorously rejoinders, we are all slaves, then so too is Filmer, and ‘one Slave’s Opinion without proof is not of weight enough to dispose of the Liberty and fortunes of all Mankind’ (Two Treatises, I.vi.51). Locke throws in the alternative that the having of children does not make them slaves and justifies his position as such: first, the fact that a parent gave a child life and being does not imply, as with any gift, that he has the right to take that gift back; second, philosophers and scientists cannot fathom what actually gives a child life, that is God’s prerogative; third, in the sexual act, what role does the father have in the creation of the child’s life – he is merely ‘satisfying his present Appetite’, for God has put such strong desires in the human race to copulate and reproduce ‘most commonly without the intention, and often against the Consent and Will of the Begetter’; fourth, what of the woman’s share in the creation of a child, which is certainly greater and longer in duration than the man’s fifth, the fact that some people show their power over the children by exposing them or selling them is not a good argument to justify absolute ownership (‘thus far can the busie mind of Man carry him to a Brutality below the level of Beasts’, observes Locke) – after all, people also commit adultery, incest, and

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sodomy, and such examples are not used to justify sex; sixth, if fatherhood entails sovereignty over children, then there will be as many sovereigns as there are fathers (Two Treatises, I.vi.52–65). Finally, parents most certainly cannot have any rights over children they did not produce, which means kings and queens cannot be called the father and mother of the nation. A child has a duty to honour his parents, Locke continues, and this duty is a moral rather than a legal code (Two Treatises, I.vi.67). Children are born weak and dependent and they have a right to be nourished and sheltered by their parents and to enjoy the luxuries of the house, as far as the parents can afford them (Two Treatises, I.ix.89). And it is only just that the parents’ effects and assets are passed down to the children equally. (In an age when the state presumes to take a sharp quantity of parental assets, Locke’s stance may seem out of the ordinary, but his reasoning and justification are relatively straightforward compared to the argument that a third party has a right to take a slice from the earned income and assets of people and distribute them to people the parents could not wish the money to be given to.) The duty that children owe to respect their parents does not mean that they are beholden to them forever: ‘all that a Child has Right to claim from his Father is Nourishment and Education, and the things nature furnishes for the support of Life’ (Essay, I.ix.93). Once of age and presumably of resilient virtues, the Lockean adult fully enters civic life as an independent, free-thinking person. The mature adult’s life is fully his or her own – indeed, he owns himself morally and politically (just as the mother does: ‘the Wife has, in many cases, a Liberty to separate from [her husband]’, Two Treatises II.82) Indeed, the Lockean world of the Two Treatises totters on anarchy. Obviously, Locke is attracted to the ideals of a completely free society, in which all people recognize each other as free and independent persons who deserve respect and dignity regardless of their abilities or social station. In rejecting Sir Robert Filmer’s arguments for a patriarchal society, Locke also provides the arguments for the rejection of hereditary monarchy and even government itself. Only the inconveniences of not knowing the law and the need to execute the law and punishment justify retaining a state, which is to remain thoroughly minimal and utilitarian. The repercussions were and remain radical. Locke has not been the first or only philosopher to call for a libertarian society, but the impact that the Two Treatises has had on world history following its publication can only be compared to the political writings of Rousseau and Marx. But remember that Locke’s free society is not the morally free or permissive society that some libertarian or anarchist thinkers would wish for. In his utopian sketches for Atlantis (‘Atlantis’) the moral order is highly restrictive and surprisingly intrusive: each village should possess a tithingman who would enter families’ homes regularly to verify that they were living a

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moral and upright life – no morally free and independent adults in Locke’s dreams! The justification of moralistic intervention can only come from Locke’s fear of a thoroughly free society that sits on the edge of a Hobbesian state of nature. In his earlier writings, Locke feared the absence of legal order and echoed Hobbes’s concern that the anarchic state of nature would be characterized by war and predation. One can detect that Locke does not completely reject that fear – perhaps the impressions and implications of the Civil War raging around his county left their indelible imprint on his tender mind – and so to ensure against neighbours regressing into opportunistic fraud and violence against others, Locke believes local guardians of the moral order are necessary. The purpose of the child’s education to produce a suitably virtuous man or woman reflects Locke’s political purpose to ensure that a free society is also a sober, industrious, and honest one. In the Two Treatises, the criminal who does aggress against people effectively declares war against his victim (Two Treatises, II.iii.16); and war is as an evil state of affairs as Hobbes characterizes it in his Leviathan, which Locke knew. Locke, who throughout the Two Treatises shows a highly competent knowledge and regard for the Old Testament, now has recourse to the ancient law of ‘eye for an eye’ (Two Treatises, II.ii.11) – the aggressor forfeits his life completely, for even if he seeks to steal something from me, his action implies that he may intend to completely subjugate me and therefore I am justified in killing him. In his writings on ideal societies, vagabonds are to be pressed into service and errant minors are to be whipped. Ideally, civil society is to be supported by reasoning and reasonable people acting virtuously, and education’s purpose is to cultivate the young into responsible adults. Government is restricted to securing property and life, and defending the commonwealth against those who would overthrow it or destabilize it – but it has no right to intervene in the education of people’s children. Locke’s political man (the ultimate vision of his educational programme) is barely Christian it seems: the virtues of forgiveness, clemency, and leniency are apparently cast aside against those who invade or threaten to invade one’s property or one’s life. They cannot be tolerated in any manner or form, and a secure victory against them renders them completely subject to the victor, who may kill them or enslave them. In his Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke emphasizes the moral teachings of the Old Testament and the charitableness of the New Testament (Reasonableness, §187); people must live according to God’s laws, for they will be rewarded or punished in the afterlife, and without that motivation, ‘virtue by itself would have few followers’ (Reasonableness, §245). But loving one’s enemies rarely comes into Locke’s moral remit in the Two Treatises: he surveys the moral message of the

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Bible in his Reasonableness but we do not see the softer, gentler side repeated in his political writings, although if his enemies should ask for forgiveness, he should give it (Reasonableness, 232). Conversely, Locke’s writings on toleration, recollecting Erasmus’s Complaint of Peace, condemn those who would employ force to further the Christian faith; here we find that enemies should be loved and forgiven. Locke disdained extremes, either from religious zealots or atheists: all should worship God, but in their own way, and the Lockean commonwealth would permit freedom of religion to those who merely wish to worship their God. Seditious, treacherous or rebellious meetings should be clamped down as a public danger, but so long as the different sects and religions are peaceful, they should be tolerated. Once he is of age, the child becomes an independent moral person. The purpose of the child’s education is then complete, and adult education or ‘study’ now takes over.

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Continued Study

It is important for us to continue our education, Locke believes, because only by continually developing our minds can we think and hence communicate with any clarity. ‘The end of study is knowledge, and the end of knowledge practice or communication’, Locke writes; and knowledge is gained to pursue the truth (‘Of Study’). Again the theme is Aristotelian: an activity must have a purpose, and we can judge the purpose according to the end it seeks. ‘Practise’ implies commercial or occupational affairs (rather than a university career), so study is designed to further our productivity; and ‘communication’ entails what are naturally engaged in both in our own thinking and in our conversation with others. Study for its own sake is a mere diversion, which time barely allows us, so when we do turn to study to improve ourselves and our affairs, we should, Locke advises, avoid a few things. First, we should avoid words and phrases of disputation – the jargon of the philosophers, as it were, which have no value or any use; second, we should avoid relying on others’ opinions in matters that demand our own judgement – others’ opinions may improve vocabulary and the ability to argue but they will not produce a capable thinker; third, when using language, it is more important to be competent than polished; fourth, historical studies should be avoided until one is mentally prepared, unless one is a scholar, as most of it relates wars and massacres and has no use for the gentleman’s pursuits; finally, we should avoid frivolous questions, such as ‘where was the Garden of Eden?’ The gentleman who is not scholarly should thus avoid intricate disciplines but should seek a breadth of knowledge. Being a Christian, Locke does argue that he should train his thinking and purposes on the after-life, and he should try to live a quiet, discreet and prosperous life on earth. Those with more fortune do shoulder greater civic responsibilities. Our bodies and minds are not well formed for continual study, Locke admits, but it is important that we ‘set ourselves on work without ceasing’,

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avoiding too much study as it may affect our health. To cultivate the mind is a civic duty for the adult, for if we do not continue to improve ourselves we then rob God and neighbour of the services that a moderate knowledge and good health may perform. Accordingly, just as Locke provides a prescription for study, for children he offers one for the adult too. We should not study immediately after eating, and preferably should wait two to three hours before sitting down, as that would deleteriously affect the digestive process – compare, Locke suggests, the fitter body of the labourer, whose body does not collect so many toxins as one who sits down too much. Studying should not encroach upon sleep, which is nature’s great restorative; and we should certainly put down our books when we feel ill. We should always listen to our body, he advises. When studying, if we become weary and lose focus, we should take a break – change the topic or go and have a conversation, he recommends. The purpose of further study is the pursuit of truth, so we must develop a mindset ‘covetous for truth’. This involves a thorough overhaul of our thinking that may prejudice the search for truths, such as considering what our prejudices are, and what unquestioned thoughts and arguments we customarily hold. Locke notes that adults often tend to seek parties of similar thinking people, but such partisan company and prejudices hinder proper study, for they merely confirm held opinions (of which Locke claims Roman Catholics to be especially guilty). It is useful to have a sincere and sober friend who may challenge our thinking. And when thinking, it is better to rise above the level of using mere words to think and reflect using abstracts alone – words are too doubtful, whereas ideas are much sharper. This is an interesting conflation of Cartesian rationalism and Lockean empiricism – an idea, remember, is the original source of our knowledge of an entity, so when I recall the image of my dog, I do not need to refer to its name. Similarly with the concept ‘triangle’: it is better that I present a triangle to my mind and then play with it rather than restrict my reasoning to the internal sound-word, ‘triangle’. Except reasoning through deduction is highly Cartesian. We can also detect a Cartesian scepticism (although Shakespeare’s Polonius also comes to mind) when Locke advises that we be neither too distrustful nor too confident in our own opinions: just as I cannot see what another man sees and understand, nor can he see what I perceive and understand. We should always seek proof but retain a cynicism towards those who are sceptical of the proof. A useful Lockean recommendation that we encourage modern students to use today is to sketch out a map of our thinking, showing how subjects and arguments relate to one another; doing this regularly, Locke adds, keeps the mind aware of what is being learned. We should regularly also

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study ourselves – what are our abilities and weaknesses? – as this will help us study more effectively. Finally, although Locke believes it too obvious to mention, we should consult only the best authors on topics. Reading badly written or argued books ‘is not only loss of time and standing still, but going backwards quite out of one’s way’ (‘Of Study’). Reading is not the sole means of studying, or its end – meditation and discourse are vitally important. Once the mind is sufficiently prepared, the gentleman may then turn his attention to historical studies, where he may learn of humanity’s strengths and weaknesses, his follies and achievements. Recall that Locke was sceptical of teaching history too early in a pupil’s programme: history is too full of war and violence to provide the young mind with respectable and virtuous instruction. His last work on educational matters, Conduct of the Understanding , which Locke did not complete and was published posthumously in the first edition of his Works (1706), became popular in its own right, going through many reprints and translations. It is a less-known Lockean work today, but deserves our attention, for in it Locke presses on with his advice to the mature student as well as reminding readers of the importance of securing good thinking habits in the young child. The title refers to Locke’s argument that understanding is the mind’s power of perception. The mind perceives what our verbal signs signify (what ideas they refer to) and also the association (or lack of) between our ideas (Essay, II.xxi.6). The will necessarily follows the understanding, and so, as he argues in the opening words of the Conduct, ‘The last resort a Man has recourse to in the Conduct of himself, is his Understanding.’ Here is the driving seat for action, hence it should be well-equipped and competent. Again Locke reminds us that people’s natural abilities differ, and those differences education will never overcome. But greater differences are produced by people’s lack of good understanding or their neglect in using their minds properly. There are as many factors debilitating men’s thinking as there are diseases of the body, he notes, echoing his opening epithet to the Thoughts that a healthy body requires a healthy mind; and the cure is to set the mind working . Locke raises several problems that he has observed in people’s understanding. People may lack ideas – that is, they have not experienced enough of the requisite things that they speak of; or they lack wisdom or do not make the effort to make or test the connections between the ideas that they possess. Some people rarely commit their mind to question what they know or what they have been taught, while others are prone to putting their emotional attachment to an argument before its validity. More excusable and more common is the lack of complete information on a topic that is being

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considered; but even if we possess enough information we may not reason properly. Much of Locke’s criticism is laid at various types of activity that lead to prejudice or ignorance: reading only one set of books; assuming the methods and results of a specific discipline are true for all disciplines; embracing principles that are not self-evident and which have not been examined; repeating the arguments of other people or of a party or sect; not connecting abstract terms to their basic ideas (e.g. fighting for justice without any idea what justice entails); not liking opposition to or doubts concerning one’s reasoning (which smacks of prejudice); reading without reflecting; drawing conclusions from every notion encountered; searching for arguments to back one’s own arguments; knowing all sides of an argument but failing to draw a conclusion oneself; jumping to conclusions; skipping around topics without getting to know them well; accepting common opinion or rejecting common opinion (rather than thinking about it); relying on others’ words or citations in one’s writings; and changing terms to avoid direct explication of an argument. Locke proceeds with his thoughts on how we fail in deploying our understanding well and how we may overcome them, which provides a wonderful optimism in his mature thinking on the development of the mind. Even though we are born with differing abilities and temperaments, ‘we are born with Faculties and Powers capable of almost any thing . . . But ’tis only the exercise of those Powers which gives us Ability and Skill in any thing.’ In one of the few direct comments about the broader results of education, Locke notes that education can, for instance, raise the chances of ignorant people getting out of poverty, for he sees no reason why people should remain brutishly stupid; but there is no excuse for those with the means and time not to improve their minds – it is a duty that they do so. The best method is to exercise the mind – if considering a topic, then investigate it rather than pontificate on it without evidence, i.e. proceed inductively before deducing; a man ought to read the best books available on science, philosophy, and religion, and avoid wasting his time on badly written works; a man must cultivate an industrious habit, even in those areas of knowledge or skill that he is not naturally inclined to. ‘Few Men are from their Youth accustomed to strict Reasoning’ (Conduct, §6), he notes, so thus he advises a programme to help adjust the mind to dealing with chains of reasoning and getting to the bottom of problems. One should study mathematics; this is best done with younger minds, but it is not too late for older minds, it is just that they will require a greater effort to help their understanding and reasoning powers to develop. As with all of Locke’s advice, the path to better reasoning begins gradually and increases insensibly Prejudices are best dealt with by examining and questioning our own and not worrying about what other people’s may be. Acting on prejudicial

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understanding is, in effect, a prostitution of the mind (Conduct, §24). It is good to broaden one’s knowledge through reading, but one must always reflect upon what one takes in: ‘Thinking makes what we read ours’ (Conduct, §19). There is no method Locke knows of improving the understanding but to get into a habit and application of thinking. Maintain an optimistic vision of one’s capabilities and the mind will triumph over seemingly difficult problems or arguments; learn new things a little at a time; and do things one thing at a time in the right order – i.e. do not jump to more complex knowledge as that will only put one off. Our passions and emotions may get in the way of our reasoning and that is to be expected, especially when we fall in love; but we must ensure that we reassert mental control over the passions so as to be able to direct our thinking and understanding to whatever topic we choose when we want to do so. In giving assent to an argument, Locke presents apparently simple yet, as he admits, difficult advice to follow. One should develop an impartiality (indifference) to arguments and be sure that one is aiming towards the truth; there should be no partial interest in the outcome of a theory. One must study things as they are in themselves, not how we wish them to be or think how they may be; do not make any opinions until one has seen the evidence and reasoned: we must see with our own eyes. Assenting should not be done lightly; it becomes an integral element to Locke’s moral philosophy, for it reflects his aim to secure man’s mastery over himself.

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Summary

Lockean education begins early, for the child possesses no specific knowledge at birth but soon begins accumulating a good stock as he or she looks around and experiences the things and people nearby. The early years are critical to fortify solid foundations in the child’s mind; the notion of God must be imprinted as soon as possible, followed by the respect and awful love of parents that should maintain a disciplinary grip on the growing child, slowly loosening until he reaches adulthood. Formal education should conversely be steadily increased, and while learning should be thoroughly enjoyable, the tutor or parent should not forget that children are apt to make silly and innocent mistakes and be prone to distractedness. Bad influences, whether servants or horror stories, should be kept from the child, for they tend to psychologically disable the impressionable mind. Gradually, the child is taught to impose his mind upon his emotions and whimsical appetite, learning to think problems through and, most importantly, to think for himself. Education should be purposeful as well as enjoyable; moreover, the maturing child is taught to cultivate virtuous behaviour through example and instruction, so that as an independent and moral adult, he or she will be able to withstand temptations that lead to ruin. Emphatically: ‘There is scarce any thing more for the improvement of knowledge . . . than for a Man to be able to dispose of his own Thoughts; and there is scarce any thing harder in the whole Conduct of the Understanding than to get a full mastery over it’ (Conduct, §43).

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Immediate Response and Impact

Some Thoughts Concerning Education was an immediate success both in Britain and, following Pierre Coste’s translation, on the Continent too. In the following three centuries it has rarely been out of print, although the influence of a text should not be correlated to the frequency of its printing: the popularity of his Thoughts must be said to ride on the popularity of his Two Treatises and Essay Concerning Human Understanding . Locke is presently recognized as one of the great educational thinkers, but his Thoughts only periodically gain academic attention beyond Lockean scholars (several publications a year are produced on Locke’s educational writings) compared to later educationalists and child psychologists. Nonetheless, Locke’s Thoughts were immensely influential in the formation of Enlightenment thinking, which still retains a palpable grasp on contemporary philosophy and educational writings; and hence we can detect direct, but more often indirect, Lockean influences on later writers, notably concerning the necessity of looking at each child as an individual and the emphasis that learning should be enjoyable, free from debilitating constraints, and proceed gradually. Similarly, when we read of education going hand-in-hand with prescriptions for bodily health, we are reminded of Locke’s advice on the rearing of the young and his opening sally: ‘a sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world’ (Thoughts, §1). The Thoughts were originally published anonymously by Locke at the insistence of his friends, who argued that his correspondence with the Clarks merited publication. Locke’s letters to Clark on the education of his eightyear-old son began in 1684; some went amiss but over the intervening years scholars have put together the story of the book’s compilation, drawing on Locke’s extant correspondence and drafts (e.g. Axtell 1968). Indeed, much is known about the book trade in the seventeenth century, allowing the curious reader to pursue in greater detail than for previous centuries the history of books, sellers, purchasers, librarians and bibliophiles. Importantly, we must be ever mindful of the initial recipient and target of Locke’s

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advice – his cousin’s family and the breeding of a young gentleman, which immediately narrows the relevance of the Thoughts; yet Locke is always mindful of the need for flexibility and for dealing with the child encountered, rather than an archetypal eight, 12, or 16-year-old (as much of modern education implies). In this tumultuary draft I have made for your son, I have considered him barely as white paper, as a piece of wax, to be molded and fashioned, and therefore have only touched those heads which I judged necessary to the breeding of a young gentleman of his condition in general . . . There are a thousand other things that may need consideration, especially if one should take in the various tempers, different inclinations, and in particular defaults, that are to be found in children, and prescribe proper remedies to each of them. (Correspondence, 15th March, 1686) It is both this pedagogic individualism – the recognition of the child’s uniqueness and the abiding necessity to adapt any educational programme accordingly – and the market for cultivating young gentlemen that ensured the success of his Thoughts. Locke’s treatise apparently circulated privately before he was cajoled into publishing the text, which he assiduously and continuously revised over several years before permitting the first edition to be printed. The first edition was printed by Churchill in 1693, even though the book was prepared in March 1690: it was published anonymously, reflecting Locke’s reluctance to be associated with any novel ideas that could cause a backlash: ‘I am not in my nature a lover of novelty, nor contradiction; but my notions in this treatise, have run me so far out of the common road and practice, that I would have been glad to have had them . . . stopped, if they had appeared impracticable’, he wrote to his correspondent friend, William Molyneux (Axtell 1968, p.13). The backlash was of course inevitable: John Aubrey commented that ‘I see a black squadron marching up from Oxford, set up by a crozier staff to discomfort this pretty flock. And so this pleasing dream is at an end’ (quoted in Ezell 1983/4, p.147). Popularity was not withheld however, and Locke’s anonymity did not last long – too many friends and colleagues knew of Locke’s enterprise. Once in print, Locke began rewriting and redrafting and by the third edition (1695), Locke finally put his name to the work, although his ultimate draft was not to be published until after his death (in the fifth edition). Shortly after the third edition was printed, Locke heard that Pierre Coste (1668–1747) had been translating the work into French; the 27-year-old was to transform the fortunes of Locke’s work by making Locke’s work accessible in Europe (together with the writings

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of many influential Englishmen). It has been said that without Shaftesbury there would have been no Locke, and perhaps without Coste there would have been no Age of Reason in Europe: ‘the French are as obliged to Mr Coste as the English are to Locke’, wrote the Marquis d’Argens. The German nineteenth-century historian F.H. Schwarz wrote, ‘modern pedagogy is more or less directly the pedagogy of Locke’ (Quick 1880, i). Over the eighteenth century, the work was published in Dutch, French, Swedish, German, and Italian. Pierre Coste, a Huguenot exile living in Holland, had left the clergy to concentrate on proofreading when a copy of Locke’s Thoughts came his way and he set about translating it. Coste wrote to Locke asking if he would approve of his translation, which Locke enthusiastically did. Coste avoided literal translations, and Locke was sufficiently competent in French to check the meaning to ensure the translation of the ideas. Coste’s translation sold well, helped by an introduction by his friend Jean Le Clerc’s earlier summary of Locke’s Essay in the Biblioth`eque Universelle; soon Le Clerc and Locke had Coste working on a full translation of the Essay, under Locke’s guiding hand at the Masham’s house in Oates (1697–1700). The Essai Philosophique concernant l’Entendement Humain reached important French minds, particularly Gottfried Leibniz, a significant polymath and philosopher. Coste remained with Locke until his death in 1704, and went on to become tutor to the Clark children and to accompany the third earl of Shaftesbury on a European tour. Coste continued to work on his translation of the Thoughts, similarly working up to a definitive fifth edition printed in 1743. Interestingly, the Italian translation was taken from Coste’s French work, but the Dutch (1698), German (1708), and Swedish (1709) were taken directly from the English editions. Locke’s legacy is manifold, and while much of it predominantly resides with his philosophical legacy in the fields of empiricism and political theory, the educational thoughts feed into several distinct trends; more entertainingly, we encounter developments and caricatures of Locke’s Thoughts in the literature of the next century. Samuel Richardson’s virtuous Pamela complains that it is a ‘noble Theory’ but one that even Mr Locke could hardly live up to (quoted in Ezell 1983/4, p.147). Henry Fielding’s hilarious riposte of Pamela, the roving novel of Joseph Andrews, has the Lockean caricature of Parson Adams, who rails against public schools and King’s Scholars and whose primary educational principle is to take care of a boy’s morals; the eponymous hero rejects the Lockean power of education: ‘if a boy be of a mischievous wicked inclination, no school, though ever so private, will ever make him good’ (Fielding, 200–01) – it’s a comment that Locke would probably agree with. There is also Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, Jane

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Austen’s novels, and the later critique of Voluntary Schools that Locke’s educational prescriptions are often considered to have spawned in Dickens’s novels, notably Oliver Twist. As with any philosopher, readers responded to ways in which he would have condoned and in other ways that seem foreign to his original way of thinking; before looking at the educational legacy, we shall first look at Locke’s philosophical contribution.

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Philosophical Legacy

Empiricism and the call for political rights girded the philosophical environment of Europe and later of the early American colonies, and contributing to their foundations was Locke’s greatest contribution to the development of the emerging modern mind. The Two Treatises are standard reading in political philosophy and many political science courses, and the Essay remains one of the founding texts to the modern era, with various aspects of it still encouraging debate. It was noted above that Locke was very much a part of the Aristotelian philosophical vision (not of the neo-Aristotelian educational hegemony of the post-Renaissance against which he so railed) that knowledge is to be gained from studying the world rather than from studying Platonic abstracts. The Aristotelian tree of influence branches out into many innovations on the central theme, just as the Platonic tree does, with much Scholastic entwining over the centuries; and so too with Locke’s own philosophical contributions. Yet like many great thinkers, Locke is not easily boxed into a simple category: he was forever motivated to seek truth, he reminds us, and accordingly while exploring his central themes, he offers the reader tantalizing expressions of deeper issues or recognition of the limitations or need for further development. Thus when we read and re-read his writings from the perspective of the twenty-first century, we can detect anticipations of many subsequent philosophical and scientific arguments and theories (just as we can find proto-evolutionary thinking in the Ancient Greeks, for instance); accordingly, we must remind ourselves of the context of his thinking and writing (as outlined in the first section) without dismissing the direct and indirect impact that Locke had on the (then) future. Philosophically, Locke’s writing on knowledge provided a great impetus for the empirical tradition, while reaction against his implications and scientific thrust came from the broadly Platonic tradition of assuming the existence of another world in which the truth was to be known (usually

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after death), or from the growing Cartesian tradition that described true knowledge as belonging to purely rational procedures. The primacy of the senses does not, therefore, go without disputation, and Locke’s version of how knowledge is built up still attracts much academic discussion; moreover, because the theory of knowledge applies directly to psychological as well as epistemic theories on how children learn, the legacy of the Essay is secure. Echoes of his own thinking on education are still to be heard, but to what extent they are second or third hand is difficult to assess, just as an examination of Locke’s personal library does not in any way exhaust the influences on his mind: personal conversations, the intimacy of his own imagination, haphazard gleanings from friends’ libraries, emotional responses to personal, political and social events – all and more enter into the formation of personality and thinking, never mind the social, moral and theological censuring of our purest thoughts when we commit pen to paper. The emphasis on looking at the child qua child would without a doubt be part of the present educational debate without any knowledge of Locke, for it was already present in general Humanist and Renaissance thinking; but the pace of psychological research may indeed have been very different without Locke’s Essay, even though many present researchers do not read or cite Locke in the original. Similarly, private and/or home-based one-on-one tuition would not have disappeared if Locke had not written the Thoughts, for tuition and home education have an ancient history that one writer could neither displace nor produce; but the cogent and pointed moral and educational criticism Locke levels against schools remains a powerful clarion in radical educational proposals down to today, and is alive in libertarian political circles, for instance. But so too are his more conservative and oppressive musings on Working Schools for the poor. As factories developed in the eighteenth century, it became easier to effect Locke’s proposals for Working Schools. Children were taught to spin, wind, knit, plait straw, sew, cobble shoes, and do gardening jobs. The products were sold to defray expenses and even, in some cases, to make profits, which were returned to the children in the form of a wage. The emphasis was on learning industrial skills rather than academic knowledge, and, given the climate, there was much religious emphasis. Moves in the late eighteenth century to found schools of industry were not popular, as the children could earn a better wage for their families in the mills: the call on present earnings was too much. Instead, the seventh day of rest permitted the growth of the Sunday School movement. Locke would have approved of the Protestant ethic cultivated in the schools for the illiterate poor; there they were taught to read, for the Bible was to be read and its instructions learned, but the role

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of writing and arithmetic were simultaneously downplayed, which Locke would not have condoned (Barnard 1947, pp.10–11). When we consider the impact of the Thoughts, we can ably trace its philosophical descent through the ages but must always bear in mind the intransigence or cultural momentum that presided, and still presides, against Lockean individualism.

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The Two Bishops’ Responses: Berkeley

The first critique of Locke’s philosophy came from the Bishop of Worcester, Edward Stillingfleet, with whom Locke pursued a public debate on the implications of Locke’s empiricism in the Essay. Stillingfleet criticized Locke’s ‘new philosophy’ (i.e. empiricism) in his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity, drawing proper attention to some of the weaker aspects of Locke’s thinking while condemning what Stillingfleet saw as a dangerous anti-Christian tendency in the Essay. He was especially concerned that Locke’s thinking apparently leads to a denial of the immortality of the soul (as its existence cannot be perceived and hence be accepted on the validity of the senses), and so that Locke’s philosophy would lead to a rejection of one of the fundamental tenets of Christianity. Locke, however, held that the immortality of the soul was not for reason to discover or prove, for it was given by revelation and thus stands outside of the realm of rationality: an attempt to bring it within reason’s fold would fail, as Locke – and earlier philosophers too – were aware. Nonetheless, the Bishop’s precise analysis of Locke’s logic prompted public correspondence that only ended with the Bishop’s death in 1699; Locke’s replies were added as footnotes to the fifth edition of the Essay. Others took up intellectual arms against Locke, but Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753), who embraced the new philosophy of empiricism as outlined in Locke’s Essay, came to a rather startling alternative conclusion. It also dawned upon Berkeley that Locke’s philosophy held dangerously subversive implications – dangerous that is, to Christian theology, a proposition that could arguably be held to represent Locke’s philosophy, notably because as time proceeded increasingly sceptical and atheistic implications were drawn from Locke’s philosophical views. Locke was immersed in the early scientific endeavours of Restoration Oxford and London, and, like Thomas Hobbes before him, emphasized the materiality of the universe, of bodies acting upon one another in a deterministic fashion. However, Locke’s division of the properties of objects into primary and secondary qualities was problematic, Berkeley reasoned. Primary qualities were solidity,

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extension, figure, motion, rest, or number, while secondary qualities are ‘nothing in the objects themselves, but powers to produce various sensations in us by their primary qualities . . . colours, sounds, tastes, etc’ (Essay, II.viii.10). If Locke’s secondary qualities, such as colour, are apparent properties and not real in themselves, then how could the observer be said to know anything of the external world, asked Berkeley? Such an argument can only lead to scepticism; and scepticism, connected to Locke’s materialism, leads to the rejection of God. Similarly, Locke’s ambivalence in maintaining the existence of immaterial souls alongside a thorough materialism was pried open by Berkeley. In pursuing Locke’s logic, Berkeley produced an unexpected twist in his own reasoning, for Berkeley went on to deny the existence of matter. By eliminating the possibility of externally existing matter, we are left with the simpler notion that our ideas of things are just that: our ideas – mental constructions. However, ideas need causes and whereas Locke argued that they are wholly external to the body, Berkeley preferred to explain that God posits them in our minds. It was an ingenious solution and one that initially, in the increasingly deist and Lockean intellectual climate of the eighteenth century, while well-taken was not influential; nevertheless, Berkeley still attracts present attention as offering not just an insightful critique of Lockean logic but also a means for explaining aspects of the recent developments in understanding philosophy of modern science from the perspective of mind, especially its quantum aspects. The great polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was in the position to debate with Locke on some of the finer points of the Essay, but unfortunately Locke considered Leibniz not to have understood his work (Leibniz had read it initially in English), and by the time Coste’s translation of the Essay was prepared, Locke’s health had declined. Leibniz presented what he thought was a coherent expansion of Locke’s philosophy and offered the notion of a ‘monad’ to explain the ultimate substratum of the universe, which Locke posited in his thinking but held as intrinsically unknowable; however, in his expression of the logic of terms – highly ‘analytical’ one would say today – Leibniz sought to deepen Lockean analysis of language and meaning and to pursue the logical analysis of predicates and relations. An entertaining conclusion that Leibniz formed was that God made the best possible of all worlds, a thought parodied in Voltaire’s Candide. Locke’s own pupil, Shaftesbury (Lord Anthony Ashley Cooper III), was initially brought up on Locke’s advice and instruction, but then sent to Winchester school, where in the conservative-royalist culture and as the ‘grandson of a traitor’, he may have been severely ribbed by other pupils; but as Quick notes, his aristocratic status would have been preferable to being the son of a merchant (Quick 1880, xxxiii). Shaftesbury went on to

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pen a highly influential work on Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, a unique approach to philosophy that lends itself more to sociology, but which forms an important element in post-Lockean thinking. Shaftesbury rejected some of his tutor’s thinking, believing that Locke did not know enough of Greek philosophy to appreciate it and its emphasis on the harmony and balance of interests to be found in the social aspects of man’s being sufficiently. His moral thinking, which condemned private vices, in turn greatly influenced David Hume, Adam Smith, Voltaire, Diderot, and Herder, but was critically rejected by Bernard Mandeville, who argued that ‘private vices lead to public benefits’, an argument particularly enjoyed by economists. David Hume (1711–76) continued the philosophy of Lockean empiricism and thoroughly rejected the rationalist programme of Descartes. He became the founding thinker of the modern empiricist tradition, which flows through the ‘analytical tradition’ down to the present day. All philosophy, he argued, relates to human nature, so man himself must also be explored. The successful methods of the natural sciences ought thus to be levelled at human nature and life and so must proceed inductively. In this he follows a path opened up by Locke and followed by his pupil Shaftesbury, and later by Frances Hutcheson and Joseph Butler. A striking conclusion Hume develops is that all scientific causal relations are contingent upon our experiencing of them (Treatise, I.iii.12), so we cannot ‘prove’ that what happened just now will happen the next time we do the same experiment. For some this is a mere semantic difference – proof being dependent on having done an experiment, which cannot be said of an experiment yet to be repeated; but for Hume and others this conclusion lends itself to a full-blown scepticism of reason’s power (not that of the senses though) and invites atheistic thinking, dispelling much metaphysics. Regarding speculative books on divinity and metaphysics: ‘Let us ask, Does it contain any reasoning concerning quantity or number ? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing by sophistry and illusion’ (Enquiry, 165). Only the senses can be trusted to give us an unadulterated source of knowledge. In the history of ideas, the main thrust of Locke’s empiricism runs through the British empiricists via George Berkeley, David Hume, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore and A.J. Ayer (Priest 1990). We can detect an influence on the Positivists of the Vienna Circle, and of course there are reactions against the entire empiricist project by rationalist and idealist philosophers (e.g. Immanuel Kant; Gardner 1999, p.128); Locke’s attempts to resolve problems produced its own problems, which remain debated today.

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Locke’s Legacy in the Philosophy of Education

When other voices entered the educational foray, Locke’s Thoughts necessarily were relatively relegated: new writers drew interest and comment, with some having a lasting impact and others only a fleeting impact. A testimony to the persistent popularity of his work is of course in the reprinting of the Thoughts, but inevitably the great innovators and writers following Locke gain critical attention in their own right and add to the breadth of educational thinking. In this section, we shall briefly peruse the detectable influence that Locke had on later thinkers before considering the attention that his educational writings attract in Lockean scholarship.

The Eighteenth Century Locke’s Thoughts gained positive attention from the periodical writers in the Spectator and the London Journal, with writers applauding Locke’s emphasis on virtue and attacks on schools (Ezell 1983/4, p.142). In Dialogues Concerning Education (1745), David Fordyce, professor at Aberdeen, drew on the principal pedagogical works of the Humanist and Enlightenment era and developed some Lockean principles in a manner that delightfully anticipates Rousseau, while retaining a Socratic belief in the immanence of knowledge. ‘What a mighty pother,’ he writes, ‘is made . . . about . . . education! What a Noise about instilling Principles into the Minds of Youth, forming their Tempers by an early Culture . . . crouding their Heads with a number of Names and Notions and dead Languages, and anticipating their Genius and Choice by the Restraints of a severe Discipline!’ Having railed against traditional scholarly education, Fordyce encourages an educational method ‘such as Nature itself dictates . . . let the young Adventurer . . . wander about in quest of intellectual Food, rifle every precious Flower and Blossom, and . . . range and digest them into a well-compacted and useful Body.’ One must above all, follow nature; but in doing so the aim is to form a pious and virtuous character. Children will learn best when they know the

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reason for the learning – that is, their self-interest and hence motivation should be constantly appealed to, making learning like play and appealing to the needs and interests of the child. When this aspect of Lockean pedagogy is enhanced (which the more traditionalist-leaning Locke arguably would have rejected as impractical), a new, ‘child-centred’ pedagogy emerges, which conceives of the child as innately good, and which flourishes in the broad characterization of progressive schooling influenced in turn by thinkers such as Dewy, Pestalozzi, Froebel, Montessori, and of course, by the main ‘Lockean protagonist’, JeanJacques Rousseau. Progressive teachers echo Locke’s distrust of authoritarian strictures and learning pointless subjects, and aim to produce a socially capable individual; but generally progressivists shift the balance (that is, from the perspective of Lockean thinking) from a guiding tutorship and parenting to a pupil-controlled environment, which, given Locke’s insistence on the relative emptiness of the young child’s mind, would imply a dangerous return to Platonic and Socratic pedagogy, in which knowledge is presumed to lie within the child which a free and stimulating environment can unleash. Rousseau, however, maintained a healthy regard for learning through sensorial experience. The Rousseau Distortion Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) magnifies and distorts Lockean pedagogy and thus gives to the world Locke’s pedagogy in a remarketed version, and a remarkable discourse in its own right. In a highly entertaining and ´ provocative treatise on education, Emile, Rousseau agrees on the moralizing purpose of education to form virtuous individuals and in so expounding ´ on Emile’s education, he stretches Locke’s pedagogy to some un-Lockean conclusions. Briefly, Rousseau agrees with Locke that the child is born knowing nothing and accepting empiricism, but rather than insisting on an educational path to develop a cultivated and virtuous adult by gradually developing skills and learning, Rousseau desires the child’s early education to be free of all apodictic conceptions of how he or she ought to develop and what is to be learnt. Whereas Locke reminds his readers of the benefits of a more natural education – watching the child’s dispositions to learn their inclinations, maintaining a healthy diet, not constraining their physical development by swaddling or contrived and debilitating fashions – Rousseau insists on an absolute compliance with the child’s natural inclinations. A child, in Rousseau’s eyes, should learn from his experiences and from the example set by his tutor, but he or she should be free from human restraint: only nature should impose its limits on the child’s actions.

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Rousseau’s very Lockean premise that the child is born without original sin was one thing, but his insistence on the innate goodness of childhood threw him into dangerous political territory – the rejection of original sin was tantamount to rejecting Christianity. Rousseau’s books were proscribed and he had to seek safety in exile with powerful supporters and even abroad. ‘That man is a naturally good creature’ seems a strange idea to be persecuted for today; it is what Rousseau’s political philosophy is founded on, but we can certainly hear it in Locke’s critique of Filmer’s Patriarcha. The binding moral chains imposed by the commonly understood implications of original sin were not ready to be rejected by the Catholic authorities of pre-Revolutionary France. ´ Throughout Emile we find echoes of Locke’s prescriptions: harden the child’s skin to the cold; don’t apply medicines; gradually accustom the child to frightening things; teach him or her as a child, not as a reasoning adult; be on guard for loose servants’ conversation and the debauched and artificial manners of the town; teach him gradually about the ways of mankind; ensure that the child remains curious and as natural as possible; teach by example rather than from books. The ideal of the rustically healthy ‘child of nature’ was given an boost by Rousseau, but the notions were sketched by Locke (Ezell 1983/4, p.145). Gradually, Rousseau’s ideal pupil is brought into the adult world, but without the tendencies to contrived habits or forced sexuality that urban environments can foster. At times, Rousseau’s magnification of Locke’s thoughts are comical – to teach balance, don’t bother with a dance master (as Locke advised), take him to a cliff-edge: that will teach the child balance! He disagrees with Locke only on a few points, and arguably on grounds that can be construed as Lockean: Locke, he argues, asks us to teach religion early – he has it the wrong way round, Rousseau exclaims. Religion is too important for children to take on board, so allow them their immature atheism and put them off asking questions by insisting that such knowledge ‘is not for them’. Such reverse psychology plays a persistent role in Rousseau’s dealing with children. He asks that we encourage their thinking and desires to ensure (safely) that they trip themselves up: only then can they learn. At other times, the empiricist psychology of associationism is brought to the fore: take a young hot-blooded man to the prostitutes’ hospital to cure him of any temptation to visit brothels. Nonetheless, while Locke gives us the impression of a benign guiding hand being offered to his pupils, Rousseau offers the rod: don’t reason with a child, as Locke advises, they can only respond to force (the force of nature’s laws and limits). Whereas Locke describes the growing child’s educational needs, ´ Rousseau explicitly divides Emile into four books, each cataloguing the

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different stages of childhood. From zero to 12 is the ‘age of nature’; from 12 to 15 the ‘age of reason’; from 15 to 20 ‘the age of force’; and from 20 to 25 the ‘age of wisdom’. In infancy, the child should respond to necessity; from childhood to puberty he should be ruled by utility; and from teenagehood he should learn to rule his life through morality. Locke similarly admits a gradual expansion of the child’s abilities and hence of his moral understanding, but Rousseau imposes gradations that attract later pedagogic quantifiers who prefer to generalize about the nature of children’s growth to the point of securing curricula based on statistical averages – a policy conclusion that neither Locke nor Rousseau, with their emphasis on individuality, would have condoned. ´ The contrived nature of Rousseau’s exposition – Emile is a fictitious pupil – leads Rousseau in later years to question the realism of his exposi´ tion: in an unpublished draft, Emile and his beloved Sophie are corrupted by Paris and end up committing adultery and separating. Not a great endorsement of his theories! Locke, we feel, would not have been overly impressed by the caricatures Rousseau invents, nor would he have enjoyed the manipulation and con´ trivances deployed to keep Emile subjugated to his tutor. Yet so much else would have been very familiar to him; Rousseau took Lockean pedagogy and stretched and distorted it, so when we read those more directly influenced by Rousseau in their educational writings, we can still detect Locke’s voice. Kant ´ Immanuel Kant was so thoroughly taken with Rousseau’s Emile that legend has it that he ignored his punctual daily walk through K¨onisberg to read the work. Rousseau’s impact on Kant is catalogued and evident; however, we must also see Kant as the apex of Lockean political thinking (cf. Kant’s ‘Perpetual Peace’), which was channelled into the eighteenth-century drive to produce a liberal republic, most notably emerging in the independence gained by the United States from Great Britain – a polity designed with much of Locke’s thinking in mind. Kant’s philosophy is broad, deep, and complex, but essentially (although not uncontroversially, given the various interpretations on emphasis that are possible with Kant) he sought to defend a non-empirical epistemology. Accepting in part that Locke’s general thesis that knowledge is gained from the senses, Kant added that the ideas are not simply posited into the mind but are categorized by the mind’s structures. Possibly, Locke would not have disagreed with Kant, for he may have accepted the braver metaphysical suggestion that the human mind requires governing epistemic structures to enable it to work at all (nowadays, we may refer to the mind’s hardware

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compared to the learned software); the mind provides the framework of understanding. Kant’s next step, however, leads further away from Lockean principles (although connections are present when we study harder the final books of the Essay, for he proposes the existence of a noumenal world as distinct from a phenomenal world of sensed objects). Kant had been a private tutor to several children before returning to a career in the University of K¨onisberg. Agreeing with the Lockean-Rousseau tradition, Kant emphasized the need to develop a child’s autonomy, believing that as they mature, children may be enabled to greater independence, and, complementing Locke’s thinking, this would incidentally ensure a better society: ‘to think for oneself . . . is . . . enlightenment . . . one must begin at an early age to accustom young minds to this reflection’ (Kant, ‘What is orientation in thinking?’, 249). A child matures into a rational being, and as a rational being, it is imperative that he or she understand morality – particularly the application of the moral law as Kant outlined it: the adult should act morally and with an independence of mind, rather than habitually or obediently. Although habit is no excuse for mature adult volitional exercise, children ought to be habituated into good behaviour (as Aristotle had once argued), but intellectually they must come to their own understanding rather than learning by rote. In all, education links Kant’s moral world with Rousseau’s natural world, in which the child learns the natural barriers to action. Children need discipline in their early years, but like Locke and unlike Rousseau, Kant preferred avoiding physical punishment unless absolutely necessary. Moreover, like many thinkers in the late eighteenth century, Kant supported public schooling. It is the duty of parents to educate their child, but when they are too poor, it becomes the duty of the parents’ ‘masters’, which can (loosely) be interpreted today as local authorities (Kant, ‘Metaphysics of Morals’, 154). However, Kant is sceptical of the moralizing benefits of schools while the state runs out of money to pay teachers and the morally frail ministers are in charge of education; progress will only come when wars become less frequent and finally disappear. That aside, a child’s public education will only flow well when ‘it is designed on the considered plan and intention of the highest authority of the state’ (Kant, ‘The Contest of Faculties’, 189). The importance of schooling was given a boost by the influential Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746–1827), who, in 1800, became the first national trainer of teachers. He emphasized the harmonious development of the three major dimensions to human nature (head, body, heart) to be inculcated in schools but, in Lockean vein, acknowledged and stressed the importance of family life in starting the pupil’s development off well. Later disillusion with the logistics and moral ends taken up by practitioners of

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his methods returned him, one could say, to Lockean territory and to a pedagogic individualism. Similarly, Johann Bernhard Basenow (1723–90), although primarily influenced by Rousseau, propelled Lockean notions into Prussian schools and helped to foster their secularization from religious interference, a move that Locke would have rejected. Adam Smith In England, the moral philosopher and economist Adam Smith echoed Locke’s thinking on the power of education: ‘The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education’ (Smith, Wealth of Nations, I.ii.4). He also stressed the economic and the moral benefits of educating the poor, who otherwise would remain stranded in tiresome and mentally dulling labour, and argues for a proposition that Locke, we feel, would thoroughly agree with. It is a quotation worth repeating: A man without the proper use of the intellectual faculties of a man is, if possible, more contemptible than even a coward, and seems to be mutilated and deformed in a still more essential part of the character of human nature. Though the State was to derive no advantage from the instruction of the inferior ranks of the people, it would still deserve its attention that they should not be altogether uninstructed. The State, however, derives no inconsiderable advantage from their instruction. The more they are instructed, the less liable they are to the delusions of enthusiasm and superstition, which among ignorant nations frequently occasion the most dreadful disorders . . . For a small expense the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring these most essential parts of education. (Smith, Wealth of Nations, V.i.f) Smith gives voice to what we now recognize as liberal thinking: that for the most part, the people should be left completely free to pursue their own happiness as they see fit, but that the state has a duty to ensure that the weakest members are educated to help them rise above their impoverished circumstances. Pragmatically, however, teachers should not rely fully on the taxpayer for their income, for then they would neglect their work and secure their own ease at the pupils’ expense (Smith, ibid, V.i.55). Wollstonecraft The last great pedagogue of the eighteenth century to explicitly develop Locke’s political and pedagogical philosophy was Mary Wollstonecraft

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(1759–97), who logically extended Lockean rights to women and rejected Rousseau’s disparagement of women’s education. Women’s education had previously assumed a lack of rationality, Wollstonecraft argued, that once secured in their education would show them to be equal to men’s capabilities: an argument Locke would have wholeheartedly condoned, given his friendship with the philosopher Damaris Masham (n´ee Cudworth) and his (albeit muted rather than exhilarating) defence of women in his political and educational writings. Throughout her writings, Wollstonecraft emphasizes the primacy of reason and the importance of virtue and knowledge as forming the conditions for happiness. Reason is ‘the simple power of improvement; or, more properly speaking, of discerning truth. Every individual is in this respect a world itself’ (Vindication, 122). The cultivated man and woman should raise themselves above mere passions and appetite, she argues; hence they should be educated to ‘slowly sharpen the senses, form the temper, [and] regulate the passions . . .’ (Vindication, 86); the best education strengthens the body as much as the mind, and should encourage such habits and virtues as to render the child eventually independent. Education consists in developing a child’s ability to reason, she argued in Lockean vein in her Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), for that is the precursor to developing her moral nature and hence her political being; as school education grew, she later demanded the co-education of girls with boys, which was certainly implemented in the next two centuries, evidently with mixed results. (Locke had thought that the early education of boys and girls ‘should be the same’.) Wollstonecraft provides us, in many respects, with the feminist counterpart to Locke; she thoroughly deploys Lockean and Rousseauvian arguments to proclaim the need for a pedagogic revolution but extended to female education, for if women are rational creatures then they deserve to be treated as such rather than as objects of pleasure. Girls are subject to an incapacitating early education that renders them helpless and dependent on pleasing men, whose guiding aim is generally to enjoy them merely for their pleasantries rather than as friends and companions. Similar to Locke, who believed that the children of the idle poor ought to be obliged to attend school to inculcate a sense of industriousness into them, Wollstonecraft’s designs for compulsory national co-educational schooling reflects the need to reorient society’s mores and expectations, but this time regarding the relationship between the sexes and the intellectual self-esteem of women: once the environment is changed, then Wollstonecraft can look forward to a future of intellectual and political equality (Vindication, 228–9, et passim). Her strong respect for religion, virtuous behaviour, and for individuality would have certainly attracted Locke’s sympathy.

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The Nineteenth Century In the following century, Locke’s ideal of one-on-one tuition was drowned by the growing momentum derived from thinkers such as Pestalozzi and Matthew Arnold to found national schools and national curricula. The private tutor and home education did not disappear of course, but the dominant philosophy expressed the late Enlightenment stress on socialization, the Pestalozzian ambition for a national curriculum and teaching programme, and the progression of ‘free schooling for all’ – i.e. statecontrolled and funded public schools, as also advanced in Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s Address to the German Nation to encourage individual freedom of thought (although how that was to be effected through a central government was and remains problematic). Defending the Lockean political vision, Wilhelm Humboldt, Johann Friedrich Herbart, and later John Stuart Mill sought to maintain the emphasis on individuality; Mill in particular rejected the homogenizing tendencies of state schools (although he was influential in calling for compulsory education for children in Britain), and Auberon Herbert argued for the rejection of state schools in favour of ‘the simplest form of school, really managed and paid for by the working classes, would be worth far more to them and to their children, than the present tawdry and pretentious official systems, in which everybody interferes, and over which no individual parent has the least real control’ (Herbert, Right and Wrong , Essay X). Humboldt, like Mill and other liberals of the nineteenth century, drew heavily on the classical ideal of education as encouraging virtuosity and lifelong learning, which Locke would have appreciated. Froebel (1782–1852) adapted the Rousseauvian and hence indirectly the Lockean and Humanist pedagogy to ensure the happiness of children’s early education, while Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), more involved with Lockean political philosophy, advanced the importance of teaching children without fear and the need for scientific learning and to reject the classical education, the ‘relics of the so-called “good old times” – [when] reason and philosophy are laid prostrate before them’ (Spencer, The Man Versus the State, 234). Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) encouraged the dissemination of science as a liberalizing and exciting discipline for all, and rejected, in Lockean style, the imposition of authority: ‘The mental power, which will be of most importance in your . . . life will be the power of seeing things as they are without regard to authority . . . but at school and at college, you shall know of no source of truth by authority’ (Huxley, A Liberal Education). John Henry Newman (1801–90), in his influential Idea of University, while turning away from

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the Protestant legacy, maintained that the purpose of a liberal education is to produce gentlemen. For the most part though, the individualist political and pedagogic philosophies that held sway in the Age of Enlightenment gave ground to collectivist and socialist proposals to exploit the power of the growing state to socially engineer society from the ground up in the furtherance of political or economic goals. We read this in the German philosophers, who sought to ‘enlighten’ the population through national schooling plans; but reaction to individualism and to a utilitarian curriculum also came from English thinkers such as John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold, who derided the materialist or consumerist sentiments arising from the material improvements the poor and middle classes could increasingly afford. Ruskin believed that the masses wanted to be governed – and that meant educated by the governing classes, a theory that would be anathema to Locke and his Classical Liberal descendants such as John Stuart Mill, Richard Cobden, and Herbert Spencer. Spencer provides a sobering criticism of national education, on the Lockean grounds of toleration: Every argument used by religious nonconformists to show the unfairness of calling upon them to uphold doctrines that they cannot countenance, or subscribe towards a ministration which they do not attend, is equally effective in proving the injustice of compelling men to assist in the maintenance of a plan of instruction inconsistent with their principles; and forcing them to pay for teaching, from which neither they nor their children derive any benefit. (Spencer, The Man Versus the State, 240) Inevitably though, material prosperity encourages individuality and a possible expansion in tastes and choice, and the critical voices of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries appear somewhat atavistic in seeking to rekindle older forms and values, either Hellenic (the Oxford Aesthetic movement of Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde) or Christian (Oxford Tractarian Movement, the Pre-Raphaelites). In the face of obvious growing disparities in taste and purchases, reactionaries sought to promote and later enforce homogeneity, which ultimately has undermined any chance of appreciating the higher values to be enjoyed in art. It can be argued that in Locke’s time, religion served the purpose of encouraging thinking on a higher plane, but the ascendancy of secularism has left a dangerous vacuum, to which traditionalists of many philosophical hues have drawn our attention. Locke, despite his general utilitarian bias for education and indeed aesthetics, did not have to contend with a Nietzschean exclamation that ‘God is dead’!

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The Twentieth Century Locke’s general philosophy was not lost. In the advance of science and industrialism, empiricism held sway against its opponents, for the results of scientific investigation were too obviously beneficial to reject: the finer points of understanding how the mind accesses and deploys information received by the senses and the relationship of deductive processes to empirical ideas remain sources of debate, of course. After Berkeley, a tradition of ‘British Empiricists’ arose – notably David Hume, John Stuart Mill, and Bertrand Russell. Politically, we see developed theories on Locke’s exposition of rights in the works of Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill, but by the late nineteenth century empirical methods were being used in a manner, notably in the field of psychology, that can be fully derived from Locke’s philosophy but which may or may not have earned his approval. Psychometric testing of children (and adults) became popular following the work of experimenters such as the Frenchman Alfred Binet (1857– 1911). In some versions developed by Francis Galton and others physical measurements, especially of the cranium, were correlated with intelligence; Binet did not completely reject testing physical aspects but preferred to employ a range of cognitive tests for diagnostic purposes. We can almost hear Locke’s own assent and interest in such experiments; after all, Locke actively engaged in scientific experiments and was particularly keen on studying the effects of climate on the incidence of illness. Yet there would also be a highly critical vein in Locke’s philosophy: education is designed to produce a virtuous person, and it is highly doubtful whether Locke would agree that virtue (and reputation) could be quantified. Nonetheless, Binet’s tests on diagnosing learning difficulties in young children can be accepted on Lockean thinking, as can the methodology of securing an impartial test of ability by avoiding biasing the respondent’s answers through suggestibility, which is reminiscent of Locke’s advice to study one’s pupil without their knowledge to ascertain his or her dispositions, interests, and implicatively their talents. The extension of psychometric testing became William Stern’s IQ test, which Locke, as Binet did, would have rejected as presenting a too simplistic picture of a child’s intelligence. Intelligence is multifaceted and its application particularly so: Locke was very aware of the division and specialization of labour, which permits individuals of different talents to be useful and productive in their own way rather than in a way prescribed for them by others, which he would have construed as tyrannical. The repressive and political nature of physical and psychological testing soon emerged with their employment for racial purposes, producing a counter-reaction and

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even hypersensitivity after the Second World War that has not left academic departments. Today, any hint of ‘measuring’ racial or gender differences brings forth storms of protest, reminiscent of the politically correct enthusiasts whom Locke encountered at Oxford. Science, he may be said to argue, should proceed dispassionately, and even if there is no correlation between intelligence and physical appearances that should not stop the curious from investigating: indeed, in the latest developments in genetics, such measuring of ability, disposition, and hence potential still continues, but with much less controversy than that of macrobiological investigation. ´ The sociologist, Emile Durkheim (1858–1917), can certainly be considered Lockean in his pedagogical vision, although the more direct influence would have been Rousseau. Locke was aware that the individual child was part of society, hence the requirement that the child grow up to be virtuous: virtues reflect the social estimation of behaviour. Durkheim, in contrast to many sociologists who see much potential in social engineering plans, did not see education as a means to change society: society and its norms are a given, that education must prepare the child for by encouraging his or her autonomy. This could best be achieved through a scientific or vocational curriculum, for the arts tended to encourage unrealistic imagination and thereby do not provide the best beginning for young people. Similarly to Locke, Durkheim also emphasized that education involves morality and that morality was to be secular and rational (against the monopoly of Catholic morality in his country’s schools); he would also agree with Locke that religion is critical for teaching pupils a transcendental authority. Following Rousseau he believed in the innate goodness of children and that their educational environment should be natural and enjoyable, but like Locke, he strongly opposed physical disciplining of pupils as degrading and dehumanizing. Maria Montessori (1870–1952) was one of the most Lockean modern educators in her educational thinking, although, as we have noted, the direct influences would have waned substantially: nevertheless, Montessori expresses the importance of free education, of the child’s environment, of individualized instruction, exercises for sensory learning, and selfteaching, self-discipline, self-assurance, and self-realization. Her Casa dei Bambini acted as surrogate homes for working parents, and thus sought to replicate homes (as well as to teach parents about good educational environments); in them, the children learned individually but did so in a social context, preparing them implicitly rather than explicitly for a virtuous adult social life. Throughout her writings we hear Lockean-Humanist thinking of freedom with discipline, and the encouragement of spontaneity and curiosity (Montessori, The Secret of Childhood, passim). The child is

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initiated into observing the phenomena of life and then into foresight of his or her effects through self-learning, freely evolving character development, and accordingly understanding growing responsibilities; education should free the child to allow the development of their nature – there should be freedom of movement (from restricting cots and clothes), but liberty is not to be unbounded, for children can only appreciate freedom if it is limited; the emphasis is on reaching down to the child’s level and not presuming that their ignorance is wilful; the environment is critical, but a good environment alone is not sufficient for it does not teach; education should be guided by children’s individual differences; and good habits can only be encouraged from the child enjoying his or her work, but once a discipline is cultivated then it should be supervised with ‘scrupulous accuracy’. Like Locke’s insistence that his contributions to education were ‘some thoughts’, Montessori envisaged the development of her thinking beyond her own offering (Montessori, The Montessori Method, p.373). Lockean epistemology also surfaces in the writings of the music educa´ tor Emile Jacques-Dalcroze (1865–1950), who taught that rhythm rather than sound was the primary form of movement and that children ought to experience eurhythmics before learning an instrument. Similarly, Frederick Matthias Alexander’s work on the use of the self is generally Lockean in its philosophical thrust of seeking to empower reason over the application and use of the self. More particularly, we find Lockean echoes in Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky’s research into the ways in which children internalize language and thereby develop and structure their consciousness – a research programme directly stemming from the arguments in Locke’s Essay. Psychological development and instruction are socially embedded, Vygotsky claimed, so a child copies better when guided by adults rather than by him or herself (opposing the progressivist thinking that the child will develop skills independently so long as their innate talents and even knowledge are allowed to flow). Vygotsky’s other main quest was to consider the relationship between thoughts and language (very much Locke’s concern in the Essay), and again emphasize the importance of social interaction for speech development. Indeed, Locke would have been pleased to see the persistent rejection of all theories of innate ideas, whatever their modern designation: feral children, for example, do not possess any great store of wisdom that social interaction may have tainted – they possess very few abilities at all. Recently, the work of the influential child psychologist, Jean Piaget (1896– 1980), has pursued epistemological investigations into how knowledge develops through childhood. Piaget’s research deepens, and accordingly modifies, the Lockean project on the Essay. Rejecting innate knowledge, Piaget contends against Locke that the child does not take in knowledge

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impassively from the senses but rather takes in knowledge actively. Learning proceeds by the child actively turning to look or to listen, following and repeating others, reaching out for things, manipulating objects, touching, grasping, and acting: his or her physical actions enable the child to organize the encountered world and to explore new aspects. Thought-knowledge is thus internalized physical action, or what could be described as internalized volitional focusing on the part of the child, which is progressively internalized through language acquisition, which in turn enables the employment of imagination and the use of symbols, all culminating in mental operations. Childhood learning is divided by Piaget and his research into four stages: sensorimotor stage, pre-operational, concrete operational, and the formal operational. He viewed children as little philosophers and scientists, grasping to understand the world around them, and accordingly the purpose of education becomes to help form creators, not obedient and conforming children – children can only progress by creating new understandings. Piaget then argues that the accumulation of knowledge is gained through norms of what is held to be knowledge and what is not. Therefore a child’s development depends on the utilization of those norms: neither the norms nor knowledge is innate, but are dependent, as Locke would agree, on culture (the English language comes with its own expressions and epistemic norms that differ from French or Urdu, for example); but other norms are what Piaget calls intellectual – i.e. universally held norms that human reason unfolds. Whereas cultural norms can be false, intellectual norms cannot be. In contrast to the empirically oriented psychological testing of abilities, or even the child-focused research of followers of Piaget and Vygotsky, progressivists emphasized, as we noted above, the importance of learning being fun and of allowing the child to freely develop innate potential. Similarly anti-authoritarian like Locke, they generally have extended the Lockean focus on the child to a child-centred pedagogy; but whereas Rousseau rec´ ognized in his Emile that such a philosophy can only be applied to the education of one child at a time, most progressivists have sought to produce the same individualistic atmosphere in a classroom, a proposal that is highly inconsistent with Locke’s advice for his readership. If, he wrote, a child has to go to school, then do not expect that the school will bend to the parents’ or child’s wishes: the child must adapt to the culture he finds there (Thoughts, §170); and while we can imagine him accepting a plurality of educational experiments for parents to choose from, we cannot help but also imagine him bristling at the zealousness, righteousness, misguidedness, and often woolly ineffectiveness of many progressive schools. Locke, after all, was a commonsensical thinker of puritan industriousness, discipline, and of empirical bent.

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But even in the progressive schools that have produced success stories, we detect the play of Humanism and hence faint echoes of Locke’s insistence on letting children be children. Homer Lane’s ‘Little Commonwealth’ removed authoritarianism in favour of providing the pupils (delinquents) with responsibility and encouraging them to exploit their natural sense of wonder and curiosity – something that present mainstream schools are swiftly deadening. At Summerhill, A.S. Neill (1883–1973) and his wife rejected traditional mainstream learning as producing a generation of robots who knew things but had never been allowed to feel – their natural development was stunted by prizes, marks, and exams, and ‘only pedants claim that learning from books is education’, which we can compare with Locke: You will wonder, perhaps, that I put Learning last . . . this may seem strange in the mouth of a bookish Man; and this making usually the chief, if not only bustle and stir about Children; this being almost that alone, which is thought on, when People talk of Education, makes it the greater Paradox. When I consider, what a-do is made about a little Latin and Greek, how many years are spent in it, and what a noise and business it makes to no purpose, I can hardly forbear thinking, that the Parents of Children still live in fear of the School-master’s Rod, which they look on as the only Instrument of Education . . . How else is it possible that a Child should be chain’d to the Oar, Seven, Eight, or Ten of the best Years of his Life, to get a Language or two, which I think, might be had at a great deal cheaper rate of Pains and Time, and be learn’d almost in playing? (Thoughts, §147) Recalling such words should remind the reader not to box Locke into an academic strait-jacket! One of the greatest impacts that Locke has had on educational thinking, and which retains an ongoing relevance down the centuries, has been his insistence on securing the essential component of a child’s health. Drawing on the Roman ethic of hardening their children to changing eating times, hard beds, different temperatures, and a plain and healthy upbringing, Locke adds his experience as a physician and assistant to one of the greatest doctors of the seventeenth century, Thomas Sydenham. Without health, a child will not become a strong character, he notes; but most emphatically good health emerges, rather than is prescribed from the doctor’s, from living the life that Locke saw being lived by the yeomanry of his county: fresh air, exercise, and simple foods. Rousseau advanced Locke’s thesis even further, contending that the country life also extended the age of ´ sexual maturity (Emile), and recently, evidence still points to the relatively healthier lifestyle of country children compared to children growing up

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in urban environments; similarly, children from more rustic backgrounds tend to have higher immune systems, evolved from a constant exposure to the soil. But, unlike Rousseau’s more radical call never to call a doctor, Locke certainly would advise medical and scientific assistance when needed. Implicatively, when observing the child to be taught, the child’s biological framework must be taken into account – are there any physiological or structural problems, food intolerances or allergies, viruses? Or how do they hold themselves and use their body? The more medically minded of Locke’s intellectual descendants continue the holistic belief of broadening pedagogy to consider the vital health of the body as well as mind. Finally, the greatest of Locke’s legacies that we are still aware of is the persistency of the liberal educational framework to which he was an able contributor. Locke encouraged his pupils to think and see for themselves. The twentieth-century psychologist Mortimer Adler wrote in highly Lockean language: ‘Liberal education is here an indispensable means to this end. It not only makes men of us by cultivating our minds, but it frees our minds by disciplining them. Without free minds, we cannot act like free men. I shall try to show you that the art of reading well is intimately related to the art of thinking well – clearly, critically, freely’ (Adler; How to Read a Book, p.ix). Elements of such promise may directly or indirectly spill over into curricula in the schools, but can often be lost in the drive to conformity in subject matter and material as a result of national curricula. Nonetheless, the need and enjoyment of continually stretching the mind to grasp new subjects and new connections as explored in the ‘Of Study’ and ‘Conduct of the Understanding’ is still influential, as witnessed in the healthy expansion of adult educational programmes, many emerging from the private sector. What presently defines the liberal education tends to fall back on the Humanist tradition from which it evolved – learning to think for oneself and not blindly to accept traditions or the given. Pedogically, the sentiment is underlined by the influential individualist and Lockean supporter, Ayn Rand: ‘The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life – by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e. conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past – and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort’ (Rand, The Anti-Industrial Revolution, p.88) It is an apt summary of what Locke strove to explain and explore in his major writings.

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Introduction

This final section considers the relevance of John Locke’s educational thinking for the modern world, in which technological change and social and cultural plurality extend beyond anything he could have envisaged. Unlike some educationalists, Locke did not found a school: instead he offered his humble advice, ‘some thoughts on education’, for parents whose children were presumed to become gentlemen. In contrast to philosophies that seek to reform society through education, the Thoughts do not offer a prescription by which to change society through schooling or through a general education, which can be latched onto by followers and their franchises; and so we cannot directly attest for the efficacy of his educational philosophy, as we can with Montessori or Steiner, for instance, whose schools still flourish. In Part 3 a more indirect comprehension of his impact was needed to assess his influence on later thinkers; nevertheless, if we ask ourselves ‘what is Locke’s relevance today?’, we do not need to struggle with similar indirect methods – we read him and we find that his voice, thoughts, and advice produce a particularly strong impression and prompt us to think and often to rethink. Some will no doubt always be disappointed with Locke’s specific target audience (namely, the established upper classes); but, as argued before, the principles of the Thoughts, as with the principles of Two Treatises, can be easily extended beyond the confines of the middle classes of the English-speaking worlds, and beyond Locke’s own prejudices. Even so, those seeking a more interventionist educational philosophy, for whatever vision, and who shy away from the ideal of individual tuition, may still critically enjoy Locke’s less well-known writings on the formation of Working Schools. Following a brief look at what ‘being relevant’ may be said to imply, the political implications of Locke’s educational philosophy are considered, outlining various pertinent aspects such as: the broad educational model and ethos; the need to understand children qua children; the critique of schools and the concerns that if the state acted as a ‘parent’, people’s liberty

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would be lost; and a free-market reading of Locke’s educational and political thinking. We then turn to what a Lockean analysis of school curricula can offer, and the need for curricula to be highly adaptive to the changing times while respecting the elementary requirements of securing a virtuous and robust individual.

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On Being Relevant

To appreciate the relevance of any thinker requires an understanding of the implications of being relevant – i.e. what of their works remain pertinent and of consequence. If we ask whether Locke can still speak to a modern audience, we must consider whether we mean generally or particularly. For some philosophers, we may admit that their message is more general: educate children to become virtuous individuals; let the state direct education programmes for the furtherance of its interests (mercantile or military); develop an educational programme to effect a social revolution; teach children to become productive, healthy, and/or godly members of society. Such programmes may still be read and learned from, regardless of the specifics involved. In a sense, this is because inevitably many of the specifics of all previous writers on education are drowned by cultural and technological changes, which is a more evident characteristic of the modern world since Locke’s time than of the world preceding his era; yet we find that his Thoughts can still speak to a society that has both undergone and is undergoing change. Thus we may be attracted to his general philosophy of educating children to become free, independent thinkers, so we may enjoy the spirit and thrust of the writer while ignoring some of the details (except for historical interest that is). Locke explains that the purpose of education is to produce gentlemen and women suitable, in effect, for a property-owning, market economy, characters which we can understand as virtuous and adaptable people capable of mixing in all societies as well as holding their own in business, family, and public affairs. The model of the gentleman had earlier roots that Locke tapped into, but it became the eighteenth-century ideal of gentility (Mason 1982, passim), and although battered in the twentieth century by the rise of popular and crass culture, the broad ethic of independence and flexibility, balance of body and mind, are, arguably, highly required in a dynamic and global economy. Inflexibility, lack of professional development, and a spurning of attention to customs and etiquette demean a worker’s earning potential in an ever-shifting marketplace; emphatically, when the mind is

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not open to change or to development, the worker suffers in contrast to those who do make the effort to adapt. Locke’s Thoughts and his minor writings on study remind modern readers of the need to form good and virtuous habits from a young age, in order to secure the moral foundations that will extend into adulthood and provide the maturing young man or woman with the psychological ability to think independently and thereby to live well. Indeed, the general principle of forming a virtuous person retains a philosophical relevance against competing ethical theories such as Utilitarianism (do that which will maximize the benefit for the greatest number of people, which often leaves the agent uncertain as to how to proceed because of the indefinable effects of actions on others) or Deontology (do one’s duty because it is the right thing to do, which sounds good except that it can lead to some tortuous dilemmas in which self and others’ interests become apparently expendable). Virtue theory has been swamped by Deontology and Utilitarianism over the past century or more, but has recently undergone a revival as philosophers such as Philippa Foot (1978) and Alasdair MacIntyre (1997) return to the less calculating or less dogmatic theories of Aristotelian-Thomist virtue ethics, from which they perceive the other main theories suffer. Some thinkers also retain our interest for the particulars that they explicate as well as the general message proposed, and in Locke we can still find much to learn from that level. So what makes some particular arguments retain their usefulness over the generations? If we take the argument that human nature does not essentially change, then we can admit principles of not just general but also particular action and education. Locke, for instance, enjoyed much that the Romans had to say on educating their children, which he in turn deploys for his readers: hardening their body, teaching them to swim, keeping their diet simple, are all specific prescriptions that can actually speak universally. Similarly, permitting the body to develop unconstrained by swaddling clothes or unnatural fashions, or encouraging a child to learn how to read and write through play, or not giving into a child’s whims, refer us to constants in human nature regardless of time or place; we can all relate to Locke’s analysis of crying for instance (Thoughts, §113), and his disapproval of allowing a grasping materialism in a child’s behaviour: ‘a Child should never be suffer’d to have what he craves, much less what he cries for’ (Thoughts, §106). The advice transcends the centuries and is quite useful to reassess when present Western culture tends to shirk from hardening children to the discipline of life while encouraging hedonism. What we read of Locke’s condemnation of the vulgar life and the detrimental influence of servants can readily be translated into the present as the condemnation of popular

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culture and its ‘godless’ celebration of the crude and sexual, a critique we ´ read magnified in Rousseau’s expansion of some Lockean ideas in Emile. Similarly, present criticism of the influence of television and the potentially unadulterated content of the Web, accessed liberally by some as a form of child-minding, remind one of Locke’s censure of parents who permit children to seek solace in the arms and morally unwholesome company of the servants. This, for Locke, ensures a swift way to undo all that his educational programme sought and to render the older child most susceptible to a disreputable life. The Thoughts are replete with details that we can still easily relate to as educators; but once we lift our eyes from the text, we need to consider how Locke’s pedagogy fits into social and political thinking and again ask whether this seventeenth-century author, appealing to the parents of the gentry classes, can have an appeal or even a purpose in a world that is altering perceptibly from the dynamics of globalization and which has been tossed and turned by revolutionary nationalist, imperialist and socialist doctrines, and the great civil and world wars that they have left in their wake.

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The Political-Educational Model

When we consider Locke’s general educational philosophy, we cannot ignore its connections to political order. Locke himself was part of the nascent Whig philosophy that developed under the guidance of his patron, Lord Ashley, and which went on to define the political agenda of the eighteenth century – predominantly in England of course, but also in the United States, where its radicals and revolutionaries combined their prestigious intellectual talents into the American Constitution and drew heavily upon the Whig philosophy. The aim to promote the natural rights of individuality, independence of thought, and the corresponding gentlemanly virtues all stem from a long liberal tradition emanating from Aristotle, the Stoics, and the Humanists. In the history of thought as well as political history, the model did not go unchallenged of course, which in turn has meant that Locke’s political critics may temptingly reject his educational philosophy with his Whig, republican-leaning libertarianism; this is less likely with those who pursue his epistemological theory in the Essay, for his ruminations tend, for the most part, to transcend party interest. Not so his politics: for socialists, who have dominated mainstream political thinking over the past century, Locke is studied as a bourgeois apologist of capitalism and the Protestant work ethic, and his education, when seen through such eyes, backs up the implicit defence of class (Marx, Contribution, 93). While a closer reading of any great thinker often presents a much more complicated picture than the cartoons of introductory texts, nevertheless, much of Locke’s relevance today involves the political implications of his Thoughts, some of which are more obvious than others. For example, one of the concerns we face when reading Locke is what to make of his argument for education’s purposes. The driving Platonic model throughout the ages has been to create a fit and educated population for the capable running of the state, or at least an educated citizenship who know their political and moral responsibilities – education is thus political in its essential aims. In Locke’s time, when the numbers of men (typically) destined for statesmanship was small, educational emphasis was on the

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majority gleaning enough to permit them to read the Bible and to deal with commercial and friendly correspondence; but when the numbers serving the state directly and indirectly increased with the modern expansion of government, it followed for many thinkers that education’s purpose was to be harnessed for the production of civil servants (at the higher echelons) and correspondingly supportive (even adulatory, or perhaps passive, or at least indifferent) citizens. Today, state-controlled schools in England include ‘Citizenship’ as a mandatory subject – but for what purpose? Politics has intruded severely into the running of schools and educational curricula that we can detect have a variety of purposes, some possessing not so hidden political agendas such as the stress on environmentalist ethics or, in England at least, on the acceptability or inevitability of the European Union. Yet was Locke concerned with citizenship, as it is presently understood? His answer may be surprising to many, for he poses the radical liberal claim that ‘Tis plain . . . that a Child is born a Subject of no Country or Government’ (Two Treatises, II.118). This is certainly radical in a world of passports and controls, when children become the pawns in political games across borders, both by parents trying to secure an easier life elsewhere and by politicians seeking to ‘repatriate’ them to their parents’ homeland. Accordingly, for Locke and libertarians since, when the young man or woman becomes of age, he or she has the right to choose ‘what Body Politick he will unite himself to’ (ibid, 119). But once an inhabitant, a person is obliged to respect the laws and government of that land (so long as that government does not aggress unjustly against him), and part of his education must then be to understand its relevant laws and constitution – which certainly constitutes a good element of the present ‘Citizenship’ classes. More broadly speaking, can we detect in Locke’s work the foundations of modern educational policies? Only in the general philosophical and particularly empirical purport of his overall thinking can we detect strands of current mainstream educational thought, in the insistence on developing early education to be fun or on the importance of vocational and scientific subjects; however, his individualist pedagogy survives in the persistent and ever growing industry of the private tutor, who almost necessarily engages in Lockean examination of the pupil’s dispositions, proclivities and talents, and who can find much relevance in Locke’s own observations. In his principal educational work and in his political texts – the Two Treatises – we are given a model of education for what many will see as being for the privileged and established, or at least the upwardly mobile. This is true, for that was Locke’s audience: so the modern ‘progressive’ educationalist, keen on equalizing people’s opportunities by equalizing child education, would not find much in Locke to excite ambitious plans for social renewal or development. But Locke is not so easily dismissed even on these grounds.

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His thoughts on a child being a ‘clay cottage’, later translated by Pierre Coste as a ‘tabula rasa’, have led to much behaviourist analysis of children’s potential: if children are blank slates, then the progressive educationalist can argue that anything should be deployed to ensure the equalization of children’s abilities. But Locke’s observations of children, while expressing the power of changing their environment and of inculcating solid and virtuous habits in a manner likely to appeal to the child’s understanding and adapting it as he or she matures, are nonetheless appended by comments on the innate limits to ability – the natural base with which the educator has to work: ‘there is such a difference between men, in respect of their understandings, I think nobody, who has had any conversation with his neighbours, will question’ (Essay, IV.xx.5). The ‘equalization’ of children through education is, for Locke, a non-starter. In contrast to Locke’s individualism of fostering individual talent and virtues to serve society better, the Platonic vein of pedagogic philosophy sees education as a tool for producing a better society as an entity and aim in itself. Plato’s Republic gives prominence to the role of reason to adumbrate the principles and specifics required to foster a social revolution or to sustain a society at its envisaged best; the state and its officers would thus insist on children’s attendance at school to effect the educational plan and thereby bring about the desired political goals. Locke was not averse to such musing, particularly for the poor and idle; but his political vision is more open-ended than closed, and accordingly, while he emphasizes the need for an educational programme to be socially oriented (after all, even children enjoying a home education have to mix socially with superiors and inferiors as they mature), he does not impose a closed vision of what that society ought to be like beyond virtuous and Christian. Locke’s general vision is particularly relevant in that regard: the open-endedness of a society of free men renders nugatory the meticulous utopian visions of planners and interventionists (although he himself was not averse to playing Utopianism). Constantly, we are reminded that the Thoughts are for the formation of a young gentleman of upright standing and flexible capabilities, learned if he so inclines, but generally speaking a morally virtuous soul. The connection to forming an ideal society is certainly thus indirect: education, for Locke, is not a tool (or weapon!) to be imposed upon the youthful minds of the country for some ulterior political vision or even religious purpose, beyond instilling a necessary belief in God. Yet neither does Locke completely reject the Platonic model of education serving the greater good of society. He is a proto-utilitarian: education has a purpose, namely to form a virtuous individual, and the more virtuous people there are, the less society will tend to be corrupted by vice and ignorance and fall into the Hobbesian world of ‘a war of all against all’.

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Some may call his thinking ‘social realist’, which implies that Locke was realistic about social needs; however, any deployment of the word ‘social’ produces vague and elastic connotations that can mean anything to anyone, but what we can glean is that critics see Locke as emphasizing the need for first ensuring that the pupil’s education makes them fit for dealing with all levels of society, from tradesmen to aristocrats, and second that education should reflect what we now off-handedly call the demands of the marketplace – the ever-shifting requirements of changing economic and technological conditions. Opponents thus deride Locke’s Thoughts as bourgeois or capitalist, requiring the child to fit the needs of the economy. Such a criticism belies its own contradiction: Locke’s purpose is to educate the individual not the crowd, to foster a virtuous citizen, not a productive cog in the wheel of an abstract machine called the economy – indeed, it was to be the collectivists of the Prussian schools that emphasized the importance of educating children to become productive units for political-economic purposes (notably war, mimicking, incidentally, the Ancient Spartan ideals) (Rothbard 1999, Education, pp.24–28). Evidently for Locke, as for others before him, the old-school pedagogy of Latin and Greek was certainly out of kilter with the growing commercial and scientific revolution, and the maturing pupil emphatically would require not only a foundational level of skills to turn his mind, but also an ability to adapt. Interestingly, scholarly rhetoric does not always embrace flexibility and the cultivation of adaptability: the powerful Platonic model arguably demands a rigidity to secure the alluded benefits of the past’s greatness, whether in the guise of a Hellenic Golden Age, or, in the wake of Christianity, of Edenic simplicity and purity. Following the Renaissance (and for the most part right down to the twentieth century), scholars mixed Hellenism and Christian thinking to assert the primacy of learning and studying the ancient texts, and eschewing vocational or practical learning as contemptuous or beneath the dignity of aspiring scholars and pupils. Accordingly, Locke’s impact on school curricula has been indirect and unexpectedly longer in coming than could be attributed to the enthusiasm with which his works were read.

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Education’s Usefulness

Education should be useful, that is the starting point of Lockean philosophy; but discerning to what ends requires the reader to distinguish between the historical and contextual vision of John Locke, and the vision later supplanted by his readers and detractors. The pupil, as we have seen, should be tutored rather than schooled – schools become, on Lockean analysis, machines which can but mould the pupil according to its specific criteria and aims; naturally (or rather through economics and public choice theory analysis), they become conservative institutions barely capable of adaptation unless the market moves sufficiently against them (or the state imposes its own solutions and visions). And what is seemingly surprising is that the market barely did move against the old school pedantry; too many parents believed in the importance of the classics, or at least in their ‘marketing’, and of course, classicists were quick to defend their position against the rising demands from both dissenting Puritans arguing against a ‘pagan’ education and the embryonic demand for scientific learning. Why the schools remained wedded to increasingly irrelevant curricula is explicable, as Adam Smith later observed in the Wealth of Nations: when schools and colleges derive their income from trusts and grants (or today the state), they have no incentive to move with the times; that cannot be true of the school or tutor whose income comes directly from the pupils or parents. With so many schools and colleges financially independent of their clients, the classical education thus remained the epitome of a gentleman’s education and accordingly imbued with class distinction and snobbery – which was, moreover, despite the economic incentive not to adapt, a highly marketable cultural product for the upwardly mobile gentry and commercially successful of the eighteenth century, who desired to mimic their ‘betters’ by affecting or purchasing a classical education. (Enjoy Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews for a satire of classically educated characters and those seeking to mimic them.) Historically, the curious attachment to the old Humanist-Renaissance tradition can be charted; some blame it for the eventual retardation of

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economic growth, for example, that England experienced in the twentieth century. Social snobbery certainly played its role in hampering a Lockeanstyle revolution in home tutoring or in the school curricula, even when the benefits and impact of the industrial revolution were obviously changing society: the old school maintained its grip on the curriculum in the most prestigious schools of Locke’s nation. Currently, classicists defend the breadth and discipline of learning that the old curriculum gave pupils, which Locke would not necessarily reject but would add, perhaps, that it was not for all, especially the lower classes to follow. Education, we may surmise, must adapt to the times to retain a usefulness that does not deaden the minds of the youth; but that usefulness stems from the general abilities that will serve a young person well, rather than particular qualifications to be earned.

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Lockean Realism

Locke’s mind is generally on not so much the future but the present and the past – his defence of human freedom does not look forward in the sense of a futurist appeal to what may be, but to what can be rescued from the wisdom and laws of the past to produce a better society today. This, it can be argued, gives Locke a more realist tinge than Utopians, who seek a revolution in human nature (never mind politics or education) to effect their desired outcomes. Locke, always a sharp observer of humanity, does not, except perhaps in his utopian ‘Atlantis’, conjecture forward into an altered, alluring future, an intellectual exercise which has become commonplace since the late nineteenth century: work with what you’ve got, not what you wish you could have, is a driving educational ethos in Locke’s thinking, and a principle that naturally retains relevance. Accordingly, the principles of education must descend, as it were, to the level of the particular individual child, rather than try to propel the child into an apodictically arranged set of educational programmes and syllabi. Look at the child, Locke advises: watch him or her surreptitiously to gauge inclinations and personality, and work with that personality rather than against it. But such a precept does not imply an educational anarchy that posits the child in the centre and around whom their education must spin. Such a ‘child-centred’ policy, which even Rousseau rejects (although quite ingeniously), would be a dangerous recipe for Locke; rather, the given pupil can be subtly encouraged along a desired programme that would ensure they learn socially useful subjects, which, once the foundations of reading, writing, and mathematics were secure, would depend on the child’s particular interests and abilities to some extent. Learning should be individualized but not lowered to the child’s perceptions of what ought to be learned, a powerful and wise message that we can still take from Locke. Individuality must thus be harnessed and encouraged, not squashed into a regimented system. Such advice and criticism remain highly pertinent in the aftermath of the rise of compulsory mass education sponsored by the state.

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Lockean pedagogic individualism remains, as government rhetoric tends to emphasize the need to tailor schooling to the proclivities of the individual, which, while commendable on Lockean grounds, is however highly improbable given the vast regulative and regulated arrays forcing children into collectives to be measured and compared statistically. The political implications continue with Locke’s insistence on the primacy of the family’s jurisdiction over its children, relative to the powers of government to interfere.

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Critique of Schools and Family

The Thoughts generally prescribe, for Locke’s audience that is, avoiding sending children to school if it can be helped. In the present world replete with schools, can that be said to be a relevant policy? When we read Plato, for instance, we may be enthused by his vision of securing the greater good of society through a protracted educational programme that is designed to place children according to their several (well, three) levels of ability, as evinced in their behaviour and aptitude. Plato’s revolt against the conservative assumption that some may deserve a better education because of their birthright retains a liberating relevance today when some complain that wealth rather than inherited title may still purchase a better education for some and not others; yet for Plato, the children were to be separated Spartan-style from their parents to board in barracks. The boarding school ethic stems in many respects from a Platonic vision to separate children from their families for the sake of their education or ulterior motives; Locke’s criticism that the children may learn vicious tricks and knavery from their peers with whom they are cooped up may have held true until recently, when, in Britain, academic achievement has tended to inspire boarding schools’ philosophy over the convenience or culture of boarding. Implicitly, the family as a social institution was and remains an impediment to Platonic visions of educating the people for the good of themselves and their state. This implies that the very people producing offspring are certainly not to be trusted in bringing up their progeny, and this is not just a matter of the specialization of labour that acknowledges some to be better educators than others – the goal is rather to procure citizens: an homogeneity of purpose and hence of education are thus required (hence, the frequent analogies in such philosophies to captains needing to pilot ships). Locke’s pedagogical thinking originates from a very different tradition and is thus a capable philosophical antidote to those who perceive the family as an obstacle to social engineering. For Locke, sociability is absolutely necessary to humanity, but it is best generated through family and locality rather than through the state or institutions that inevitably, even if they do not

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intend to relegate the family’s role in the child’s education in favour of more abstract philosophical ideals to which the children’s futures are to be bowed. The distinct ethical visions dividing and at times bridging family and state education sustain political and educational thinking today, ensuring Locke a secure and germane place in the debate. To what extent should the child be trusted to its own family, or to what extent should it be trusted to the institutional rigours of the state or public schools? Locke saw no need, as others in his political trench have done, to abolish schools as inherently detrimental (if not abusive) towards children – ‘Any schooling involves misfitting each child into a Procrustean bed of unsuitable uniformity’ (Rothbard 1999, p.7); but Locke did emphasize that a parent should accept the prevailing culture of the schools as they find them and not assume that a school would change its policy for one child. The filial ethic which he champions thus does not imply that families are necessarily good at understanding their children’s needs: after all, he would not have written so much advice on not spoiling their children if he had thought that families necessarily provide them with the best. Partiality to one’s own children is not going to disappear from human sociology, unless a Spartan, Brave New World is effected, which Locke would unsurprisingly consider tyrannical. But home education, particularly for most families, is not always an economic option – a problem Locke recognizes in his prescriptions for the poor: by obliging school attendance, the mother is freed to earn a better wage. Such remains the case for most families and so sending children to school is and always will be economically highly attractive, so long as material comfort is valued that is: education helps the children learn skills that may later prove profitable, and the mother may earn more too, thus relieving the family of immediate costs while investing for the longer term (pensions). The choice to send children to school is one hurdle that is highly dependent on the costs and benefits of home versus school education, but choosing which school can be another. A family’s locality tends to have very few schools to choose from, which from an economic point of view is not conducive to producing a highly competitive and broad range of choice. In Locke’s time, the public schools offered an alternative to remaining at the local church or guild school or under the guidance of a home tutor; but the requirement to board brought its own costs, financial and, as Locke and Wollstonecraft pointed out, psychological and social too. To alleviate the costs for the very poor, Locke envisioned the Working Schools being funded by the local parish – i.e. what can be generalized today as local authorities; the very poor would not have the money to send their children to school, he opined, since the relief that they were given under the Poor Law was habitually spent ‘at the alehouse, whilst his children, for whose sake

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he had it, are left to suffer, or perish under the want of necessities, unless the charity of neighbours relieve them’ (‘Working Schools’ 189). It is this ethic of reaching past the families for the sake of the children, in contrast to the more blatant political ends of statist designs, that later radicals and liberals such as Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill deploy to justify an obligation to school children. However, in Locke’s way of thinking, the schools were designed for the very poor, a small section of any community who would naturally be dependent upon charity because of circumstance or incompetent choices. They were not designed for the average working family with a middling income: those he would have assumed would be quite capable and morally obliged to send their children to a fee-paying school. While the prevailing assumption is that schooling should be compulsory and free, Locke’s words of caution and his limited approach to welfarism retain their cogency. Implicitly, we can surmise, Locke would have rejected a 90 per cent monopoly hoarded by the state as is found in Britain today, just as he would have castigated those who could afford a private education sending their children to schools, which, on his reasoning, he would have imagined, would be solely for those in the direst of economic circumstances and hence requiring parochial assistance. Similarly, we can imagine him bridling at the expense of state-sponsored schooling, the unionization of its teachers, and the increasingly lowered standards perceived by commentators that modern children are immersed in. Following the French Revolution, other thinkers agreed, adding that they were also concerned that if the dispossessed were not brought into the normality of economic and moral processes, they would revolt and cause mayhem (thus ignoring the imposition of taxes on the poor and their absence on the rich as a factor). The French intellectuals of the Revolution were more receptive to expanding state influence than their British counterparts, having suffered the formation of a highly centralized and absolutist state under Louis XIV, and despite the disasters created by compulsion and central planning, the revolutionaries made primary schooling compulsory in 1791. Later, under Napoleon, all schools were controlled by the University of France. Following the end of the Empire, schools regained a relative freedom until the Prussians invaded in 1871, and all things Prussian were emulated: ‘the Prussian schoolmaster had won the last war, and the French schoolmaster must win the next’, cried French politician L´eon Gambetta (quoted in Rothbard 1999, p.29). Together with the advance of statist German philosophy (the philosophy of Hegel, claiming, as far as it can be understood, that the state is the epitome of all morality), the Lockean ideal of ensuring the education of the few who would not otherwise bother was expanded in English political thinking and then practice to cover the entire

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population. English and Welsh law, however, maintained a caveat that the child must be educated at school or otherwise, leaving parents free to follow their conscience and teach at home if they thought it appropriate. Adam Smith’s extension of Lockean thinking – that the poor must be provided for through some form of compulsion – predominates in modern liberal thought. The philosophy of John Rawls (Rawls, Theory of Justice), for example, is not so dissimilar in that his theory of justice seeks to ensure that the worst off are provided for (Rawls’s ‘difference principle’). The morality of ‘intervening to assist’ dominates international charity and foreign aid thinking: provide schools and teachers for the poorest nations to invest in the educational potential of the youth, that way the weak can learn to help themselves (and implicitly, although less explicated in relativistic postimperial times as it once was, they may raise their ethics above butchering and mutilating one another and become goodly Christians or liberals). There are, however, as Adam Smith explains in his Wealth of Nations, (which Locke would condone), more conditions required for progress than merely education – notably the division and specialization of labour and the application of capital (machinery) to laborious processes (Wealth of Nations, Book I). Locke reminds us of the need to cultivate industriousness and curiosity: perceptively, he notes that ‘I doubt not but one great Reason why many Children abandon themselves to silly Sports, and trifle away all their Time insipidly is, because they have found their Curiosity baulk’d, and their Enquiries neglected’ (Thoughts, §118). It is a thought that this still may be extended to the enthusiasm for extremism and fanaticism that prevails in the more militant and impoverished places in the world today.

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State Education

Education becomes a highly valuable tool for providing the intellectual and cultural capacity to enrich a person and a community, but the practicality of state versus privately funded education has been accentuated in recent years. During the nineteenth century and for the most part of the twentieth century, it was popularly assumed that the state could competently provide educational services for the people and not charge for its services, except through taxes. Only Adam Smith and a few liberals cautioned against putting teachers on salaries – they should to some extent be dependent on pupils and their fees, which can only encourage good teaching (Kant concurred). Much hope was placed in the ability of the educated elites to engineer (in the fashionable and lasting term deployed to mask ‘massive intervention’) society for the better: ironically, in the nineteenth century, drawing on the obvious successes in the physical sciences and particularly the applied disciplines that were transforming the landscape of cities and towns with canals, railroads, steam engines, tractors, water pumps, metal bridges, macadamized roads, etc, the new intellectuals of the late nineteenth century sought to deploy the empirical methods that Locke and his contemporaries had unleashed to ‘improve society for the better’. Liberals of the Age of Enlightenment optimistically foresaw the abandonment of ignorance, and socialists predicted the end of poverty – hopes that have been severely blighted by experience. The Western nations have now experienced many decades of state monopolies over primary and secondary education, and the results are patently disappointing from a Lockean perspective. Schools which were supposed to earn a profit incur massive losses in the billions (well, they do not attempt to make money as Locke would have hoped for his Working Schools); many children are forced to attend schools that leave them intellectually deadened and suspicious of learning; curricula are subject to political interference from transient educational ministers as well as ephemeral teaching methods; and the teaching unions defend teacher interests against politicization, but often at the cost of pupils’ education. A general reading of

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Locke would encourage the reader to reject most state-sponsored education and to insist that parents send their children to fee-paying schools, leaving only a few institutions controlled and paid for through private charity or local taxation for the most needy or indolent. This surely would capture the Lockean spirit of filial independence coupled to Christian concern for the worst off; yet the perceived result of securing Working Schools in the guise of Workhouses has nonetheless been thoroughly rejected by Dickens’s indelible portrayal of the contrived degradation that the pupils experienced. Workhouses were designed to put inhabitants off staying in or returning to them, encouraging them to leave and to become independent earners rather than dependent on state assistance. It is not commonly known that the Workhouses were state enforced (Poor Law, 1835), for popular conceptions of the nineteenth century tend to roll the horrors of the Workhouse into the poor conditions of the early factories. Life was indeed rough for the poor, but the artificial safety nets were designed to keep people focused on living their own lives rather than becoming life-long dependents who draw on the common pool without contributing, an ethic Locke’s political philosophy would thoroughly reject and which continues to fire the writings of many conservative and libertarians across the West. The idea of a Working School (as opposed to the Workhouse) has not disappeared. Even in mainstream debates among the main political parties in Britain, we find thoughts to reintroduce more flexible school curricula that would permit under-16s day release into apprenticeships or to encourage companies to return as it were to the schools to educate and train future employees. However, the notion of making a profit from children has become intrinsically obnoxious to most thinkers in the West, who widely condemn child labour and the sweat-shops of poorer nations around the world, an ethic that Locke would find spurious given his encouragement of setting up Working Schools. (Proponents of children’s rights tend to emphasize their rights to other people’s resources, rather than their rights to engage in labour (Rothbard, passim)). Children and families, it could be argued on Lockean thinking, should be allowed to make money as they see fit, so long as it is in a moral manner (i.e. not prostitution or child slavery!), and permitting children to earn a wage is not only concomitant with their developing right to self-ownership and hence freedom, but also conducive of teaching them valuable lessons in working and responsibility. Nevertheless, the vagaries of family life continue to inspire interventionist reformers to present alternative institutions or more child-oriented safetynets to secure their upbringing and health and thus to present the state as a parent to all.

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The ‘State as Parent’ Critique

Just as economists consider the nature and effects of ‘market failure’, when the market fails to provide any or enough of a service from a third-party perspective, we can consider the possibility of family failure. Locke, as Tarcov (1989) argues, envisages the family as the great counterpart to state power, as well as the source of natural liberty, when children, born of consenting parents, are to develop within nature’s traditional institution for child-rearing and hence education. Absent in Locke’s rendition of natural rights of the individual to pursue their own lives unaffected by officialdom, however, is the right of children to form legal contracts and to compete with adults on a level playing field for work. When the family fails, the present implication is that the state or similar authorities must step in to provide impartial assistance for the child. In the nineteenth century, that meant tying children to Workhouses and to indentured apprenticeships until they were 21, hardly respecting the maturing child’s right to forge his own life; in the present day, social services can forcefully intervene in family life, disrupting choices, rather than permitting the child to decide his or her future – a problem that is becoming increasingly apparent to critics and radical thinkers (e.g. in the ‘liberal vein’: Bertrand Russell, Principles of Social Reconstruction, Rothbard, Ethics of Liberty; also from the progressive, socialist, or feminist standpoints, see Franklin, The New Handbook of Children’s Rights for an overview). Yet Locke, we must remember, believed that poor children ought to attend schools for their own good, because he judged their parents unfit for bringing up their children in the absence of parochial intervention. The ‘paternal policy’, we have already noted, became and remains part of the general liberal political framework, both in its domestic and international appeal to remove poverty and discrimination. Nonetheless, one of Locke’s intellectual descendants, John Stuart Mill, advised that while education ought to be obligatory, the government should not be vested with control of the schools, for that would provide it with a tyrannical power and leave educational parties quarrelling about education rather than teaching (Mill,

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On Liberty, 62). Certainly, the power invested in a national educational system would have needled Locke’s political conscience, for he defended the rights of (normalized, decent) family over and above that of the state to interfere either for their own good or for their children’s. Yet what ought to happen when the family ties break down; does this provide for another justification for state intervention as many today would assume? Interventionists critical of the primacy of the family express concerns that the child should not be left to such a partial, sometimes unpredictable and even highly destructive institution, that may extinguish a child’s ‘right’ to a decent life and education. Increasingly over the past century, the state, encouraged by reformist sociologists, has evolved to become a ‘parent’ to the children in its jurisdiction. In early welfare models (e.g. Sweden), the motivating assumption was to break apart the family and to forge a new ‘individualism’ external to and independent of the family by securing the dependence of the ‘liberated’ individuals on the largesse of the state. It was, of course, a variation on the ‘divide and conquer’ theme, for family morals have always, as Locke and other liberals have made clear, stood in the way of engrossing states’ desires to impose new ethics or forms of life; but to answer why families were targeted requires a brief look at the nature of the family in society. For the Aristotelians, whose philosophy underpins liberal and conservative thinking, the family is a natural social unit; the reproductive tendency drives man and woman together and the production of children encourages them to stay together in some form or other. The family therefore appropriately is the initiator of the child’s education and his or her morality. Families, however, may err in how they raise their children, which, for those imbibing heavily from the Darwinian evolutionary pools, becomes increasingly costly – such children do not survive. Moreover, Carl Menger, the Austrian economist, explored the spontaneous motives that assist people to converge onto socially useful institutions, including money and language (Menger 1976, pp.315ff), and his ideas can also be used to explain the evolution of the family as an efficient mechanism for securing the best benefits for a child-rearing couple; and the fact that people do converge onto filial institutions independently of legislative directives provides working evidence for the Mengerian notion of their usefulness. For Locke, the family is the most moral social unit: to destroy the sanctity of marriage through legislative decree or tax incentives would have been as immoral (if not more so) than undermining it through adultery. Parents could indeed mistake their child’s interests because of their own partiality or lack of discipline, which did the children no good at all (hence many of his strictures on parental indulgences in the Thoughts), but they were the primary and natural moral guardians for their children. It is this argument

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that is challenged by statists of the past two centuries or monarchists of Locke’s period, who claim that the state or monarch is the overarching parent to all the people of the land and that, therefore, families’ rights to their own jurisdiction and guardianship over their children is conditional. When a father or mother acts to harm a child or abandons it, that ‘model’ has failed; but whether the government or another family ought to replace it is another question. Locke was all too aware of the destructive tendencies of ill-thinking or poorly educated families, who cramp and undermine their child’s potential – hence some sympathizers and many critics have preferred to offer the role of child-rearing and/or education to the state. A child, Locke argues in the Two Treatises, has ‘a Right to be nourish’d and maintained by their Parents . . . as far as the conditions of their Parents can afford it’ (passim throughout Locke’s works, e.g. Two Treatises, I.89), and he has a right to education (ibid, I.93); parents cannot alienate their rights over their children (ibid, I.100), although they may forfeit that right and others may take up the duty of care, which the child must respect, following the Biblical command to ‘honour thy parents’. The parent’s rights encompass the right to be honoured and revered and supported if necessary (which lasts for their life), but the child cannot be free until he is of reason, which leaves children in an awkward moral and legal hole. Murray Rothbard presents a development of Locke’s theory of natural rights to children. Once born, they are to be recognized as independent moral beings, which implies that the parents should not aggress against them (initially rejected in Mississippi law in 1891, for instance, but now being challenged by various decisions to uphold the right of the child to sue against excessive punishment). However, in contrast to Locke, Rothbard argues that the child does not have right to be fed – no one can claim a ‘positive’ right against another individual, for that is tantamount to securing their slavery, which a free society cannot uphold. But, Rothbard continues, this would not imply that children would be duly neglected where parents were unable to afford basic care or food, for he argues that the mother also possesses the right to alienate her guardianship over her children: that is, to sell her trusteeship to anyone wishing to foster. The child should also enjoy full adult rights to enter the workforce and to legal redress, the absence of which leaves them poorer and vulnerable to exploitation (Rothbard, Ethics, pp.97– 112). When the state prohibits the alienation of parents’ guardianship, then struggling parents face dire choices of abandoning the newly born or encouraging older children into prostitution and crime; other parents may turn their frustrations on the child – a phenomenon Locke was seemingly oblivious of, given his optimism in parents’ natural inclination to support their children.

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In the First Treatise, Locke rejects Filmer’s argument that the monarch is somehow the father of his nation (Two Treatises, §64–66) – politically speaking that is, although in Charles II’s time, that could also have been taken somewhat literally in some circles! Locke argues that Filmer’s philosophy actually leads to the dissolution or what may now be termed the nationalization of the family. Locke sought to defend the family from political interference and to protect the natural freedoms of individuals and their family from the usurpations of monarchy: and today, the same arguments can be levied against the state, which has in effect taken over the tilting absolutism of the modern welfare state. The family, however, is not a political entity as such – it is more like a voluntary society (Two Treatises, I.130–2); power is diffused at least between the mother and father, and the power is geared towards looking after the children, which Locke understands as a moral duty (and a corresponding right on the part of the children to expect). Parental power ends once the child becomes independent: thereby the family exercises no sovereignty and cannot be construed as political (Tarcov 1989, 72). A child’s education is the parents’ prerogative, just as the adult has the right to follow his or her own religious conscience, a right that cannot be abrogated by political authorities. Yet here Locke lacks a critical distinction that critics have opened up: to what extent will the child become rational naturally, without parental or positive education to assist him or her? The ordinary course of nature, he intimates, is sufficient to bring us to reason (Two Treatises, II.60), except for exceptional cases of lunatics and idiots; people may have differing abilities, but that does not nullify their right to live independent lives and to understand the law. It is a commonsense reply, for the absence of formal education does not render an individual irrational, just less knowledgeable in a scholarly sense; but if rationality is not dependent on education, why should families be primarily responsible for what then becomes a somewhat superfluous task – superfluous in the sense of not being essential to their well-being in the same way as shelter and nourishment? A century later, Mary Wollstonecraft, expanding on what can be considered a Lockean thought, relented in her earlier support for home and private tuition in favour of a national education; partly this is because parents’ ignorance can cripple the young mind and they could not be fully trusted to know what a good education would consist of, even when paying for it (Vindication, 236–7, 247). I say Lockean, because, as we have seen in Part Two, Locke considered the poor to be less than worthy parents of their children, who must be obliged to attend a Working School to be educated into a more industrious ethic. Obviously, not all parents can be deemed morally sufficient to secure the best for their children as seen from a

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different perspective, and it is this argument that opens up the push for state or local intervention into the family. If, as Wollstonecraft argues, ‘a great proportion of the misery that wanders, in hideous forms, around the world, is allowed to rise from the negligence of parents’ (ibid, 236), then we must entertain the claim that others may therefore take up at least the educational guardianship of the children. It is a conclusion that Locke would reject: the family for him was an entity in its own right, not a political entity as such, but certainly acting as a bulwark for natural liberty against government encroachment. In turn, government must gain its mandate from the free people to rule on their behalf – this is the great liberal political thesis branching vocally out from Locke’s Two Treatises. But it can hardly be said to gain a mandate if there is no independent justification of its powers and it relies on a complicated self-serving network of interest groups, dependents and officers (as the modern state does). Thus as the state intrudes on the family, so is the family’s moral sovereignty diminished and thereby the government’s mandate weakened on Lockean analysis, and the nation opens itself up to the kind of patriarchalism that Filmer supported, and to the tyranny that led to the Civil Wars. But could not the state act impartially, as Wollstonecraft implicitly hopes, in directing children’s education to free them from the Lockean curbs on mental development? It is a powerful assumption, and one that certainly drove co-educational schools as well as the advance of state-sponsored and controlled schooling in the nineteenth century. The problem that is rarely addressed though, although it can certainly be drawn from Locke’s thinking, is if parents are assumed to be incapable of educating their children properly, why would employees of the local parish or the central government be any different? While parents can certainly err in favour of their children, government may err in favour of national interests, which sounds reasonable enough, until, critics may point out, those interests involve war or crusades against other people or merely self-serving propaganda designed to secure the establishment from criticism. From that perspective, permitting parents to diminish their child’s education may be the less costly option! History provides many examples of governments channelling schools and curricula into less than salubrious nationalist ends, but supporters will also note how co-educational schools have effected the changes to women’s expectations that Wollstonecraft desired, and that may not have arisen in the absence of direct intervention obliging children of both sexes to attend schools.

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Free Market Education

Nonetheless, the above lines of thought accepting the role of the state as parent to some extent – which can be termed ‘liberal’ and which indeed are seen to stem directly from the spirit of Locke’s works – can be contrasted with those thinkers such as William Godwin, Herbert Spencer, Auberon Herbert, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard, who take Locke’s premise in the Two Treatises on self-ownership and pursue it to a different logical conclusion, namely the complete rejection of any form of governmental intervention in adults’ lives. These thoughts are worth considering, for they may still colour the debate of present political proposals. Godwin (1756–1836), anarchist and husband to Mary Wollstonecraft, argued that government is an evil institution and should not be involved in regulating and punishing its citizens; accordingly, the state should not interfere with education, for it would check free opinion and perpetuate dogma and traditions. Spencer likewise, an avid enthusiast of vocational, physical, and scientific education, saw only danger in permitting the government to institutionalize education. Ayn Rand and Murray Rothbard have been particularly adamant that the government should have nothing to do with invading the rights of families to look after their children as they see fit; Rand pertinently asks us to consider the morality of officers of the state demanding that families give up their children to the state’s schools, where they are to be taught in those subjects that the state’s officials think fit (Rand, Capitalism). Classical liberal theorists in the Lockean vein more often develop compromising policies: for example, while parents are obliged to educate their children, the market shall provide the tutors and schools to fit their specific tastes and budgets with mandatory core examinations (J.S. Mill, On Liberty, 63); or all parents are to be provided with vouchers from which they may shop around for local schools (Friedman, Free to Choose). Conservative thinkers in this vein note how churches (and charities) have often provided low-cost or free schools where the market costs and benefits do not warrant

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a profitable school. Fee-paying schools were certainly the norm in the century following Locke’s writing, and it is worth reminding those who think that the absence of state provision would entail millions going without education: prior to the nationalization programmes of the late nineteenth century, most children were in fact educated in some manner or form, not always in a manner that progressive educationalists believed they should be taught, but many, rather than setting up competing services, preferred to harness the compulsory powers of the state to secure their pupils. Literacy rates were as high then, when scholarly programmes were relatively narrower than today’s broad national curricula that increasingly demand the inclusion of politically infused topics. The many branches of Locke provide modern theorists with much to learn from: Locke perhaps would support a broadly market-led school system, encouraging those who could afford it to purchase the service of tutors rather than send their children into institutions, but also supporting local authorities to provide some form of basic education for the children of those parents receiving welfare benefits (yet we can also imagine his shock at the extent of today’s ‘poor relief’, which has encroached into relatively high income groups and produced generations of dependents).

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School Curricula

But given the need to instruct a child following and during their educational development, what can be learned from Locke’s thoughts on a curriculum? Flexibility is the key beyond a certain core element or foundational skills such as reading, writing, arithmetic, and religion. Lockean methodology is individualistic – appealing to the particular child’s skills and inclinations, while ensuring their general moral development. Critically, he appealed to parents to open their eyes and to think about their child’s needs, which is best effected in the privacy of the home environment, either directly or through the proxy of a suitable tutor. In the seventeenth century, there was not much competition among school methodologies: the prevailing educational philosophies in England were derived from the graduating teachers and tutors from the two universities of Oxford and Cambridge, bulwarks of religious and academic conservatism. Only gradually do we see dissenting colleges and schools develop on the margins, offering parents a less traditional approach to religion but incidentally also providing teachers with more scope by which to experiment with schoolroom learning. Since the mainstream public schools were for Locke places of last resort to send boys, he thus presented a challenge to parents’ assumption to send their child to school in the first place, demanding that they consider what benefits will be gained and what virtues will be lost as a result of boarding the young boy. It remains a pertinent question: the contemporary curriculum was woefully inadequate for preparing and educating young gentlemen for the world, so why send him on to school? Many voices, including the influential Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mary Wollstonecraft and Herbert Spencer, derided the classical curriculum, but the momentum was barely dimmed by the passage of time and the evident need to adapt to more flexible, scientific, and vocational curricula, and even when schools and universities emerged to offer more relevant courses, the classically trained elite reacted defensively and derided their validity, just as they had generally criticized the moral validity of mercantile work (cf. Ruskin 1907). Locke refreshingly advises

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parents to ensure that their child learns a trade, and Rousseau follows suit; education for its own sake, the classicists implied, could only be for the few scholarly inclined pupils, and Wollstonecraft rhetorically asked whether the many should be sacrificed for the academic interests of the few, a sentiment Locke surely would concur with (Wollstonecraft 1999, p.246). If they are so inclined, Locke advised, make sure that they get a thoroughly good grounding in the classics; but generally, he recognized, it was not the proper path for most. Locke, we must recall, is particularly critical of studying useless subjects and of wasting time on subjects that could, if the pupils were interested, be learned much quicker (such as a foreign language). This would imply the need for a persistent adaptability in specific teaching programmes; but the formation of such ‘textbook’ oriented teaching, however, tends to an intractable conservatism of which Locke and other Humanists were all too aware. Once courses are up and running, it is an inevitable characteristic of education that they will tend to converge on ease of delivery and teaching; it is, after all, in the teachers’ interests to economize on teaching time. In one regard this presents an obvious advantage to the student, for the teacher may condense complicated issues succinctly; but this has the danger of the pupil not fully understanding the depth of a subject or an issue, for all that is provided may be a superficial gloss. In Locke’s time, the classics were learned not for the intellectual content but were studied through their grammatical structures, thus depriving the pupil of a thorough insight into a different mentality and world. The uselessness of studying the ancient languages, particularly in the methods that the schools produced, is foremost in Locke’s criticism, as deadening the child’s appetite for further learning; yet we can also detect further frustrations with the very narrow curriculum that was expected to be followed. Locke, recall, desired that the pupil learn a trade alongside forming a healthy body and learning the foundations necessary for leading the virtuous life, a theme magnified by Rousseau. His home county was one of the most economically advanced in the country, and it was not until the agricultural and industrial revolutions of the next century established a visible change in the production and distribution patterns of the nation, that the nascent growth of the economy was suggesting to wider-travelled thinkers the need to adapt education to the changing technological requirements of the marketplace. Such explicit thinking is not present in Locke’s writing, but the implication of producing an adaptable and commercially minded pupil certainly is. Unlike Mary Wollstonecraft, who could genuinely look forward to a revolution in human relations (as economic growth and political revolution surrounded her), Locke remains embedded in his era,

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and this is where his conservatism retains a restrictive parochial attitude, especially, as we have seen, in his thoughts on the poor. Curricula have certainly broadened in recent decades, generally with independent private schools leading the way, as they are more sensitive to changing demands in the workplace. But Locke, we feel, may raise some pertinent criticisms of the alternative to traditional classically oriented learning in chasing the ‘hot-topics’ of the day. Locke, deriving much of his thinking from the classical Roman and Renaissance sources, was more considerate of providing a secure foundation in virtuosity and its related benefits of adaptability anyway: let the tutor, the family, or the school provide a decent educational base to secure the child the growing confidence to learn those skills that become pertinent as he or she enters the workplace. Independence of mind will not be secured by running after narrowly defined and shifting courses – at least, not for children. What use, we can ask a modern parent, is the local school today? But what if the curriculum had been different in Locke’s time: would he have encouraged sending children to school? Locke was rarely dogmatic – we can indeed envisage his appreciating a more flexible curriculum that sought to explore the potential of pupils in a flexible and adaptive environment. However, broad programmes of education for the masses were not part of Locke’s political thinking, nor were they on the political horizon either: nationalism, with its demands of channelling youth into nationalist programmes and pursuits, emerged in the nineteenth century. Instead, Locke’s petition is to jolt parents’ presumptions to become ‘so irregularly bold that they dare to venture to consult their own Reason, in the Education of the Children, rather than wholly to rely upon Old Custom’ (Thoughts, §217). The implication – as well as the explication – in these words is that the onus is generally on the parents to take care of their children’s education, not the state. In today’s world, that message is still highly relevant, indeed, it is more relevant when parents glibly follow the common expectations of sending their child to the local school and its curriculum to which, as Locke forewarned, the child must be bent. In present day England, this entails the child being placed on a conveyor belt educational system, harking to the particulars of a national curriculum that educates all children of the same age in the same material and, increasingly, at the same pace. Locke would have been horrified at the implied malleability of all children to fit the same mould, as he would have been of the tenuous link to his own philosophy that children are like clay cottages and may thus be molded by their environment and the expectations it produces. Each child retains separable inclinations, he would counter, which cannot be ignored in its education, as mass education so implies; what is distinctive is their

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particular personality – which incorporates aptitude and dispositions to different subjects – and that cannot, we can surmise, be eradicated without doing serious psychological harm. And if individual children are being stultified by a one-size-fits-all curriculum, then, Locke would warn us, social problems would also ensue: children quickly become bored and displace their frustration into more antisocial behaviour. Thus the need to challenge every parent into thinking about his or her child’s education, to dare to ‘consult their own Reason’, which is a message whose relevance cannot be thwarted by time nor by place. Once of maturity, the adult is then capable of choosing and studying appropriate courses, but this can be effected more efficiently if they possess a confident security of mental abilities in the first place: and here we have some pleasantly relevant instructions for the modern adult turning to study. The world is a busy place for the working middle classes of his audience, so little time is available to ensure the luxury of study as the Aristotelian may love to pursue. Locke advises us, if we modernize his thinking, to avoid jargon-filled books, metaphysical philosophy, and biographies; history books that merely provide the details of events or personalities are mainly useless, as are any books that do not instruct us on how we may live better. We should nonetheless read widely; and when studying, if we find ourselves distracted, we should break from learning, for at times, he notes, the mind is willing to learn, and at other times, less willing (Of Study, 414). Foremost though is the fostering of independent reasoning, and this is not often provided in institutional settings, which tend to encourage a dependency on the thoughts (quotations) of others. Students in universities, we are reminded, are encouraged to reference their works; but Locke, who generally avoided providing references (and thereby attracting the historically diligent scholars to track down his sources!) is not at all diminished by this scholarly ‘failure’. What is important, he would advise, is that the student be encouraged to understand what he or she is learning; this cannot be taught as such but is a process that the individual has to pursue in the act of contemplation – of going over the connections and concepts in the mind, to ‘own them’ as it were, rather than, say, being asked to take an exam on them. Locke dismayed of the public examinations that he had to endure at Westminster – the practice of disputing orally on a topic with an opponent: these, he considered as ‘no better than Wrangling, and that they served only for a vain Ostentation of a Man’s Parts, and not in the least for the Discovery of Truth, or the Advancement of Knowledge’ (Jean Le Clerc, quoted in Yeo 2003). Much more important is the application of understanding to the world and life. Locke’s own guiding ethic was to search for the truth, and the independence of mind that such an adventure requires was certainly trying during

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the political turmoil and civil wars through which he lived. Yet despite the prejudices against religious toleration and scientific progress that at times seriously impinged on his career, Locke managed to present a cogent appeal to his reader to engage the mind with a healthy body and to learn cheerfully to the best of ability and to make what we read ‘ours’ – to own it and to understand it. It is an ethos that is always worth recalling and striving for.

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Bibliography

Locke’s Writings Clarendon Press are (1975– ) producing a 30-volume collection of the Works of John Locke. Locke, John (2002b) ‘Atheism’, in Political Essays. Ed. Mark Goldie. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Locke, John (2002a) ‘Atlantis’ in Political Essays. Ed. Mark Goldie. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Locke, John (1996) Conduct of the Understanding . Thoemmes Press : Bristol. Locke, John (1997) ‘An Essay Concerning Human Understanding’. Penguin : London. Locke, John (1997) ‘Essay on Toleration’ in Political Essays. Ed. Mark Goldie. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Locke, John (2002c) ‘First Tract on Government’ (also known as the English Tract), in Political Essays. Ed. Mark Goldie. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Locke, John (1955) A Letter Concerning Toleration. Liberal Arts Press : Chicago. Locke, John (1880a) ‘Of Study’, in Rev. R.H. Quick, Some Thoughts Concerning Education by John Locke. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Locke, John (1997) The Reasonableness of Christianity. Regnery Publishing : Washington DC. Locke, John (2002d) ‘Second Tract on Government’, in Political Essays. Ed. Mark Goldie. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Locke, John (1968) ‘Some Thoughts Concerning Reading and Study for a Gentleman, 1703’, in James L. Axtell, The Educational Writings of John Locke. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Locke, John (2002e) ‘Thus I Think’, in Political Essays. Ed. Mark Goldie. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Locke, John (2002f) ‘Toleration B’, in Political Essays. Ed. Mark Goldie. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge.

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Locke, John (1880b) ‘Working Schools’, in Rev. R.H. Quick, Locke on Education. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Various Editions of Some Thoughts Used Locke, John (1880) ‘Some Thoughts Concerning Education’, in Rev. R.H. Quick, Locke on Education. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Locke, John (1968) ‘Some Thoughts Concerning Education’, in James L. Axtell, The Educational Writings of John Locke. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Locke, John (1969) ‘Some Thoughts Concerning Education’, in F.W. Garforth, Locke’s Thoughts Concerning Education. Heinemann : London. Locke, John (1986) Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Eds. John W and Jean S. Yolton. Clarendon Press : Oxford.

Secondary Sources Aaron, Richard (1955) John Locke. Clarendon Press : Oxford. Adler, Mortimer (1967) How To Read a Book : The art of getting a liberal education. Simon and Shuster : New York, NY. Aristotle (1992) Nichomachean Ethics. Trans. David Ross. Oxford University Press : Oxford. Axtell, James L. (1968) ‘Introduction’, John Locke : Educational Writings. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Barnard, H.C. (1947) A Short History of English Education : From 1760 to 1944. University of London Press : London. Clark, M.L. (1959) Classical Education in Britain, 1500–1900. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Cranston, Maurice (1957) John Locke : A Biography. Longmans, Green and Co : London. Crawford, Patricia and Mendelson, Sara (1998) Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720. Clarendon Press : Oxford. Dewhurst, Kenneth (1963) John Locke (1632–1704) : Physician and Philosopher – A Medical Biography. Wellcome Historical Medical Library : London. Ezell, Margaret (1983/4) ‘John Locke’s Images of Childhood : Early Eighteenth Century Response to Some Thoughts Concerning Education.’ Eighteenth Century Studies, Volume 17, pp.139–55. Fielding, Henry (1999) Joseph Andrews. Oxford World Classics : Oxford. Foot, Philippa (1978) Virtues and Vices. Berkeley University Press: Berkeley, CA. Fordyce, David (1992) Dialogues Concerning Education. Routledge : London.

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Franklin, Bob (2001) The New Handbook of Children’s Rights. Routledge : London. Friedman, Milton (1980) Free to Choose. Penguin : Harmondsworth. Gardner, Sebastian (1999) Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason. Routledge : London. Godwin, William (1947) Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. George Allen & Unwin: London. Harris, Ian (1994) The Mind of John Locke : A study of political theory in its intellectual setting . Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Herbert, Auberon (1978) Compulsion by the State. Liberty Classics : Indianapolis, IN. Hume, David (1951a) A Treatise of Human Nature. Ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford University Press : Oxford. Hume, David (1951b) Enquiry concerning Human Understanding . Ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford University Press : Oxford. Kant, Immanuel (1999a) ‘Perpetual Peace’, in Kant : Political Writings. Ed. Hans Reiss. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Kant, Immanuel (1999b) ‘The Metaphysics of Morals’, in Kant : Political Writings. Ed. Hans Reiss. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Kant, Immanuel (1999c) ‘The Contest of Faculties’, in Kant : Political Writings. Ed. Hans Reiss. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Kant, Immanuel (1999d) ‘What is orientation in thinking ?’, in Kant : Political Writings. Ed. Hans Reiss. Cambridge University Press : Cambridge. Lawrence, Elizabeth (1972) The Origins and Growth of Modern Education. Penguin : Harmondsworth. MacIntyre, Alasdair (1997) After Virtue. Duckworth : London. Marx, Karl (1904) A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Trans. N.I. Stone. Charles H Kerr : Chicago, IL. Masham, Lady Damaris (2003) ‘Lady Masham’s Account of Locke’. In Roger Woolhouse, Locke Studies, Vol. 3., pp.167–93. Mason, Philip (1982) The English Gentleman : The Rise and Fall of an Ideal. Andr´e Deutsch : London. Menger, Carl (1976) Principles of Economics. New York University Press : New York, NY. Mill, John Stuart (1884) On Liberty. Longramns, Green & Co : London. Montaigne, Michel Seigneur de (1875 ?) The Essays in One Volume. Trans. Charles Cotton. Ward, Lock, Bowden and Co. : London. Montessori, Maria (1963) The Secret of Childhood. Trans. Barbara Barclay Carter. Orient Longmans : Bombay. Montessori, Maria (1964) The Montessori Method. Shocken Books : New York. Priest, Stephen (1990) British Empiricists. Penguin : London.

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Quick, Rev. R.H. (1880) ‘Introduction’, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education by John Locke. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge. Rand, Ayn (1967) Capitalism : The Unknown Ideal. New American Library : New York, NY. Rand, Ayn (1971) Anti-Industrial Revolution. Signet : New York, NY. Rawls, John (1988) A Theory of Justice. Oxford University Press : Oxford. Rothbard, Murray (1999) Education Free and Compulsory. Ludwig von Mises Institute : Auburn, AL. Ruskin, John (1907) Unto This Last. George Allen & Sons : London. Russell, Bertrand (1971) Principles of Social Reconstruction. Allen & Unwin : London. Smith, Adam (1981) An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations. Liberty Classics : Indianapolis, IN. Spencer, Herbert (1982) The Man versus the State. Liberty Classics : Indianopolis, IN. Stone, Lawrence (1990) The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500–1800. Penguin : London. Strutt, Joseph (1903) Sports and Pastimes of the People of England. Chatho & Windus: London. Tanner, Lawrence E. (1934) Westminster School : A History. Country Life Ltd : London. Tarcov, Nathan (1989) Locke’s Education for Liberty. University of Chicago Press : Chicago. Wollstonecraft, Mary (1999) A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and A Vindication of the Rights of Men. Oxford University Press : Oxford. Yeo, Richard. ‘John Locke’s “Of Study.”’ Locke Studies, Vol.3, 2003. Yolton, John W. and Yolton, Jean S. (1986) ‘Introduction’, in John Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Clarendon Press : Oxford.

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Index

abstractions abstract thinking 149 abstract words 72 abstraction of simple ideas 67, 72, 73 children’s picking up of abstract concepts 78 progression of learning towards the abstract 40 scepticism over abstract arguments 37 uncertainty of 58 Act of Uniformity 11–12, 43 Adler, Mortimer 181 ‘Adversaria Pharmocopeia’ 45 Aesop’s Fables 19, 91, 122, 133 Alexander, Frederick Matthias 178 Amsterdam 28 Anabaptists 26 anarchism 85, 145, 146 Anaximander 101 Anaximenes 101 Anglican Church 11–12 animals 115–16 approval 122 Aquinas, Thomas 101 Argens, Jean–Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d’ 159 Aristotle 23, 28, 29, 78, 83–4, 88 Aristotelian educationists 205 Locke’s Aristotelianism 83–8, 142, 148 Locke’s rejection of Aristotelian view of the child 118

Nichomachean Ethics 83, 84, 88, 112, 127 on the pursuit of intellectual life 140, 142 Rhetoric 137 arithmetic see mathematics Arminianism 12 Arminianius, Jacobus 12 Arnold, Matthew 174, 175 Ascham, Roger 41 Ashley, Lord see Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Ist Earl of atheism 99, 100–1, 135, 169 children as atheists 100 Atlantis 34, 139, 145–6 atomism 29, 135 Aubrey, John 158 Augustine of Hippo City of God 141 doctrine of original sin 118 Austen, Jane 159–60 authoritarianism 63, 76–7, 116 awareness 61, 68 of consequences of actions 112–13 Ayer, A.J. 166 Bacon, Francis 27–8, 29, 33 Bagshaw, Edward 19, 42–3 Banks, Caleb 46, 136 Banks, Sir John 46 Basenow, Johann Bernhard 172 Bates, Susan 19

220

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Index Belluton 9 Bentham, Jeremy 27, 143 Berkeley, George 56, 70, 164–5, 166 Bible 101, 123, 162, 191 New Testament 137 Old Testament 146 Binet, Alfred 176 Blackmore, Richard Dodderidge 134 Blunt, Thomas 45 body educational need for a healthy body 79, 113, 149 good breeding and the body 104–7 Locke’s legacy concerning a healthy body 180–1 Boethius, Anicius Manlius : Consolations of Philosophy 140–1 Boileau, Nicolas 136 Book of Common Prayer 92 Boyle, Robert 24, 28, 29–31 Boyle’s circle 29–31, 45 Boyne, Battle of 48 breeding, good 102–7, 134 early education and 116–23 see also education : the cultivation of the gentleman Brinsley, John 41 Bristol 14 Browne, Thomas 101 Bruni d’Arezzo, Leonardo 35 Bruno, Giodarno 25 Bruy`ere, Jean de la 137 Busby, Richard 17–20, 92 Butler, Samuel 134, 166 Caesar, (Gaius) Julius 136 Calvin, John 11, 25 Cambridge Platonists 48–9, 62

221 capitalism 89, 121, 190 Cardan, Jerome (Gerolamo Cardano) 29 catechism 92, 116 Catholic Church 25–6, 36 Locke’s stance against Catholicism 87, 98 Cervantes, Miguel de : Don Quixote 137 character development 81, 116–17, 178 perfectibility and 142 Charles I 12, 13–14, 44 Charles II 22, 24, 42, 44, 47 chastisement 119 see also punishment ; senses, human cheating 118–19 chemistry 29 children as atheists 100 child qua child 40, 53, 118, 162, 185 clandestine observation of 108–9, 115 Comenius on the growth of the child 39 desire for domination in 115–16 dispositions 115 education of see education ; educational philosophy of Locke good breeding 102–7, 116–23, 134 Montaigne’s reflections on 37–8 nature/nurture debate in child development 108–10 need for faith before knowledge 34, 96 parental power over see parental authority

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222 children (cont.) Piaget on childhood learning 178–9 picking up of abstract concepts 78 the Renaissance child 35–6 tabula rasa concept 76, 108, 192 Chillingworth, William 135, 136 Chomsky, (Avram) Noam 59 chronology 135 Church Anglican 11–12 Catholic see Catholic Church Congregationalism 22 Puritanism see Puritanism Reformation see Reformation Cicero, Marcus Tullius 19, 91, 135, 136, 137 citizenship education 191 civic individualism 84, 85 civic/civil society 82, 87, 144, 146 Catholicism rejected as theology for 63 free society 89, 145, 146, 206 the mature adult’s entry into 145 study of laws of 118 Clarke, Edward 46, 81, 105 Locke’s correspondence with 4, 81, 157 Clarke, Edward Jr 81 Clarke, Mary 81, 103, 105 class 102–4, 190 classicism 26–7, 212 learning classical languages 133 clothing 106–7 Cobden, Richard 175 Cole, Thomas 23 Colet, John 92 Collins, Anthony 100–1 Comenius, John Amos 26–7, 39

Index communication 72–3, 79–80 see also language company, good 126, 127 Conant, John 42 Conduct of the Understanding 150–2, 153 Congregationalism 22 conscience 62–3 Cooper, Ashley see Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Ist Earl of Copernicus 25 corporal punishment 119 Coste, Pierre 158–9, 192 criminals 146 Cromwell, Oliver 21–2, 44 Cromwell, Robina 24 Crook, Samuel 10, 13–14, 16, 19 crying 116 Cudworth, Ralph 48, 62 curricula 211–15 dancing 127 Darwinian theory 62 daydreaming 69 De Arte Medica 57 Declaration of Indulgences 48 deduction 56, 57 see also rationalism Dell, William 26 demonstrative knowledge 74–5 see also reason deontology 188 Descartes, Ren´e 31, 32–3, 65, 80, 99 innatism of 29, 60–1 rationalism of 29, 32–3, 56, 58 determinism 111 Devizes 14 Dewey, John 168 Dickens, Charles 160, 203 Diderot, Denis 166

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Index diet 106, 188 disapproval 122 dispositions 115 Don Quixote 137 drawing 71, 128 Drury, John 41 Dryden, John 17, 44–5, 92 ´ Durkheim, Emile 177 duty 143, 145, 149, 188 education in citizenship 191 Comenius on 39 the cultivation of the gentleman 5, 37, 93, 98–9, 104–7, 116–18 Durkheim’s philosophy of 177 educational philosophy of the schools 27 free market education 209–10 see also liberal education Kant’s philosophy of 170–2 liberal see liberal education in the Little Schools of Port Royal 40–1 Locke’s education at Christ Church Oxford 21–4 Locke’s education at Westminster School 17–20 Locke’s philosophy of see educational philosophy of Locke Montaigne’s reflections on 37–8 and the nature/nurture debate 108–10 philosophy of life and 55–6 Piaget on childhood learning 178–9 Platonic 86, 140, 192, 198 primacy of simple ideas in 67 progressive 85, 86, 115, 168, 179–80, 191–2 punishment and fear in 93

223 Puritan condemnation of the classics 26–7 Reformers’ undermining of Renaissance ideals 35–6 religious 92, 99, 123, 169 Renaissance ideals of 35, 36 Rousseau’s philosophy of 168–70 scientific 135 ‘state as parent’ critique 204–8 state control of 85–6, 87, 191, 200, 202–3 in virtue 23, 53, 93, 116–17, 188 Wollstonecraft’s philosophy of 172–3 women’s 139, 173 see also schools educational philosophy of Locke Aristotelian basis of 83–8, 142, 148 child–centred education 118 continued study 148–52 critical voice of the scientific revolution in 27 early education 114–24 education as a family matter 87, 94, 204, 205–6, 213 eighteenth–century legacy of 167–73 girls’ development 139 good breeding 102–7, 116–23, 134 home–schooling 94, 131, 132, 174, 194–5, 198–9 see also tutors humanist tradition of 88 individualism and see individualism influence of European tour 46 influence of Locke’s theory of knowledge on 3, 53–4, 79, 94 influence of Lord Ashley 49, 190

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224 educational philosophy (cont.) influence of the Port Royal Schools 40–1 liberal educational framework 40, 125, 181 Locke’s theory of education 81–2 Locke’s vision of life and 55 making learning pleasurable 128–9 middle education 125–30 Montaigne’s influence 36–8 moral education methods 132 nineteenth–century legacy of 174–5 overview 55–9 for the political man 140–7 the political–educational model 190–3 see also political philosophy of Lock for the poor 138–9, 199–201, 204 precedence of education in virtue 23, 53, 93, 116–17, 125–6, 188 the ’Protestant work ethic’ 89, 190 the purpose of education 90–5, 141–2, 187, 192–3 realism in 196–7 relevance with regard to 187–9 scepticism in 66, 149 scholarly education 131–7 self–learning 133 social context of 10 social status and 102–3 teaching by example 126 Thoughtson see Some Thoughts Concerning Education training and pleasure 109–10 twentieth–century legacy of 176–81 use of reverse psychology 109

Index use of words 72–3 the usefulness of education 194–5 young men to be put off becoming poets 134 egalitarianism 77 Eichhorn, Johann Gottfried 101 Elizabeth I 11–12, 22 Elyot, Thomas 41 emotions 69, 113, 118, 152, 153 enthusiasm 97 passions see passions empiricism 25, 27–8, 33, 56, 80 empiricist rejection of innatism 58, 80 see also innatism influence of Lockean empiricism 166, 176 and the origin of ideas 65–6 Stillingfleet’s criticism of Locke’s ‘new philosophy’ of 164 encyclopaedias 143 Engels, Friedrich 103 English Civil War 4–5, 14 Epicureanism 29 epistemology as basis to child development theories 55–6 Cartesian 32–3 of the Church, versus science 27–8 of complex ideas 67–8 empiricism versus rationalism 33, 56, 58–9 of faith and reason 96–7 ideas as the origin of knowledge 65–70 innate knowledge see innatism Locke’s theory of knowledge 30, 57–9, 74–7 see also Essay Concerning Human Understanding

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Index political and religious consequences of 63–4 scepticism and 56–7 Erasmus, Desiderius 19, 34, 36, 92 Complaint of Peace 98, 147 Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 publication 48 criticism of 78–80, 164–5 on the education of the maturing gentleman 136 on faith and religion 96–100 on free will and determinism 111–12 on ideas 65–70 influence of medics 46 influence of theory of knowledge on Locke’s educational writings 3, 53–4, 79 Montaigne’s influence 37–8 Newtonian understanding in 33 on perfectibility 141–2 philosophical legacy of 161–2 rejection of innatism 60–3, 78 support for 49 theory of knowledge 57–9, 74–7 twentieth–century legacy of 178–9 on understanding of words 72–3 Essay on Toleration 99 Essays on the Law of Nature 30 ethics mathematical footing for 143 mental nature of 67–8 virtue ethics 84, 143, 188 eugenics 64 see also genetics eurorhythmics 178 evolutionary theory 62 Exeter House 45–6

faith 34, 96–101, 123 see also religion fallibilism 57 families critique of schools and family 198–201 education as a family matter 87, 94, 204, 205–6, 213 ‘state as parent’ critique 204–8 fatalism 56 fear 127–8 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 174 Fielding, Henry 194 Fielding, Henry : Joseph Andrews 159 Filmer, Sir Robert 16, 47, 63, 76–7, 144–5, 207 First and Second Tracts on Government 22, 30, 42–3 Fodor, Jerry 59 Foot, Philippa 188 Fordyce, David 167–8 Forms, Platonic 58, 65, 83 Franklin, Bob 204 free market education 209–10 free will 111–13 Froebel, Friedrich Wilhelm 168, 174 Galileo Galilei 26, 33 Galton, Francis 176 Gambetta, L´eon 200 games 127 see also play Gardner, Sebastian 166 Gassendi, Pierre 29–30 genetics 62, 64, 115, 177 geography 134, 137 geometry 135 Glanvill, Joseph 101 Glorious Revolution 5, 48

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226 God, existence of arguments for 99–100, 101 as basis for knowledge 96 Goddard, Thomas 28 Godwin, William 209 Gould, Stephen Jay 96 government 85, 137, 145, 146 intervention in education see state education grammar 19, 91, 92, 128, 133, 135 grammar schools 91–2 Greek 19–20, 92, 131, 133 Grosseteste, Robert 25 Grotius, Hugo 135 habits 105–6, 119, 125, 171 Halley, Edmond 28 Heale, Elizabeth 9 health educational need for a healthy body 79, 113, 149 good breeding and 104–6 Locke’s legacy concerning 180–1 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 86 Hellenism 193 Helvicus, Christoph : Theatrum Historicum 19 Henry, Philip 18 Henry VIII 11 Herbart, Johann Friedrich 174 Herbert, Auberon 174, 209 Herder, Johann Gottfried 166 history 135, 150 Hobbes, Thomas 28, 32, 98, 101, 146 Holbach, Paul–Henri Dietrich, baron d’ 100 Hooke, Robert 17, 24, 28, 30

Index Hooker, Richard 137 Horace 105, 137 humanism 34, 41, 88, 91, 180, 181 education’s attachment to the humanist–Renaissance tradition 194–5 Humboldt, Wilhelm 174 Hume, David 56, 166, 176 hunting 116, 127 Hutcheson, Frances 166 Huxley, Thomas Henry 174 ideas 65–70 innate see innatism Platonic Ideas 58, 65, 83 words as symbols of 71–3 idleness 129–30 of the poor 138 ignorance 67, 69, 75 immortality of the soul 164 impartiality, to arguments 152 implicit understanding 61 Independent Academy, Oxford 23 Independents 22 individualism 54, 86–7, 121, 192, 197 civic 84, 85 nineteenth–century reaction to 175 induction 56, 57 see also empiricism Industrial Revolution 27 infallibilism 57, 76–7 innatism 29, 49, 58, 60–3, 78, 80 innate morality 49, 62 Inquisition 25–6 intelligence 40, 61, 176–7 intuitive knowledge 61, 74 Locke’s meaning of intuition 72–3 ‘Invisible College’ 22, 23–4

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Index ´ Jacques–Dalcroze, Emile 178 James, Duke of York (later James II of England) 44 James I 12, 47 Book of Sports 13 James II of England 47, 48 overthrow of 5 see also James, Duke of York Jeffreys, George 17 Jeromite schools 35 Jesuits 32, 36 judgement 76, 117–18 Junge, Joachim 29 Juvenal 79, 137 Kant, Immanuel 70, 78, 143, 166, 170–2 Keene, Agnes (later Agnes Locke) 10 see also Locke, Agnes knowledge existence of God as basis for 96 faith needed by child before knowledge 34, 96 of God 96 the heart and 40 ideas as the source of 65–70 innate see innatism intuitive 61 language and 58 Locke’s theory of knowledge 30, 57–9, 74–7, 94 see also Essay Concerning Human Understanding necessity of a healthy body for gaining 79, 149 Piaget’s theory of 178–9 self–knowledge 38, 150 subliminal 61 see also epistemology Kropotkin, Peter 62

227 La Bry`ere, Jean de 137 laissez–faire 85 Lane, Homer 180 language communication problems with 79–80 knowledge and 58 learning classical languages 133 learning foreign languages 128 linguistic skills 142 overcoming problems of moral language 142, 143 psychological development and 178, 179 reading sources in the original 23, 83, 136 words 71–3 Lansdown 14 Lansdown Hill 16 Latin 19–20, 23, 26–7, 92, 131, 133 Latitudinarianism 10, 34, 48, 98, 101 Laud, William 12, 13, 18, 21 Le Clerc, Jean 22, 159 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 56, 159, 165 Leonardo da Vinci 28 Letter Concerning Toleration 26, 48, 63 Letters on Toleration 3 liberal education 35, 174–5, 181, 209–10 Locke’s liberal educational framework 40, 125, 181 libertarianism 35, 49, 85, 88, 121, 144 linguistic skills 142 Livy 136 Locke, Agnes (n´ee Keene) 10, 15–16

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228 Locke, John sen. (John’s father) 10, 15, 16, 19, 42 Locke, Nicholas (John’s grandfather) 9 Locke, Thomas (John’s brother) 15 Locke family background 9–10, 15–16 Lockean scholarship 3–4 Locke’s life overview of 3–6 birth 9–10 childhood during English Civil War 14 parental upbringing and influences 15–16 Westminster School under Busby 17–20 Christ Church, Oxford, under Owen 21–4 influence of Boyle 29–31 Oxford 1660–65 42–3 meeting with Lord Ashley 45 at Exeter House 45–6 in France 46 final years 47–9 logic 135 London 26, 28 Exeter House 45 Thanet House 47 London Journal 167 Louis XIV 200 Lower, Richard 24, 28 Loyola, Ignatius 36 Luther, Martin 11, 25 call for compulsory education 35–6 lying 118 MacIntyre, Alasdair 188 manners 126 Mapletoft, John 45, 46

Index Marx, Karl 103, 145 Marxist analysis 103 Mary II 48 Masham, Francis 33 Masham, Lady Damaris 4, 15, 32, 48, 49, 62, 173 materialism 32, 164–5 mathematics 72, 80, 134–5, 151 morality and mathematical thinking 75, 142 Mayflower 12 medicine 22, 28, 29, 45 restraint in use for children 106 Melanchthon, Philip 36 memory 74, 129, 134 see also recollection Menger, Carl 205 Mill, John Stuart 174, 175, 176, 200, 204 Milton, John 27, 41 Moli`ere 134 Molyneux, William 46, 158 monarchy, hereditary 145 Montaigne, Michel E. de 7, 36–8, 132 Montessori, Maria 168, 177–8 Montessori schools 8, 177, 185 Moore, G.E. 166 morality Aristotelian 84 Durkheim on 177 of the gentleman 117–18 innate moral ideas 49, 62 Locke’s recommendations for the study of 136–7 moral intervention 87, 146 moralizing purpose of education 82 of the Old Testament 146 overcoming problems of moral language 142, 143 parents as guardians of 205–6

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Index promotion of values in children 125–6 the pursuit of the good 112, 143–4 tutors and moral education 132 see also ethics More, Thomas 34 Mulcaster, Richard 41 music 127 Napoleon I 200 nativism 58–9 Neill, A.S. 180 neologisms 71 Netherlands 35, 47 Newman, John Henry 174–5 Newton, Sir Isaac 28, 32, 72, 80 Principia 33, 135 obedience, blind 63 Ockham, William 27 original sin 118, 169 Origins of Formes and Qualities, The 30 Ovid 91 Owen, John 18, 21–2, 42 Oxford Christ Church 21–4 Locke’s educational experiences at 3, 21–4 Puritan influence in 12, 21, 23 as a safe–haven for free thinking 26, 28 Oxford Aesthetic movement 175 Oxford Tractarian Movement 175 Paine, Thomas 176, 200 painting 135 Paracelsus 45

229 parental authority 85, 87, 116, 119, 125 threats to 120 parental discipline 119 parental respect 16, 145, 206 Paris 26, 28, 46 St Bartholomew’s Massacre 98 passions control of 69, 113, 121, 152 enslavement to 112 transcendence of 173 Pater, Walter 175 patriarchy, theory of 16, 63, 76–7, 144 ‘state as parent’ critique 204–8 Pensford 9 perception 66, 150 knowledge and 74 mental 67 perfectibility 140–2 Persius 137 Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich 168, 171–2, 174 Petty, William 24 Piaget, Jean 178–9 Pierce, William 13 plague 45 Plato 58, 65, 80, 83, 86 Platonic education 86, 140, 192, 198 play 36, 105, 118, 122, 126–7, 129–30 clandestine observation of 108–9, 115 pleasure 55, 109–10 making learning pleasurable 128–9 pain and 66, 67, 74, 75, 109, 119 and the pursuit of the good 112 Pococke, Edward 23 poetry 134 political man’s education 140–7

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230 political philosophy of Locke 82, 84–8, 94, 120, 145–6, 203 philosophical legacy of The Two Treatises 161 the political–educational model 190–3 Poor Law 199, 203 Popham, Sir Alexander 16, 19, 22 Port Royal schools 40–1 Positivists 166 prayer 99 prejudice 139, 149, 151–2 against atheism 100 Presbyterianism 12 primary qualities 66, 78, 164–5 probability 75 progressive education 85, 86, 115, 168, 179–80, 191–2 Protestant Reformation see Reformation ‘Protestant work ethic’ 89, 190 psychological development 178–9 psychometric testing 176 public service 37 Pufendorf, Samuel Freiherr von 135, 137 punishment 93, 119, 171, 177 Puritanism 11–12 classics condemned by 26–7 and Crook’s prohibition of Sunday games 13–14 culture of parental respect 16 influence in Oxford 12, 21, 23 Locke’s birth into 10 and the perfectibility of Christian man 141, 142 Puritan sects 26

Index Quakers 26, 97, 98 qualities primary 66, 78, 164–5 secondary 66, 165 virtuous 5, 7, 93 Quintilian 136 Rabelais, Francois 28, 36, 41 racial testing 176–7 racial theories 64 Rand, Ayn 209 rationalism 29, 32–3, 56, 58–9, 65, 80 perfectibility and 142 rationality 96, 101, 122 innate love of 129 Rawls, John 201 reading, encouragement in 91, 122–3 realism 196–7 social realism 192–3 reason employment of 32, 58, 75 faith and 96–7 knowledge and 58, 60 limits of 37, 71, 76 power of 16, 34 religious role of 34, 48, 101 as ruler of passions 69, 113 see also demonstrative knowledge Reasonableness of Christianity 146–7 recollection 66–7, 75 see also memory Reformation 5, 11–12, 98 intellectual revolution stemming from 25–8 and the perfectibility of man 141 see also individual Reformers

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Index religion Church see Church faith and 96–101, 123 Latitudinarian role of reason in 34, 48, 101 Locke’s religious faith 10, 101 moral intervention and 87 religious consequences of epistemology 63 religious education 92, 99, 123, 169 religious toleration 12, 44, 98, 147 religious zealots 97–8 secularism and 175 transcendental authority taught through 177 uniformity and dissent 11–12, 42–3 religious education 92, 99, 123, 169 Renaissance rejection of medieval science 24, 28 rekindling of Greek ideals 141 the Renaissance child 35–6 Renaissance humanism 34, 41, 88, 91, 194–5 reputation 117 responsibility 68–9, 102, 116, 121, 136, 203 and the diminishing role of forgiveness 144 revelations 97 rewards 121 Reynard the Fox 122 rhetoric 84, 135 Locke’s learning of 19 Locke’s opposition to the teaching of 73, 91, 125 rhythm 178

231 Richardson, Samuel : Pamela 159 riding 127 Rothbard, Murray 204, 206, 209 Roundway Down 16 Rousseau, Jean Jacques 53, 145, 168–70, 179, 189 assertion of man’s innate goodness 118 influence of Locke concerning health 180–1 influence on Durkheim 177 influence on Kant 170–1 and school curricula 211, 212 view of women’s education 139, 173 Royal Society 23, 27, 46, 101, 109 see also ‘Invisible College’ Ruskin, John 175 Russell, Bertrand 56, 166, 176, 204 Russell, Lord William 47 ‘Rye House Plot’ 47 Saint–Cyran (Jean Duvergier de Hauranne) 40 Sallust 19, 91 scepticism 56–7, 66, 94–5, 149, 164–5 Scholasticism 27, 28, 94, 125 criticism of Scholastic logical games 75 Locke’s breaking with 30–1, 41 schools 91–3, 123, 131, 132–3, 194 critique of schools and family 198–201 disciplinarian 119–20 grammar schools 91–2 Kant’s thoughts on 171 Montessori schools 8, 177, 185 nineteenth–century thought on 174 Port Royal schools 40–1

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232 schools (cont.) progressive 179–80 school curricula 211–15 Working Schools 138, 162, 199–200, 203 Schwarz, F.H. 159 science 25–8, 30, 176–7 advances in chemistry 29 Aristotle and 84 need for a scientific dictionary 142–3 scientific education 135 see also medicine secondary qualities 66, 165 secularism 175 self Alexander’s use of the self 178 the Cartesian thinker 32 Montaigne and the validity of the self 37 Renaissance promotion of the self 34 self–control 69, 152 self–knowledge 38, 150 self–learning 133 self–ownership 84, 144, 209 Sennert, Daniel 29 sensation 57, 63, 65, 68, 97, 165 senses, human Cartesian distrust of 32 certainty through 56–8 as means of acquiring knowledge 3, 33, 40, 57–8, 65–6, 79 Montaigne’s reliance on 37 overwhelming of 61 subliminal knowledge and 61 see also sensation sensible knowledge 74 Separatism 12 servants 102–3, 120

Index Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, Ist Earl of (Ashley) 44–5 charged with treason 47 influence on Locke 4, 43–4, 49, 190 Locke’s meeting and work with 45–6 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of 165–6 Shakespeare, William 34, 92 Sidney, Algernon 47, 137 sketching 71 sleep 106 Smith, Adam 41, 166, 172, 194, 201, 202 social interaction 178 social realism 192–3 social status 102–3 society, civic see civic/civil society Society of Friends (Quakers) 26, 97, 98 Society of Jesus (Jesuits) 32, 36 Socrates 58, 86 Some Thoughts Concerning Education anonymous publication of 157, 158 contemporary reception of 157–60 critique of schools and family 198–201 early education 114–19, 120–2, 123–4 eighteenth–century legacy of 53, 167–73 on girls’ development 139 on good breeding 102–7, 116–23, 134 influence of tutoring Ashley’s grandchildren 45 Locke’s theory of education 81–2

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Index middle education 125–30 Montaigne’s influence 37–8 and the nature/nurture debate 108–10 on need of a healthy body 79 original Correspondence 158 on paternal relations 15 philosophical legacy of 162–3 political implications of 190–3 on the purpose of education 93–5 recommended school books 91 relevance in regard to 187–9 travel and 4 twentieth–century legacy of 179–81 Somerset 9–10 souls 164 South, Robert 18 Spectator 167 speech development 178 Spencer, Herbert 174, 175, 209, 211 Spinoza, Benedict de 56 sports 13–14, 127 St Bartholomew’s Massacre, Paris 98 St Paul’s school, London 92 Stahl, Peter 30 Stanton Drew 9 state education 85–6, 87, 191, 200, 202–3 ‘state as parent’ critique 204–8 Steiner, Rudolf 185 Stern, William 176 Sterne, Lawrence : Tristram Shandy 159 Stillingfleet, Edward 164 Stirner, Max 121 stoicism the stoic ideal 140 stoical virtues 37, 84

233 Strachey, John 29 stupidity 67, 75 Sturm, Johannes 19, 36 subliminal knowledge 61 Summerhill 180 Sunday School movement 162 Sydenham, Thomas 45, 46, 104, 180 tabula rasa 76, 108, 192 Tarcov, Nathan 204 Terence 19, 91, 136 Thales 101 Thanet House 47 Thomas, David 45 thought, conscious 68–9 Thoughts see Some Thoughts Concerning Education Tillotson, John 136 toileting 105–6 toys 126–7 Tracts on Government, First and Second 22, 30, 42–3 trades, skilled 135–6 travel 4 Grand Tours of Europe 136 tutors 7, 91, 131–2 choice of 131 Erasmus on 36 Locke’s advocacy of 94, 131 Locke’s experience as a tutor 43, 45, 46, 82 Locke’s guidance for 108–9, 115, 119, 128–9, 132 Two Treatises, The 3, 48, 53–4, 116, 137 on aggressors 97 anonymous publication of 26 on civic life 145, 146 educational model for the privileged 191

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234 Two Treatises, The (cont.) on the Fifth Commandment (First Treatise) 16 and Filmer’s Patriarcha 47, 63, 144–5, 207 on parental power 85, 87 on parental responsibility 206 philosophical legacy of 161 political thinking of 85, 120, 121 on self–ownership 84, 144, 209 Tyrell, James 46, 137 utilitarianism 27, 68, 188 utopianism 192 see also Atlantis vacuum 30 van Helmont, Jan Baptist 29, 45 Vane, Sir Walter 43 Vergerio, Pietro Paulo (Vergerius) 35 vices 117 Vienna Circle 166 Virgil 136 virtue ethics 84, 143, 188 Vittorino da Feltra 35

Index Voltaire 165, 166 Vygotsky, Lev Semyonovich 178 Waller,William 16 Wells Cathedral 16 Westminster School 16, 17–20, 131 Whig philosophy 190 whims humouring of 120–1 ignoring of 121 suppression of whimsical emotions 118 Wilde, Oscar 175 Wilkins, John 24, 31 William of Orange (William III) 48 Williams, John 18 Willis, Thomas 28 Wollstonecraft, Mary 139, 172–3, 200, 207–8, 211, 212 Wood, Anthony 23, 30 words 71–3 communication problems with 79–80 Workhouses 203, 204 Working Schools 138, 162, 199–200, 203 Wren, Christopher 17, 24 Wrington 9, 10 writing lessons 123 Wycliffe, John 27