Locke's views on women's education, indeed his views on women in general, were remarkably enlightened for the time. In his Second Treatise of Government Locke criticized the political theory of Robert Filmer, which justified absolute monarchy on biblical grounds, and stated that the authority of kings was the same as that of fathers over their wives and children. In counter to this, Locke avers that the authority that fathers have is temporary, not permanent. Furthermore, he adds that parental authority is shared between men and women.
Locke holds that women are possessed with the same capacity for rational behavior as men. As such, Locke advocated what we now call "no-fault" divorces, based on individual choice. It's hard to underestimate just how radical this concept was in the late 17th century, especially as such divorces did not become available in the United States and Europe until the mid-20th century.
Locke's radical views of women's rationality and autonomy feed into his pedagogical theories. In his Some Thoughts on Education Locke argues that girls should receive the same education as boys, with some minor differences. The chief aim of education for Locke is the inculcation of virtue, a quality which is as important for girls as it is for boys. Locke also argues against children of either sex being sent to school; they should receive their education at home.
At the time that Locke wrote Some Thoughts on Education such schooling as was available for girls took place within the home. In advocating home schooling Locke was essentially arguing that boys should be educated in the same way that girls already were. The implications of such a theory are quite radical. The home and hearth would no longer be seen as the unique province of women; by extension, the public world would be more freely accessible to both sexes, instead of solely men.
https://ndpr.nd.edu/news/feminist-interpretations-of-john-locke/
Friday, December 28, 2018
What was John Locke’s view of the education of women?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Summarize the major research findings of "Toward an experimental ecology of human development."
Based on findings of prior research, the author, Bronfenbrenner proposes that methods for natural observation research have been applied in ...
-
One way to support this thesis is to explain how these great men changed the world. Indeed, Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) was the quintes...
-
Polysyndeton refers to using several conjunctions in a row to achieve a dramatic effect. That can be seen in this sentence about the child: ...
-
Both boys are very charismatic and use their charisma to persuade others to follow them. The key difference of course is that Ralph uses his...
-
At the most basic level, thunderstorms and blizzards are specific weather phenomena that occur most frequently within particular seasonal cl...
-
Equation of a tangent line to the graph of function f at point (x_0,y_0) is given by y=y_0+f'(x_0)(x-x_0). The first step to finding eq...
-
Population policy is any kind of government policy that is designed to somehow regulate or control the rate of population growth. It include...
-
Gulliver cooperates with the Lilliputians because he is so interested in them. He could, obviously, squash them underfoot, but he seems to b...
No comments:
Post a Comment