Abstract
This book recounts the origin and development of civic education as an enterprise fundamentally concerned with character formation. That origin and development is divided between five thinkers but just as importantly it is split into Ancient and Modern. The second half of this account begins with John Locke and his neglected but nonetheless influential Some Thoughts Concerning Education. The chapter begins, as the first chapter does, by addressing the question of nature. Locke, in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, famously described humans as natal “tabulae rasa,” blank slates upon which almost all knowledge and capacity must be subsequently inscribed by experience. This account of nature, seemingly so at odds with Plato’s distinctions, nonetheless retains room for differences in ability and, if only by implication, the distinction between the philosophic and the civic student. At the same time, drawing close to Cicero, Locke returns to an emphasis on the role of education in ameliorating perceived differences in capacity. The chapter then considers the formation of the archetypal citizen of the seventeenth century, the gentleman. The education of the Lockean gentleman presents an early example of the increasingly democratized vision of civic education at the heart of early modernity. That education and the expansion of its audience, embraces with increasing urgency the ancient focus on character as cultivated by custom, culture, and habit. By these antique means Locke aims to implant the civic principles of a modern and liberal community.
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Notes
- 1.
Winston Churchill, My Early Life (Montreal: Reprint Society of Canada, 1948), 47.
- 2.
Lorraine Pangle and Thomas Pangle, The Learning of Liberty (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1993), 54.
- 3.
John Locke, “Some Thoughts Concerning Education,” in The Educational Writings of John Locke, ed. James Axtell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968).
- 4.
Of course, Milton also breaks with the ancients and in particular Cicero and Plato in important respects which will be countenanced below and that place him closer to Erasmus’ Education of a Christian Prince than to either ancient source herein treated.
- 5.
John Milton, “Of Education,” in Areopagitica and Of Education, ed. George H. Sabine (Arlington Heights: Harlan Davidson, 1951).
- 6.
Milton, “Of Education,” 63.
- 7.
Locke, Some Thoughts, 9.
- 8.
Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History, 189.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
The divide between ancient and modern in educational theory, as this chapter will assert, is much more ambiguous.
- 11.
John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), II.124.
- 12.
John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1983), 35.
- 13.
Thomas Pangle observes the ease with which Locke facilitates this misreading in Two Treatises of Government wherein the terms morality, morals, moral virtue, and ethics never appear. Thomas Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 204.
- 14.
Contrast Milton’s casual description of the pupil’s nature and lesson in Of Education, 62 with the prudent discrimination of Plato, Republic 535c and Cicero, De Oratore, III.xiv.55.
- 15.
Pangle and Pangle, Learning of Liberty, 55.
- 16.
Locke, Letter, 51.
- 17.
John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 203.
- 18.
This is not to suggest that the specific teaching regarding virtue is the same, merely that both teachings are concerned with the question of virtue.
- 19.
Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 1.
- 20.
Cicero’s declaration differs not in the account of the pupil but in the pessimistic tone only. “If distorted habits and false opinions did not twist weak minds and bend them in any direction no would be so like himself as all people would be like all others. Thus, whatever definition of a human being one adopts is equally valid for all human beings” (De Legibus I.30).
- 21.
John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), II.i.2.
- 22.
This simplistic reading of the tabula rasa is not limited to the past, see David M. Post, “Jeffersonian Revisions of Locke,” Journal of the History of Ideas 47 (1986): 149.
- 23.
Letters Written by Lord Chesterfield to his Son, quoted in W.M. Spellman, John Locke and the Problem of Depravity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 3. This motif, connecting a lowly profession to a higher one appears as early as Demosthenes and is restated, perhaps most famously, by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations. There the comparison is between a street porter and a philosopher in the context of the division of labor. Chapter 6 will deal with return again to this motif, these specific passages, and their larger significance.
- 24.
J.J. Chambliss, “Reason, Conduct, and Revelation in the Educational Theory of Locke, Watts, and Burgh,” Educational Theory 26 (Fall 1976): 376.
- 25.
Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 6.
- 26.
Cicero, De Legibus, I.x.28.
- 27.
Milton, Of Education, 59.
- 28.
Indeed this repudiation and the elucidation of its liberal political consequence constitute the lionshare of Locke’s neglected First Treatise on Government.
- 29.
Locke, Essay, I.iii.22.
- 30.
James Tully, “Governing Conduct,” in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed. Edmund Leites (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 21.
- 31.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.101.
- 32.
Peter Laslett, introduction to Two Treatises of Government, by John Locke, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 84.
- 33.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.60.
- 34.
Strauss, Natural Right, 135.
- 35.
Locke, Essay, III.vi.27.
- 36.
Ibid.
- 37.
John Locke, Two Treatises, ed. Peter Laslett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), II.6.
- 38.
Leo Strauss, “Locke’s Doctrine of Natural Law,” in What Is Political Philosophy? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 206.
- 39.
Leon Craig, The War Lover, xxxii.
- 40.
Locke, Essay, I.iii.6, I.iii.13, and II.xxvii.6.
- 41.
Nathan Tarcov, Locke’s Education for Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 93.
- 42.
Locke, Thoughts, sec. 54.
- 43.
There is an awkward and poignant contrariety in seeing the equine imagery unwittingly echoed in the words of Thomas Jefferson arguably Locke’s greatest political pupil. Writing on the impending 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, “The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favoured few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the Grace of God.” Thomas Jefferson, “Letter to Peter Weightman” quoted in Michael Zuckert, The Natural Rights Republic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), 41.
- 44.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.94.
- 45.
Hans Aarslef, “The State of Nature and the Nature of Man in Locke,” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives, ed. John Yolton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 136.
- 46.
Locke, Thoughts, sec. 195.
- 47.
John Locke, “Concerning Reading and Study,” in Educational Writings of John Locke, ed. James Axtell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 399.
- 48.
Locke, Thoughts, sec. 195.
- 49.
Locke, Some Thoughts, 215.
- 50.
Of course Locke differs dramatically from Cicero and Plato in arguing that such an education may be futile and pointless but not explicitly concluding that it is dangerous, barefaced, and unremitting ignorance and not an incomplete and imperfect schooling is for Locke a much greater threat to civil society.
- 51.
This remains a problem that bedevils the classrooms of liberal democracies in particular when it comes to the practice of “streaming” the necessity of which only the most radical and ideological reject and the problematic and potential biased character of only the willfully blind deny.
- 52.
John Locke, Reasonableness of Christianity, ed. L.T. Ramsey (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1958), 67.
- 53.
C. B. Macpherson, “The Social Bearing of Locke’s Political Theory,” The Western Political Quarterly 7, no. 1 (1954): 4.
- 54.
For instance, Locke, Essay, IV.xx.2.
- 55.
Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 3. Of interest for the discussion of Rousseau below is the early placement of a near identical sentiment in Emile. “Let us, then, choose a rich man. We will at least be sure we have made one more man, while a poor person can become a man by himself.” J.J. Rousseau, Emile, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: HarperCollins, 1979), 53.
- 56.
Locke, Essay, I.iv.12.
- 57.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.94.
- 58.
Recall the ‘men of pre-heminency’ Two Treatises, II.94.
- 59.
John Locke, On the Conduct of Understanding, ed. Francis W. Garforth (New York: Teachers College Press, 1966), 42.
- 60.
Ibid.
- 61.
Ibid., 44.
- 62.
Right reasoning I take here to mean not true reason but a prudential calculus. Locke acknowledges as much when he suggests that such an ability can be “made” and simultaneously rejects the idea that any benefit can be gained from “reflecting on a rule” which is surely the very heart of a full and complete reason.
- 63.
Locke, “Board of Trade Papers,” in Fox Bourne, The Life of John Locke, vol. II (London: Henry S. King & Co., 1876), 378.
- 64.
Locke, “Trade Papers,” 385.
- 65.
Locke, Essay, IV.xii.11.
- 66.
Locke, Essay, IV.xx.4. Recall here the absence of reflection on rules described in Of the Conduct of Understanding, 44.
- 67.
Locke, Essay, IV.xx.4.
- 68.
Locke, Thoughts, sec. 70.
- 69.
Milton, Of Education, 66.
- 70.
Locke, Reasonableness of Christianity, sec. 243.
- 71.
Locke, Some Thoughts, 147.
- 72.
Michael Zuckert, “Fools and Knaves: Reflections on Locke’s Theory of Philosophical Discourse,” Review of Politics 36 (1974): 560.
- 73.
Lee Ward, John Locke and Modern Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 186.
- 74.
Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 216.
- 75.
Ibid., sec. 70.
- 76.
Ibid., sec. 33.
- 77.
While at one point in Some Thoughts reason is described as the fullest perfection of man the range, number, and likelihood of its realization is left conspicuously undeclared. See Some Thoughts, sec. 122.
- 78.
Ibid., sec. 115.
- 79.
Pangle and Pangle, Learning, 59.
- 80.
Tarcov, Locke’s Education, 173.
- 81.
Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 54.
- 82.
Ibid., 56.
- 83.
Tarcov, Locke’s Education, 107.
- 84.
Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 18.
- 85.
John Yolton, John Locke and Education (New York: Random House, 1971), 69.
- 86.
Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 66.
- 87.
Locke, Essay, I.ii.12.
- 88.
Locke, Essay, I.iii.22.
- 89.
See Plato, Laws 653b-c, from Pangle, Locke n265.
- 90.
Locke, Epistle Dedicatory to Some Thoughts, 8.
- 91.
Ibid.
- 92.
Ibid.
- 93.
Locke, Two Treatises, II.94.
- 94.
Robert Horwitz, “John Locke and the Preservation of Liberty,” American Political Science Reviewer 6: 340.
- 95.
Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 142.
- 96.
Pangle and Pangle, Learning of Liberty, 72.
- 97.
Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 81.
- 98.
Locke, Some Thoughts, sec. 67.
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Kellow, G.C. (2022). Locke’s Education for Ordinary Life and Liberal Citizenship. In: The Wisdom of the Commons. Palgrave Studies in Classical Liberalism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95872-5_4
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