Figure 1.--

The educated elites of 18th-century Europe began a serious review of their inherited institutions and ideologies, reflecting upon 17th-century advancements in scientific thought, technological innovation, and a broadened knowledge of the world beyond European and Mediterranean cultures. Optimism about the power of human reason, especially when linked with empirical methods of inquiry, led to queries about the possibility of improving the human condition. With a view to the contributions of luminary figures such as Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, John Locke, René Descartes-to name only a few of the most prominent iters-18th-century "philosophes," men and women of the Enlightenment, asked whether or not the successes stemming from the application of reason and science to the natural world might be achievable also in the social world. If the physical world obeys such laws as Newton formulated, might not scientific inquiry reveal that the social world also obeys certain natural laws?

The mind set that posed questions about natural laws of human nature and society tended to turn attention away from traditional theological accounts of the human condition and focused attention rather on questions concerning the observable environments in which people lived. "Environment" was equated to a considerable extent with "education," i.e., what one learns by "experience." Hence, we understand John Locke's observation in his Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693): ". . . of all the Men we meet with, Nine Parts of Ten are what they are, Good or Evil, useful or not, by their education" (p. 2). From this point of view, which was so different from the traditional, pessimistic outlook, inherited characteristics play a much smaller role in determining what a person might become. It is but a short step from the assumption that environment (or education) is the principal force in shaping people to the assumption that careful organization of the environment can change people in desired directions. The next step is also short: if environment is the source of one's education, then one's education should be deliberately organized accordingly. And here is the final step: an environment deliberately organized for the purpose of fostering selected learning is a school. Hence, calls for school reform were to be expected among leading thinkers of the Enlightenment. French writers such as Claude Helvetius and the Marquis de Condorcet, and American writers such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, spoke systematically and powerfully to the subject of school reform.

Consistent with the Enlightenment faith in reason, many enlightenment writers on education directed attention to the importance of cultivating reflective thinking, although some were more explicit than others. Should everyone be taught to think reflectively, according to the leading figures? Answering the question is complicated because opinion differed along several lines, especially with regard to assumptions about limits to native capacity, gender, and age group. Just as Locke had assumed individual differences in native endowment and potential, so did Thomas Jefferson, but Jefferson proposed for the state of Virginia that all "free white boys and girls" should have three years of schooling paid for from public tax coffers. In contrast, Jean J. Rousseau argued in Emile (1762) that his student must be tutored at home rather than sent to school, given the corrupted condition of French social institutions, that the natural order of human development dictated that attention to reflective thinking must not come to soon, and, moreover, that it is a natural development only for boys; Nature disposes girls to think differently. Mary Wollstonecraft cogently argues the contrary.

Fairness requires noting that Rousseau wrote from a vantage point sometimes called Romantic Naturalism, that he is less representative of the mainstream of Enlightenment educational thought than is, for example, Claude Helvetius or the Marquis de Condorcet. Whereas mainstream Enlightenment writers are enthusiastic about social progress though science, technology, and education, Rousseau expresses views much less sanguine on the subject. Rather than a concentration on general human progress, most of his writings on education bespeak preoccupation with "reasons of the heart," with the development of an authentic self. (Critics are skeptical of the degree to which this concern extended to girls.) Compared to Rousseau, Wollstonecraft's ideas are in many respects closer to the main assumptions of Enlightenment educational thought. With regard to the education of girls, her recommendations are clearly far in advance of most of her contemporaries.

However the faith in reason might translate into provisions for curriculum and instruction, whatever the limits by gender, age group, or other demographic divisions, Enlightenment writers on education tended to look away from ecclesiastical institutions for the advancement of education. They had little faith in the capability of the religious establishment to provide the kind of education they thought appropriate to modernity. Most mistrusted the traditional curriculum embodied by church related schools, which they tended to associate with the inculcation of authoritarian, mystical, even superstitious, habits of mind.

Created: October 2, 2000 Last updated: October 2, 2000