After reading John Locke’s”experience “Rene Descartes’s”book of the world” and Jean Jacques Rousseau”book of nature”. I found that they were all disagree with school system.
Rene Descartes stated that school isn’t the only way of learning education, people should always get out of what can only see, go outside of school, have the freedom of gaining education of what they really need. Descartes believed that everything has an answer, but in order for him to believe the answer is to prove the answer by himself. And that is the reason Descartes didn’t believed in school systems, he did not like the way of school educate students, which is giving out an answer without proving it. Which i found it is similar to John Locke’s “experience”, John Locke believed everything that we learned from life are from experience. He states that, “children and idiots have not the least apprehension (Locke, page 2)” proving that knowledge isn’t something you’re born with. Locke also questions, “Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge?” and answers this stating, “in one word, from experience (Locke, page 5).”
On the other hand Rousseau more focus on nature and education, he believe that people can also learn education by teaching themselves, because as we growing up, we are learning little by little, from our parents, from our neighbor, from anyone that are around us, and eventually from ourselves.
According to their points of view, we should all stay home, teach ourselves, study on our own, go travel, learning things that only interested us, and don’t cares about grades, we don’t need school. But question, without grades, how can school determinant whether you are qualified for the certification or not? And without a certification how can look for a job? And now it comes to without a job how can you survive? How can the society be balance, if no one is willing to go to school and only learn what they interest? So in order to be succeed in the society today, maybe school isn’t the only of learning education, but definitely the best way of learning education.
So I think some of the questions you ask at the end are good, but they are also 21st century questions imposed onto a 18th century philosophy. I will speak a little more about this with the lecture today, but one thing to think of is that I think Rousseau was not interested in educating to a certificate. He was interested in making a citizen who could then go onto learn particular points of study. Rousseau’s Emile would always be able to survive because he would know how to make a fire and a tent and to endure hunger and other trials.