“I can not forbear to say, I would have my gentleman learn a trade, a manual trade; nay, two or three, but one more particularly.”[137]
Rousseau will say the same: “Recollect that it is not talent that I require of you; it is a trade, a real trade, a purely mechanical art, in which the hands work more than the head.”
But Locke, in having his gentleman learn carpentry or agriculture, especially designed that this physical labor should lend the mind a diversion, an occasion for relaxation and repose, and secure to the body a useful exercise. Rousseau is influenced by totally different ideas. What he wants is, first, that through an apprenticeship to a trade, Émile may protect himself against need in case a revolutionary crisis should deprive him of his wealth. In the second place, Rousseau obeys his social, we might even say his socialistic, preoccupations. Work, in his view, is a strict duty, from which no one can exempt himself. “Rich or poor, every idle citizen is a knave.”
221. Working Schools.—Although Locke is almost exclusively preoccupied with classical studies and with a gentleman’s education, nevertheless he has not remained completely a stranger to questions of primary instruction. In 1697 he addressed to the English government a remarkable document on the importance of organizing “working schools” for the children of the poor. All children over three and under fourteen years of age are to be collected in homes where they will find labor and food. In this way Locke thought to contend against immorality and pauperism. He would find a remedy for the idleness and vagabondage of the child, and lighten the care of the mother who is absorbed in her work. He would also, through habits of order and discipline, train up steady men and industrious workmen. In other terms, he attempted a work of social regeneration, and the tutor of gentlemen became the educator of the poor.
222. Locke and Rousseau.—In the Émile we shall frequently find passages inspired by him whom Rousseau calls “the wise Locke.” Perhaps we shall admire even more the practical qualities and the good sense of the English educator when we shall have become acquainted with the chimeras of his French imitator. In the case of Locke, we have to do, not with an author who wishes to shine, but with a man of sense and judgment who expresses his opinions, and who has no other pretense than to understand himself and to be comprehended by others. To appreciate the Thoughts at their full value, they should not be read till after having re-read the Émile, which is so much indebted to them. On coming from the reading of Rousseau, after the brilliant glare and almost the giddiness occasioned his reader by a writer of genius whose imagination is ever on the wing, whose passion urges him on, and who mingles with so many exalted truths, hasty paradoxes, and noisy declamations, it is like repose and a delicious unbending to the spirit to go to the study of Locke, and to find a train of thought always equable, a style simple and dispassionate, an author always master of himself, always correct, notwithstanding some errors, and a book, finally, filled, not with flashes and smoke, but with a light that is agreeable and pure.
[223. Analytical Summary.—1. This study illustrates the fact that the aims and methods of education are determined by the types of thought, philosophical, political, religious, scientific, and social, that happen to be in the ascendent; and also the tendency of the human mind to adopt extreme views.
2. The subjective tendency of human thought is typified by the Socratic philosophy, and the objective tendency by the Baconian philosophy; and from these two main sources have issued two distinctive schools of educators, the formalists and the realists, the first holding that the main purpose of education is discipline, training, or formation, and the other, that this purpose is furnishing instruction or information. This line is distinctly drawn in the seventeenth century, and the two schools are typified by Malebranche and Locke.
3. The spirit of reaction is exhibited in the opposition to classical studies, in the effort to convert study into a diversion, in the use of milder means of discipline, and in the importance attached to useful studies. In these particulars the reaction of the sixteenth century is intensified.]
FOOTNOTES:
[128] Rollin, Traité des études, Tome IV. p. 335.