Amos Bronson Alcott (1830): Observations on the Principles and Methods of Infant Instruction

 

(1799-1888)

Amos Bronson Alcott is undoubtedly less known than his daughter, Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women. Even in the field of philosophy, he is overshadowed by the fame of his associates, Emerson and Thoreau, who, together with Alcott, were part of the so-called Transcendentalist movement.

What we are looking at in this article is Alcott’s work as a reformer of education. Alcott himself worked as a school teacher, but we are especially interested in his theoretical work on the topic of education, and particularly on infant instruction, where the infants in question are meant to be under the age of primary school, from two to seven years. Alcott’s main principle is the time-honoured idea, familiar from Plato onwards, that education means not just external pouring of information in a person's mind, but development of propensities already nascent within the mind.

Underlying Alcott’s ideal of education is also a notion of what it means to be a human. Humans are for Alcott active beings with a twofold nature, animal and intellectual. While the aim of education is especially the development of the intellectual side of the human being, the animal side should not be ignored. This is especially true of small children, where animal nature is still stronger than intellectual nature. Like the whole human being, their animal nature is also active. Thus, Alcott concludes, the natural physical energy of children should not be bound down, but allowed to develop through playing. By letting children use their physical energy, the teacher pacifies their animal nature and creates room also for the development of the intellect.

Children seek primarily enjoyment, Alcott says. He thinks this is a perfectly natural desire, but the task of education is just to direct this desire to lasting sources of enjoyment. Still, because small children prefer very immediate forms of enjoyment, their instruction must  remain at a very concrete level and leave abstract reasoning for the higher levels of education. Route memorising is to be replaced by amusing stories, pictures, music and poetry.

Alcott also endorses the idea that human beings feel a natural sympathy toward one another and are thus by nature communal animals. This implies, Alcott suggests, that the teacher should encourage the use of this natural sympathy and especially use it to build up the conscience of the children. The best way to do this, Alcott think, is that the teachers themselves become an object of children’s affection and thus serve as their role models, showing toward them the same kindness they want to awaken in them. If this succeeds, he concludes, the children become, in a proper Kantian fashion like law to themselves.

James Mill

(1773-1836)

Some thinkers have had the misfortune of being overshadowed by both their predecessors and their successors. This is true e.g. of Karl Reinhold, a philosopher known often just as the link from Kant to Fichte. A similar fate has been experienced by James Mill, who is often regarded just as the person to transfer Bentham’s utilitarianism to his more famed son, John Stuart Mill.

Even so, James Mill was an interesting philosopher, with a wide range of interests. Indeed, this variety calls for some selection. I will not look at his role as a historian of India, although this was a work close to his professional interests as an administrator in East India Company. I will also ignore his economic writings, mainly because Mill's main achievement was to inspire David Ricardo to complete his book on economy. Instead, I shall focus on Mill’s political essays, the most famous of which is undoubtedly his essay on government.

Mill begins his look on the best form of government with a conundrum. Clearly, pure democracy is impossible, he says, because every time a governmental decision is required, we cannot go around asking everyone what to do. Then again, aristocracies and monarchies can - and even more strongly, Mill appears to say - tend to devolve into dictatorships where rulers follow their own interests. Sometimes solution was seen to be in mixing democracy with monarchy and/or aristocracy. Mill noted that this would mean merely that the government would not be unified, but a battlefield of the different interests of the nobles and the commons.

Mill’s simple answer is representation - the decision must be made by people representing the real owners of the political power. Evidently, representation is pointless in case of monarchies and aristocracies and does not remove the threat of tyranny. One might naturally ask whether the representational democracies don’t also face the threat of tyranny, in case representatives gain too much power. Mill’s answer is that if the representatives are regularly changed then they will have an incentive to rule for the best of the whole community - after all, they will soon be just regular citizens.

Mill’s account of representation has some notable gaps. First of all, it is a bit unclear whether Mill really suggests that all the representatives will be changed at appointed time, without any chance of same representatives being re-elected. A more important problem is Mill’s somewhat naive assumption that the interests of an individual representative will in every case coincide with the supposed interest of the whole community. Indeed, Mill seems to leave quite out of consideration the possibility that representatives might make decisions benefiting just some factions within the people. Mill does try to prevent this possibility by rejecting all systems where representatives are voted to represent certain professions or class. Yet, even if one would not officially be a representative of certain class, she might still feel the interests of this particular class as aligning with one’s own and make decisions based on it.

Despite his rather republican conclusions, Mill at once takes back his statement that mixed governments could not work and notes that a king and a House of Lords could still be maintained, if the representative government would find some use for them in administration. Mill’s suggestion might have been just a political move, meant to allay concerns that he would be deposing British royalty. Even so, he makes the further conservative move that voting could have an income limit. He doesn’t want the limit to be too great, which would make the system practically aristocratic, but allows a small limit, because, he says, people with little money can take care of the interests of those with no money. Furthermore, although Mill does not want rich people to buy votes for themselves and therefore endorses a secret ballot, he casually notes that representatives will most likely be rich and aristocratic in the good sense of the term, that is, capable men.

My use of the word “men” is quite deliberate. Mill states in clear terms that women are to be treated like children: they do not take part in voting, neither as voters not as candidates, because, Mill says, their interests are taken care of by adult men. Nowadays, Mill’s reasoning seems just preposterous. Even if one would believe that fathers and husbands always have the interests of their children and wives in their mind, the case of orphaned, unmarried women would still need some further solution.

Mill’s system of government has, then, an elitist streak. Indeed, he notes that while even a nation of mere uneducated people would benefit from representational democracy, its true worth is shown in nations with a large, educated middle class. Then again, Mill’s middle class is not a closed club, but people can become part of it by educating themselves. Indeed, Mill endorsed the idea that all people could and should receive education, with the exception of those that have some clear syndrome making learning difficult. This is the part where Mill’s philosophy most closely touches what was classically meant by philosophy, as Mill notes that finding best means of education requires first determining what human mind is like and what makes it happy. We’ll see in a later post what to make of this side of Mill’s philosophy.

In addition to representative government, Mill also spoke for freedom of press. According to him, there are only two cases where it should be restricted. Firstly, press should refrain from publishing slanderous lies told of individual persons. They could still make headlines about true scandals, except in cases where scandals are not true scandals, although irrationally held to be so because of outdated morals. Secondly, press should not hinder the proper activities of government. This does not mean that government could not be criticized, and in fact, Mill takes it to be the duty of free press, because people need to no when a time for a revolution is at hand.

Marquis de Condorcet: Historical picture of the progress of human spirit (1795)

Condorcet (1743-1794)

At least after World Wars, any talk of inevitable progress in history seems out of place – every apparent step forward appears to have led to even more horrible atrocities. Yet, the notion of progress seemed so natural for over a century that it should be seriously considered, even if the idea feels naive these days.

Condorcet's Tableau historique des progrès de l'esprit humain is as infatuated with the idea of progression as a book can be. Its picture of human history is not a straightforward line of progression, because Condorcet does accept that the development of humanity could stop from time to time – for instance, in quite a traditional fashion, Condorcet paints Middle Ages as a time of cultural stagnation and even decay. Still, the main theme of Condorcet's work is one of on-going development.

Condorcet begins from pre-historical times. Of course, he lived in time, when no reliable knowledge of the early development of humanity was available and he was thus forced to speculate on many important questions. Yet, he did raise a central question – why did particularly human beings gain the power to form huge civilisations? Condorcet notes some peculiarities in the physical form of humans – e.g. two hands give them advantage in forming tools. But the most important element explaining the rise of human kind was language, Condorcet says.

An important early invention was agriculture, which helped to sustain human life and allowed people to gather into large collections. This centralisation of human population is not just pure development, Condorcet says, because it also led to centralisation of wealth and power. More remote offspring of this current is warfare – it makes no sense to conquer a roving band of hunter-gatherers, but it is possible to conquer villages and towns. Such conquests led to even further imbalance in society, since the conquering class of people usually received more rights than the people conquered.

One major theme in Condorcet's writing – and indeed, in whole Enlightenment – is the supposed deviousness of clergy. Clerics had power, because they had some important knowledge, for instance, about movement of stars and about proper times for planting seeds. Clergy also had the access to alphabets, early versions of which were often cumbersome to read and write. Although holders of knowledge, priests also mixed truths with errors and even outright lies, which helped them to control the human population.

Condorcet's rather fanciful conspiracy theory sets the tone for the rest of the book. Greeks began the process of liberating reason from superstition, but because they couldn't obliterate the power of priests and other tyrants, the progress was halted and continued only in renaissance. Condorcet emphasises especially the development of science at the beginning of modern age, but also the invention of printing press, which kept truth alive, even under censure. Then final phase of the human development begins then with the American and French Revolutions, which helped to eradicate final social inequalities.

It is especially Condorcet's speculation of the future of humankind, which interests us. It comes as no surprise that Condorcet believes in even further progression, which could be forestalled only by a barbarian invasion. I already noted that Condorcet believed that French revolution had resulted in destruction of all privileges traditionally given to some class of people. Condorcet went even so far as to suppose that in the new society even the genders would have equal status. This does not mean that Condorcet would have held the idea that women could be as valuable as men in society. Especially in case of mathematical sciences, Condorcet believed that females could never obtain the highest rank of a creative genius – a common presupposition of his day.

Condorcet also didn't think that all inequality could be eradicated forever, because he supposed people to have different natural talents, which inevitably leads to e.g. differences in wealth. Yet, like any student of Adam Smith, Condorcet appears to have believed that a kind of invisible hand would keep economy balanced and fair, as long as all traditional privileges were cancelled.

We might ask if Condorcet's hope of diminishing inequality could be nothing but a phantom, if he was not willing to give the state any power to regulate the economy. Yet, Condorcet puts all his chips on education – a very Enlightenment-like move. Apparently all that is enough is just teaching everyone to look things from a more general perspective and especially making them learn probability calculus. Armed with this tool, a person could just calculate her chances of getting any profit from some actions – and by seeing, for instance, that potential punishments overcame all possible benefits of a crime, anyone would be convinced of not committing a crime.

We are starting to see the weak side of Condorcet's science fiction, that is, blind reliance on the powers of human reason. It is fantastic to think that everyone could become a master calculator, able and willing to use mathematics for finding out the best course of action. Yet, even if such a fabulous discipline could really exist in any but quite rudimentary fashion, we might still be skeptical of everyone actually using such a behavorial calculus – and having the strength of will to follow its advice, even against strong temptations.

Similar naivety occurs also in Condorcet's notion of international politics: he believes that the value of commerce would inevitably lead to a time of peace, since in the new liberated phase of human history no country would in the long run benefit from a war. Still, Condorcet does allow patriotism, and indeed, believes it to be a necessary part of the life of a good citizen – one must love one's country and all its denizens. Again quite naively, Condorcet thinks that in a good society, patriotism cannot be in conflict with cosmopolitan and open attitude toward other nations.

Mary Wollstonecraft: A vindication of the rights of woman (1792)

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)

Works that begin some field of study or movement are sometimes quite different from what works belonging to that field or movement generally are. Development of such fields and movements leads often to some idiosyncracies, which weren't discernible in the seminal works. Thus, it is no wonder that the major work of the supposed founder of feminism May Wollstonecraft, feels often quite alien in its tone, when compared to later feminist works.

The feeling of strangeness is especially prominent, when one thinks about the goal and purpose of the Vindication. Historically, feminism is famous for advocating rights of women. On the contrary, Wollstonecraft's book is less about right and more about duty. True, she does speak for giving women more rights, but she justifies this demand by noticing that more rights would make women more useful in the society – classic argument, hailing all the way from Plato. Furthermore, Wollstonecraft is also willing to accept the possibility that women have even naturally inferior intellectual skills – she just wants to point out that their inferiority is no reason for not developing them.

From these quite non-feminist or even antifeminist principles Wollstonecraft develops more progressive ideas, which often seem quite self-evident these days – or at least, they should seem. Education should be provided to all children – preferably, by communities – and particularly girls should not be left without any intellectual stimulus. Furthermore, girls should be allowed to run and play, because exercise improves physical vigour, which is also required for learning. And last, but not least, women should have an equal status in society with men, they should be able and even demanded to work for their living, and if they happen to marry, they should not be held as mere appendages of their husbands.

Although all these ideas seem so evident to us – and most likely seemed quite radical back in the day – Wollstonecraft's duty-centric viewpoint gives them a peculiar light. Wollstonecraft's starting point is the prevailing picture of women as irrational beings who follow their instinct and fancy and who are governed by sensibility. Wollstonecraft's thesis is that these supposed peculiarities of woman nature are just results of their upbringing – if women are not given anything other to care about than their outward appearance, they won't in the end care about anything else.

What Wollstonecraft shares with the writers she criticizes is the idea that in their current state women simply are inferior – although she is careful to emphasize that this inferiority is not to be blamed on the women or their nature. Wollstonecraft holds the old idea that certain lifestyle, which might be called sensual, has a lower than value than a lifestyle that is supposedly based on reason. In other words, when women think of nothing but making themselves beautiful, Wollstonecraft implies, they are not just wasting their skills, but they are wasting their whole lives and even living badly.

To be fair, Wollstonecraft's criticism is not in any sense gender-specific. Indeed, she is quite willing to condemn men who live in the same manner. In fact, she suggests that both soldiers and nobility often resemble women in their behaviour – soldiers learn to not think and to just look good in their uniforms, while noblemen are spoiled and pampered and therefore fail to become dutiful citizens. Still, it appears quite surprising that Wollstonecraft would go so far in expressing the inferiority of a certain lifestyle, when modern feminism is more about liberating everyone, no matter what their gender, and letting them decide their lifestyles for themselves, without any explicit or implicit pressure to behave in a certain manner. Yet, Wollstonecraft just is a child of her times – after all, the urge to educate humankind to supposedly better lifestyle was quite an established idea, again, at least since the time of Plato.

Wollstonecraft shows her reliance on tradition also in her motives for emphasizing duties. True, she admits, if we would only live this one life, there would be no reason to condemn a life of sensibility and everyone would have the right to increase the amount of pleasures they experience. Indeed, she appears to say, in this case even men would have no reason to let women live up to their potential, because they would get more pleasure out of women in their childlike condition. But, Wollstonecraft points out, this is not the only life we'll live, since God has destined us to another life beyond death. Thus, behind Wollstonecraft's feminism lies a religious mindset.

Even with these peculiarities, Wollstonecraft's work is a milestone in history of thinking. Rarely before this was the state of women considered in such a reasonable fashion, and while the suggested improvements were at first ridiculed, they did eventually lead to positive social developments – what more could we ask of a philosopher?