" [EU: I.III, 3]
Locke consistently favored the role played by parents in early childhood education for he argued that children learn best when they are exposed to knowledge from an early age by their parents. Nurturing by adults was thus an essential component of Locke's education philosophy.
However Rousseau did not agree with such intervention. He felt that a child could develop his mental capacities best when allowed to use his own reason without supervision of a guide. The role of nature is more important in Rousseau's education philosophy and hence he opposed Locke's views on nurturing. Rousseau felt a child had the natural capacity to make sense of his surroundings, gain knowledge from it on his own and hence self-educate himself. He thus doesn't need to depend on adults but rather...
He thus encouraged freedom and non-habitual learning: He explained that a child must not form habit so to "prepare him early for the enjoyment of
liberty and the
exercise of his powers; leave his body its natural habits; enable him always to be master of himself and, as soon as he acquires a will, always to carry out its dictates."
Locke and Rousseau did not see eye-to-eye on the issue of childhood education. While Locke encouraged habitual learning, Rousseau felt that reason and reason alone should guide a child and not any habits or guides. Both supported freedom and liberty in
learning but in different manner and hence while a child under Locke's philosophy was bound to learn more through nurturing, Rousseau's child would learn more through nature.
References
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Peter H. Nidditch. New York: Oxford UP, 1975.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Emile, Julie and Other Writings. Edited by R.L. Archer. New York: Barron, 1964.
Rousseau, Emile, Julie and Other Writings, 80.
