Time for Everyone to Get Skooled

In Mary Wollstonecraft's chapter XII "On National Education," she makes arguments we have read in previous chapters or discussed in previous classes.  Wollstonecraft focuses on reforming the education system and gaining a meaningful education for women that will, in turn, allow women to aid in the productivity of society and to become better wives, mothers, and citizens.  However, Wollstonecraft focuses on a new area of interest in order to further her previous arguments.  Through the use of new and particularly inflammatory argument support, Wollstonecraft focuses heavily on men and their intricately entwined relationship with women.  Through this heavy focus, Wollstonecraft molds out the new argument that men and women should not only receive equal education, but that they should be educated together throughout their school lives.

The first piece of inflammatory support she brings up is the influence religion has on schooling. Religion is an important part of Wollstonecraft's society and the notion of it negatively impacting the schooling of children is a huge point of contingency.  Wollstonecraft argues that the enforcement of religious worship on school children harms their moral character as "what can be more prejudicial to the moral character than the system of tyranny and abject slavery which is established amongst the boys, to say nothing of the slavery to forms, which makes religion worse than a farce" (300). Morality and moral character are important characteristics to Wollstonecraft, and she has previously stated that tyranny is detrimental to the preservation and formation of proper morality and moral character. To speak of religion as a "system of tyranny" is Wollstonecraft calling out how oppressive religion can be when forced on those unwilling.  Religion, as enforced by the school system, is oppressive due to how it "[endeavours] to confine [people] in one narrow channel" that the "supporters of these establishments, degenerated into puerilities" have created (302).  These oppressive schools lead to a corruption of moral character, according to Wollstonecraft, as the boys who attend these schools "become selfish and vicious" as a result (303).  Wollstonecraft calls for an end to these schools and a creation of "proper day schools" where education will be focused on forming citizens instead an "emulation" of scholars (303).



Then Wollstonecraft calls out the style of instruction used by ushers, or teachers, which is the next fallacy of education during this time.  While nowadays this might not appear to be a particularly offensive topic, ushers were seen as infallible during this time period.  Wollstonecraft eloquently picks apart the instruction style of these infallible ushers and calls attention to how the children learn nothing under the ushers' tutelage. She insists that "the master [A.K.A. - usher] countenances falsehood" and makes the children under him memorize facts instead of promoting learning (304). This method, she says, "stops the progress of gradual improvement" and results in children that meet expectations but do not know how to think.  Vanity is a direct product of children not learning how to think for themselves and the moral character of the child is harmed.

According to Wollstonecraft, the harms delivered to a boy's moral character due to religion in schooling and the "teaching" of ushers are the catalyst to society.  The corruption of a boy's moral character will lead to "little attention paid to the cultivation of modest, amongst men, [which] produces great depravity in all the relationships of society" (307).  The depravity leads to the exploitation of women's modesty and chastity, which in turn directly affects how women are educated to hold spaniel-like affection for men and to be delicate and sensible. Wollstonecraft, as argued in previous chapters, reiterates how a better education for women will end their spaniel-like affection, delicacy, and sensibility.  She goes on to say that an equal education between men and women that is gained together will result in an improvement in both sexes.  Wollstonecraft insists that "in this plan of [co-ed] education the constitution of boys would not be ruined by early debaucheries [of the mind], which now make men so selfish, or girls rendered weak and vain, by indolence, and frivolous pursuits" (312).

Throughout this chapter, I kept drawing comparisons to American education and how we are instructed now as compared to then. I think it's important to think about how education has changed over time and this youtube video explains how education has, or really has not, changed since the Enlightenment period. It hits on problems that Mary Wollstonecraft covers in her broad arguments for better education and shows how we, as a society more culturally and scientifically advanced than her own, have yet to truly overcome the problems Wollstonecraft brings up.

Discussion Questions:

• While Wollstonecraft can be considered a feminist writer as she advocates for equality between men and women, how influential do you believe her arguments of education can be to our society now?  On the flip side, how influential do you think her arguments of education were to her society then?
• We've previously talked about how Wollstonecraft shifts her focus to how the act of bettering women can in turn better men and society.  Although her heavy focus on the re-education of men in chapter XII is logical and tied in well with the re-education of women, how has this focus potentially harmed her argument of equality between sexes considering audience?