John Locke and Children's Books in Eighteenth-Century England (review)

"Of all the men we meet with," John Locke asserted in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), "nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education. It is that which makes the great difference in mankind."¹ Although Locke's educational treatise was originally writen as a series of letters to Edward Clarke, a wealthy Somerset landowner, and was concerned with the instruction of English gentlemen, Locke intended it to be of universal application: "the well-educating of their children is so much the Duty and concern of Parents, and the Welfare and prosperity of the Nation so much depends on it, that I would have everyone lay it seriously to heart" and "set his Helping Hand to promote everywhere that way of training up youth with regard to their several conditions, which is the easiest, shortest and likeliest to produce vertuous, useful, and able Men in their distinct Callings."

Since, for Locke, the mind was a tabula rasa inscribed by experience, children of all social classes could, ideally, be shaped into productive, "virtuous" members of society through constant exposure to "good impressions." Harmful impressions were to be avoided as much as possible, and, where unavoidable, erased through negative associations. Thus, the role of the educator was to reinforce positive impressions and discourage the formation of negative ones through a process of conditioning.

By the second half of the eighteenth century, the democratization of education implied by Locke's Thoughts and his Essay on Understanding (1690) was beginning to have far-reaching effects on British pedagogical theory throughout England, and, with the emergence of children's literature, children's books became a major vehicle for transmitting Lockean principles to English youth.

In John Locke and Children's Books in Eighteenth-Century England, Samuel Pickering describes how eighteenth century writers for children adopted and adapted Lockean principles in order to shape children on all social levels and prepare them for life in a swiftly changing, upwardly mobile society. Focusing on such themes in children's books as the importance of kindness to animals (to shape a non-violent character), the downgrading of the imagination (and the use of play and recreation to "cozen" children into utilitarian learning), and the new emphasis on proper diet (to strengthen children for life in the material world), Pickering offers an exhaustive description of how writers for children merged Lockean prescriptions with religious, economic and social principles of the time, in order to transform the child into the moral and economic man capable of succeeding in eighteenth century society. Containing extensive illustrations from the texts, John Locke is a major contribution to the study of an important and largely unexplored area of scholarship, and will be of interest to students of history, literature and education as well as of children's literature.

Pickering is at his best when he makes clear the linkages between the texts, their theoretical sources and their social goals. Thus, he demonstrates how Isaac Watts, in advising parents not to allow children to take pleasure in harming animals lest "they learn in Time to practice these Cruelties on their own Kind, and to murder and torture their Fellow-Mortals, or at least be indifferent to their Pain and Distress, so as to occasion it without remorse," melded Locke's theories to the religious underpinnings of his own convictions. In so doing, he attempted to instill in the child those principles of Universal Benevolence which were to appear in the countless Tommy Sandfords and Harry Harmlesses of eighteenth century children's books as unfailing indicators of the virtuous, non-violent character valued by middle-class society.

Locke's distrust of the purely imaginative and his advice that recreation and play be put in the service of learning were similarly adapted to bourgeois goals in books for children. John Newbery's Jack the Giant-Killer (one of a series of "reformed giants" in eighteenth century children's literature) addresses the child as...