Rousseau versus Locke: political philosophy comparison

Education of Young Children

John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau have both believed in promotion of reason as an essential factor in social contract theories yet their stance on early childhood education differ sharply. Locke principally believed in the role of reason in children's education and considered it primarily parents' duty to educate their children properly: "The well educating of their children is so much the duty and concern of parents, and the welfare and prosperity of the nation so much depends on it, that I would have everyone lay it seriously to heart and […] set his helping hand to promote everywhere that way of training up youth […] which is the easiest, shortest, and likeliest to produce virtuous, useful, and able men in their distinct callings." He felt that children have this innate capacity to reason and to decipher information according to their reasoning faculties. "children commonly get not those general Ideas [of the rational Faculty], nor learn the Names that stand for them, till having for a good while exercised their Reason about familiar and more particular Ideas" (Essay concerning Human understanding (EU): I.II, 14). But while these innate tendencies exist, Locke felt that it was still important to nurture them. The role of nurturing tendencies cannot be ignored in gaining knowledge. He also believed that absence of innate tendencies did not follow that a child wouldn't be able to gain knowledge. It is important they he is exposed to external stimuli and with practice, his mind would open to receive knowledge.

"I deny not, that there are natural tendencies imprinted on the Minds of Men; and that, from the very first instances of Sense and Perception, there are some things, that are grateful, and others that welcome to them; some things that they incline to, and others that they fly: But this makes nothing for innate Characters on the Mind, which are to be the Principles of Knowledge, regulating our Practice." [EU: I.III, 3]

Locke consistently favored the role played by parents in early childhood education for he argued that children learn best when they are exposed to knowledge from an early age by their parents. Nurturing by adults was thus an essential component of Locke's education philosophy.