1
The following text was originally published in PROSPECTS: the quarterly review of education
(Paris, UNESCO: International Bureau of Education), vol. 24, no. 1/2, 1994, p. 61?76.
©UNESCO: International Bureau of Education, 1999
This document may be reproduced free of charge as long as acknowledgement is made of the source.
JOHN LOCKE
(1632?1704)
Richard Aldrich
John Locke was a great educator on several counts. In an immediate sense he was himself a
practitioner and publicist of good education. This profile is concerned with his life in education, his
theory of knowledge, his advice to parents on the upbringing of their children, and his educational
priorities with specific reference to the curriculum. But Locke also made significant contributions to
human understanding in such fields as theology, economics, medicine and science, and particularly
political philosophy. This dual prominence places Locke, arguably the most significant educationist
in English history, in a long and honourable tradition. As Nathan Tarcov observed: ?philosophers
have been able to stand out in the realms of both educational theory and political theory ever since
the two fields of thought first flowed from their common fountainhead, the Republic of Plato'
(Tarcov, 1984, p. 1?2).
Seventeenth-century England
In the seventeenth century England experienced two revolutions. In 1649, after years of civil war,
the first culminated in the execution of King Charles I of the Stuart family and the establishment of
a Commonwealth, replaced in 1653 by a Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell. In 1660 the
monarchy was restored under Charles II and, on his death in 1685, the throne passed peaceably
enough to his younger brother, James. Once aga ...