“Children’s mental health is very important, sometimes even more important than physical health. However, parents usually ignore this idea.” John Locke, the author of “Some Thought Concerning Education”, wrote a quite long letter to his friend Edward Clarke, to advise his friend to educate his children who are living in 17thcentury in England. John Locke proposed that a child should be taught in moral, physical health, and academic progress. Each section is split into various circumstances, how to treat and react under different conditions. The text was written in information format, with advising tone, John Locke also said that these things should be done, even though it means to ignore some of the traditions from England. The author’s use of presenting examples, providing history and organization of the letter for each cast to reveals the theme of education.
Before looking into the letter, we have to understand the history back in 17th century in Great Britain. Back then, Britain had dominated the trades over the sea, and it brought wealth to the merchants. These aroused the economics of Britain, and many of the nobility household began to have servants and strict manner for themselves. However, the servants didn’t receive much education as nobility, they didn’t have great manners or actions just like their master. Some children neglect by their parents began to associate with the servants and began to have bad habits. In order to avoid such consequences, John Locke highly suggested his friend to teach child well in 3 different subjects. In the book, there is also a part where John Locke mentioned about his point of view about servants. He described the servants as “vulgar and not well-educated people” (Locke 27). Clearly, in didn’t trust servants more than he trust parents to teach their child.
Within the book, the very first part of the book was concentrated in physical health. According to John Locke, everything makes us happy follow behind physical health. He described that there is mo one born with perfect health, but everyone’s health is influenced by multiple factors from their environment. He even included very specific details, what we think as unnecessary. For example, John Locke given an example with washing child’s feet. “I will also advise his feet to be washed every day in cold water… with the poor people’s children, gone bone-foot, who, by the means, come to be so reconciled by custom to wet in their feet, that they take no colder or harm by it” (Locke 7). He stated a wealthy child, will get cold more easily when he touched cold water, compare to the poor child, who had a lot of exposures to cold water before. He reasoned that this should be act, not only because for health, also for hygiene issues. Personally, I think agree to his statement, because I take cold water shower in winter, too. And it feels like it gives me protection barrier to cold, since then I never got cold by the time, I started to take cold water shower. Furthermore, he gave few more examples, to indicate his idea was right. All the other health issues were similarly organized as this one, given topic, write down subject, therapy, reasons and example.
Overviewing the letter, we can see all the texts are written in topic, subject, explanation, treatments and sometimes example order format. Since the letter was for convincing and telling how to teach kids, he wrote the letter in logical way. He wrote the letter in this way because he then can enable his friend to better understand how and why his children should be treated like that. Every single point he made followed his ordering. For instant, in the earliest part of his book, the very first paragraph, he briefly talked about it. “A sound mind in a sound body, is a story but full description of a happy state this world… better for anything else” (Locke 1). Then, start from second paragraph, he began to write all the subjective things under first paragraph, such as warmth, air, swimming etc. Within each paragraph he first described the situations, giving treatment idea, then sometimes example. As like from second page of his book, “I shall not need to mention swimming… this that saves many a man’s life… then I think nothing need to be said to encourage it (Locke 2). Just like this, every situation in the book was labeled in same way, which proved that the idea why structured his paragraph like this, he was trying to convince why everything should be done, and how. The author used a logical format to enable reader to understand why they should follow the John Locke’s idea.
“Some Thought Concerning Education” revealed the purpose of education by stating the examples, giving background information and specific letter structure. John Locke wanted to tell why and how the education should be done in moral, physical education and academic progress. He logically stated the reasoning and examples to trying to convince the readers.
Work Citation
Locke, John. Some Thought Concerning Education. playpen.meraka.csir.co.za/~acdc/education/Dr_Anvind_Gupa/Learners_Library_7_March_2007/Resources/books/John%20Locke.pdf.
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