ES2212: Theorising early Childhood
Week 2: Locke and Early Childhood
last updated 03.10.11.
John Locke (1632-1683) Brief Biography
Son of a small landowner and attorney.
Attended Westminster School. Education focused primarily on ancient languages (Latin, Greek and Hebrew).
Studied at Christ Church Oxford - reported that he found the curriculum, teaching and learning boring and frustrating
BA in Philosophical and Theological Studies (1656).
Stayed on as a college tutor and pursued interests in medicine and natural philosophy.
Became medical adviser for the Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Thomas Ashley (later became the Earl of Shaftesbury): lived in his London residence between 1667 and 1675, when he developed interest in politics
Context of Locke’s work
Lived and worked among national leaders, and studied and wrote on the subject of human understanding, the intellectual life and education.
Concerned with epistemology, the philosophy of the mind, and the philosophy of language.
Problem of defining what constitutes knowledge had already been raised by people like Bacon (1561- 1626), Comenius (1592-1672) and Descartes (1596-1650), who all challenged unthinking assimilation of traditional understandings of the world, and emphasised the discovery of new knowledge.
Themes of Locke’s work
· Origin and growth of knowledge
· Formation of character
· Interrelation of society and individual
Locke and Human Understanding
Epistemology: study of humans’ processes of gaining knowledge, the nature and limits of this knowledge, and the distinction between knowledge and belief.
Very controversial: Essay Concerning Human Understanding initially banned from Oxford University as a ‘dangerous text’
Gradually became accepted as a standard text as its tenets became absorbed into the prevailing orthodoxy.
First part of Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) refutes the contemporary assumption about the source of human knowledge, which was that humans possessed ‘certain innate principles’ enabling us to make sense of the world.
‘Let us suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas.’ (Locke, 1690; II.i.2-4)
Rejected the scholastic method of proposing all human knowledge is based on maxims that are assumed to be intuitively known: believed this led people to be uncritical about the basic axioms of knowledge (and faith), and therefore uncritical of authority.
Attempting to promote more informed acceptance of authority.
Experiential basis of all knowledge
Humans learn from and through experience, which is facilitated by sensation and reflection.
Direct experience is ultimately the foundation of simple or complex ideas. Rejected notion of
‘… certain innate principles; some primary notions, [koinai ennoiai] characters, as it were stamped on the mind of man; which the soul receives in its very first being, and brings into the world with it’ (Locke, 1690; I.i. 1)
Proposed that
‘Principles [are] supposed innate because we do not remember when we began to hold them.’ (Locke, 1690: I. ii. 23)
Used the examples of children and idiots to assert that not everyone demonstrates knowledge of these ‘innate principles’.
Asserted that humans are not born with some innate understanding of the world, merely the capacity to understand the world - the mind of the child is like:
‘white paper, or wax, to be moulded and fashioned as one pleases.’ (Locke, 1693; s. 216)
‘Moulding’ of a child’s knowledge through a process of experience, impression and habit: refers to the ‘furnishing of the empty cabinet’
Two types of ideas:
· those we acquire through sensation
· those we acquire through our own reflection
Experience of the world enables us to make increasingly complex associations within our mind in order to identify, classify, analyse and critique the objects, people, situations and (ultimately) abstract ideas we encounter.
First type of idea (sensation) has to precede the second (reflection). There can be no reflection until there is content to reflect upon.
Everything that we know is the sum of both types of ideas. So any idea, regardless of its complexity can be traced back to an original experience.
Therefore, the quality of a person’s early experiences and the skills of the teacher in exploiting and developing these experiences through reflection become crucial for their educational success.
Locke and Education
Denial of any innate knowledge presents a context where education has great significance, because it is a vital element in human formation.
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) serves as his application of the philosophical writing in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding (he revised the text several times, and so it is sometimes cited as 1693 and sometimes as 1697).
In 'Thoughts' the value of education is stated very clearly, with the proposal that ‘nine tenths’ of a person is determined by their education.
Focus was on the education of young gentlemen only, but the arguments are universally applicable. Primary argument is that the general method of educating a young gentleman should place great emphasis upon forming the ‘right’ habits of behaviour and thought.
Believed excessive corporal punishment is self-defeating, and proposed instead the complementary strategies of esteem and disgrace to discipline children. Parents should set children a good example rather than bombard them with meaningless rules.
Emphasised necessity of allowing children to play, and for parents and educators to attend to children’s differing temperaments to ensure these are accommodated in their education.
The Role of the Educator
Educator must observe each child in order to find out ‘which way the natural make of his mind inclines him’. Careful observation of the children’s behaviour in the classroom is necessary to discover what each child is ‘naturally’ best suited for:
The ‘blank slates’ Locke describes should be seen as empty only of content (which can be achieved through experience alone). The analogy should not be extended further to assume that this ‘emptiness’ of content is equivalent to emptiness per se, i.e. ‘nothingness’.
Young children’s propensities will be unleashed and developed in various ways according to the experiences they receive (and their own tendencies). The Educator’s task is to identify common propensities and specific tendencies to foster these as they present themselves to him.
Educator also has responsibility to combat some of the child’s natural tendencies, particularly his lack of reason:
‘their want of judgement makes them stand in need of restraint and discipline’ (Locke, 1693; S. 40)
Children must be treated as rational creatures (despite their lack of reason) in order to demonstrate the value of reason to them. Combined strategies of esteem and disgrace should be used to mould the child’s actions into rational behaviour.
Habit, custom, ‘modelling’ will enable children to learn how to make use of the faculties given to them by God to use reason.
Reason is the means by which humans recognise they are God’s creation and therefore subject to God’s Laws: through the use of their reason they will make informed consent to God’s authority
Problems and Confusions
Inconsistent views about the child’s nature, and its implications for the educator.
'Thoughts' appears to incorporate three different views of ‘nature’, which:
· Sometimes suggest that innate propensities/inclinations of individuals should be encouraged
· Sometime asserts that aspects of shared human ‘nature’ need be overcome in the course of human education
· Seems to indicate that what is achieved as a result of education, nurture, is itself ‘natural’ (e.g. according to God’s law!)
Similarly confusing and contradictory interpretations of nature are also evident in Rousseau’s arguments about the child’s nature.
Both theorists are combining (or possibly confusing)
· the particular and the universal definitions of human nature
· the normative and descriptive functions of the terms ‘nature/natural’
Alternate between using ‘nature’ to simply mean that is innate in human beings (and which may distinguish individuals) and using it to refer to that which is perceived to be good in human beings.
Bantock summarises Locke’s use of nature in the following way:
‘So ‘nature’ referring to origins, can provide characteristics which are both desirable and to be resisted; and it is also used to refer to outcomes which he regards as desirable – a harking back to the older view, shared with the humanists, of man’s ‘natural’ potential for good. Its use is therefore both descriptive and normative.’ (Bantock, 1994; p. 228)
Comments about reading Yolton’s chapter on Locke
· Yolton presents an overview of Locke’s ideas, encompassing more texts than you need to concern yourselves with!
· Use Yolton (or other texts) to develop a sense of the context and general themes of Locke’s work, but focus only on 'Essay' and 'Thoughts' for your assignment.
· Don’t allow yourself to become distracted by debates about the accuracy of Locke’s ideas. The assignment only asks you to explain the theorists’ ideas
