John Locke On Education Analysis

Prior to the 18th century, there was very little literature available that was directed toward child readers. As more literature was released for this category of readers, it was thought to be made to have a very specific structure: any stories intended for children were meant to incorporate both delight and instruction. John Locke wrote Some Thoughts Concerning Education in 1692, which expressed his opinion on education of children, and literature directed towards children. He had very clear ideas which both agreed and disagreed with some of the other main opinions at the time, about everything from socialization of children and their ability to reason to some extent, to the need for distinctions between hierarchical classes remaining a major …show more content…
They emphasize the importance of maintaining the balance, because pure instruction will bore a child and not keep them engaged in the lessons they are reading, while pure delight will be leading them away from learning to be virtuous as they read. Locke expresses his liking of fables which “delight and entertain a child, may yet afford useful reflections to a grown man” (26) as being a good middle ground of instruction and delight. Cinderilla has a large portion of it committed to including morality for children to learn, such as how being kind and holding yourself with good grace has more positive impact than outer beauty ever could, and yet still manages to entertain. When the godmother is introduced she is stated to be a fairy, and they include the magical aspect that was brought in by the fairy godmother throughout the tale to keep the child reader interested. Not only does the fairy godmother conjure up a coach, horse, and a coach-man by “having touched him with her wand” (Perrault, 2), but at the end of the night the magic fades and the fairy godmother has to do it all again the next night. Including this sense of enjoyment and delight in reading really encourages the child reader to continue until the end of the story, where the moral is typically revealed in plain in case the child could …show more content…
They laid the groundwork for the types of stories that were acceptable for children, what should be included and what should not, and how all of society and hierarchy was to be viewed in this stories. It was a time when children were finally able to stop reading purely for religious reasons, and much more fiction was available including fairy tales, rational moralist tales, Sunday school and evangelical readings, as well as the previous non-fiction categories such as puritan writing and chapbooks. The fiction that was now available, thanks to these 3 influential individuals, was centered around instruction and delight to encourage the child readers to enjoy reading rather than doing it simply because they were told, while still instilling positive qualities into