A Comparison of the Schooling in Foreign Lands in Gulliver’s Travels Anonymous College

Educational practices have evolved in a multitude of ways throughout human history. In Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, each land that Gulliver visits has its own idea of what education should be like for the citizens there. The first land Gulliver visits, Lilliput, which seems most similar to Gulliver’s home of England in its social structure, is also most similar in terms of educational practices. However, each subsequent land he visits is increasingly different from the schooling that Gulliver is used to. As a whole, the educational practices that Gulliver encounters in the various lands are different from the educational practices in England at the time of the book’s writing in 1726. Swift uses these differing practices to make a commentary on the state of education in early eighteenth-century England. Swift uses Gulliver’s Travels to expose the limits in the English educational system in the early eighteenth century through his depiction of schools in the novel’s various foreign lands.

In describing Lilliput, Swift reveals how the educational system is set up similarly to other historical governments in every aspect of life. In the Nurseries for Males of Noble or Eminent Birth, Gulliver reports how the children are “...