Locke's Vs. Rousseau's Views on Child Development

John Locke (1632-1734) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) were both early modern social contrast theorists who had different views and methods on how to best educate our children in their early age. Both Locke and Rousseau believe reason and freedom to be two of the most important components to raise our children. Although they both believe the above mentioned components are extremely important, they seem to take different directions. Locke believes that humans are born with innate ideas or instincts and that they learn their values and develop their behavior based on what they see around them, in their external environment. Rousseau, on the other hand, believes that children are born with their natural instincts and should be let free so they could explore life, learn by themselves and act according to whatever their minds tell them instead of being told what's wrong and what's right. I believe that Locke's perspective is more understandable and proper when raising our children; children do learn from their external environment. Therefore, parents should make sure that what their children see hear and experience either at home or at school, are properly adjusted for their age so that their children start growing up with a decent, educated manner.

Although Locke strongly believes that children are born with blank minds, he recognizes that they have natural inclinations from which personality comes. For Locke, the best way to educate our children is to instruct their minds and shape their natural tendencies and parents need to take care of this at a very early age, when the child haven't started school yet. Rousseau thinks the opposite; he believes that children should learn by their own instincts and not be forced into learning. I believe that Locke's version is more effective because it has been shown that children learn a lot from their peers at school as well as from the media. If parents don't start teaching their children values and proper ways to behave at a very early age, it is going to become much more difficult by the time the child gets to go to school and experience different behaviors and situations from which they are going to learn. As an outcome, children could learn bad habits such as violence and disrespect towards their parents. That is the reason why Locke believes that home education is more efficient than school education for our children because of the bad influences they could encounter at school while at home, they are being taught by their parents.

Locke also believes that there are fundamental qualities that all children share which are: curiosity, pride, desire for liberty and want of dominion. Locke advises parents to watch their children when they are not supervised, when they feel completely free to do whatever they want, because that is when parents will be able to find out many of the hidden inclinations that the child may have. It is also a great opportunity