Education; Educational psychology; Moral education
In reading even the best treatises on education written in former
times, one becomes aware of certain changes that have come over
educational theory. The two great reformers of educational theory
before the nineteenth century were Locke and Rousseau. Both deserved
their reputation, for both repudiated many errors which were
wide-spread when they wrote. But neither went as far in his own
direction as almost all modern educationists go. Both, for example,
belong to the tendency which led to liberalism and democracy; yet
both consider only the education of an aristocratic boy, to which one
man’s whole time is devoted. However excellent might be the results
of such a system, no man with a modern outlook would give it serious
consideration, because it is arithmetically impossible for every child
to absorb the whole time of an adult tutor. The system is therefore
one which can only be employed by a privileged caste; in a just world,
its existence would be impossible. The modern man, though he may seek
special advantages for his own children in practice, does not consider
the theoretical problem solved except by some method of education
which could be open to all, or at least to all whose capacities render
them capable of profiting by it. I do not mean that the well-to-do
should, here and now, forego educational opportunities which, in the
existing world, are not open to all. To do that would be to sacrifice
civilization to justice. What I do mean is that the educational system
we must aim at producing in the future is one which gives to every boy
and girl an opportunity for the best that exists. The ideal system of
education must be democratic, although that ideal is not immediately
attainable. This, I think, would, nowadays, be pretty generally
conceded. In this sense, I shall keep democracy in view. Whatever
I shall advocate will be capable of being universal, though the
individual should not meantime sacrifice his children to the badness
of what is common, if he has the intelligence and the opportunity to
secure something better. Even this very attenuated form of democratic
principle is absent from the treatises of Locke and Rousseau. Although
the latter was a disbeliever in aristocracy, he never perceived the
implications of his disbelief where education was concerned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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