John Locke first published Some Thoughts Concerning Education in 1693. More than three centuries have since passed and in that time Karl Marx wrote The Communist Manifesto, Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, Charles Darwin rewrote the history of the entire world and Nietzsche declared that God was dead. The system of education, however, has undergone such little substantial evolution that—as difficult as it may be to believe—most of what Locked proposes in his more than three-hundred year old tome is just as controversial today as it was when they first appeared in print and, indeed, the chances of getting his book into the curriculum is probably not as good and Marx's making it there.
The foundation of the American academic theory, funding and assessment for the past half-century—standardized tests—would be the first thing in the trash if Locke’s vision were put into the place tomorrow. That Locke’s commonsensical observation that “memories should be employ'd, but not in learning by rote whole pages out of books, which, the lesson being once said, and that task over, are delivered up again to oblivion and neglected for ever” simply has not been grasped by American’s education system at any time almost defies logic. Either that, or it ironically goes to prove his argument since those most committed to maintaining the systemically flawed approach of rote memory across the entire curricula are usually those speaking loudest in support for it on the basis of it being how they were taught that way and they turned out just fine.
Even if that is so, who’s to say they wouldn’t have turned out more than fine if they had been taught in more creative ways adopting the tactics Locke presents as alternatives. The single most controversial idea developed by Locke also flies directly in the face of how those who turned out just fine over the centuries were taught. Standardized testing, reductive approaches to curricula to focus on the three “R’s” have proven every bit as misguided as believing that arithmetic actually starts with the letter “R.” The irony is that that grammatically incorrect shorthand for an entire educational ideology is actually more at home within Locke’s approach than the approach it defines. The fundamental tenet of Locke’s ideological approach is an outright reject of America’s lifelong attempt to make the learning process homogeneously applied through standardizing toward a goal of collective mediocrity rather than toward individual excellence: “give them a liking and inclination to what you suppose to them to be learn'd, and that will engage their industry and application.”
In other words, by all means make sure that reading, writing and arithmetic necessary to survive in the workplace are taught, but don’t automatically assume that no children can learn math by learning how to play a musical instrument or improve their reading skills by taking a dance class or even become a better writer by taking a P.E class every single day instead of just twice a week. The individual suggestion offered by Locke run the gamut from the recognition that without proper nutrition, good learning habits cannot be deployed (a particularly annoying suggestion to those lawmakers seeking to cut the fat from the education budget by doing away with free breakfasts for the poor students) to making sure art, music and dance classes are available to every student who might be interested along with mandating that every single student must also learn some sort of manual trade. What is perhaps most impressive about the many areas of learning covered by Locke is how each and every one manages to connect backward to a single solid and logically reasons center.
The purpose of education is neither complicated nor simple enough to be reduced to just three main disciplines of student. Everything—from nutrition to exercise to teaching to each student’s strength rather their weakness to the process by which new information is apprehended and applied—is designed to fulfill the same goal: creating an adult of sophisticated virtue that naturally recognizes the value of rational conclusions arrived at through critical thinking rather than uncontrolled and misdirected emotional passions.
Every attempt to introduce Locke’s thoughts concerning education into standard practice in the American educational system has so far been most soundly rejected. Usually on the basis of highly inflamed passions rather than critical engagement with most of the inflame passions stimulated over the argument of how to fund the comprehensive overhaul of the system without raising taxes.
