As someone who is consistently involved with caring for and teaching young children, I really enjoyed these chapters on education. I agree with a lot of what Wollstonecraft says. One thing I agreed with that Wollstonecraft brought up was actually a quote from Locke: “‘if the mind be curbed and humbled too much in children; if their spirits be abased and broken much by too strict an hand over them; they lose all their vigour and industry’” (160). Children learn almost everything from their parents. Think about it. An infant knows absolutely nothing about the world so they naturally look to their parents to show them how this whole life thing works. If the parents are constantly shutting down the child’s ideas and confine them into a box of strict expectations, then the child will quickly learn to stay inside that box.
This goes along with another point I agreed with, which is that “children cannot be taught too early to submit to reason” (161). Babies know nothing; they rely on their parents to not only teach them but to show them how much they are expected to know. I cannot stress this enough: children will rise to your expectations. And so, when Wollstonecraft says that it is never too early to teach children reason, I believe it. I know a one year old boy who can identify a hexagon (he points to it and can actually say ‘hexagon’). I don't know about you, but I didn’t know what a hexagon was until I was at least 8. The reason for this boy’s unusual knowledge and advanced vocabulary? His parents started teaching him when he was 7 months old. The expectations placed on a person matter. This is why our public education system is so bad and this is also why high school is so stressful. For the first 14 or so years of our life, the expectations placed on us are not that high. Then we’re suddenly in high school and we’re expected to balance everything that’s going on in our life while also maintaining high test scores. College is a little easier because, by the time we get here, we’ve pretty much learned how to adapt to these higher expectations. In short, expectations shape the person. I’d love to go into more detail on this, but I’m afraid I’ve gone too long already.
P.S. I commented on Gabby’s and Osten’s posts
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