Locke Vs Rousseau

The limits of Rousseau and Locke’s educational theories

The education of woman

Before the Age of Enlightenment, the education for girls were ignored for centuries. Increasingly importance has been attached to the education of woman since the Age of Enlightenment. During the eighteenth century, there were increasingly number of girls being educated in schools rather than at home, but these school excluded female students from subjects of science and politics. However, in today’s educational reality, there is still a lot of gender bias cause by the traditional view of women.

From Emile, Book 5: Sophie talks about a girl's education in the Enlightenment, about women's rights, and about learning to read in the C18th. According to the characteristics

And his theories contradict with each other. He indicates man is born equal. There is nothing different between man and woman except their sex, then why woman ought to be in subjection to man. A woman has rights to receive education, then why she has no rights to choose what she learns. Rousseau viewed women’s options as totally limited to the roles of mother and wife. The purpose of a woman getting educated is being a better person instead of being useful for her future role as wife, mother and housekeeper. And furthermore, we should design different course content based on boys and girls’ physical and moral

He complains that children of the lower class are a burden to the parish and are usually idle. Therefore, he suggests that “working school” should be set up for those children so that they can be educated to be a good worker when they grow up and make profits for the parish. (Locke, Goldie, 1997) He believes that Some Thoughts Concerning Education applied only to children of the wealthy and the middle-class. There is one of his conclusion in Some Thoughts Concerning Education: "think[s] a Prince, a Nobleman, and an ordinary Gentleman's Son, should have different Ways of Breeding."(Locke,