Children

Rights and Childhood

David Archard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317580874
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Children: Rights and Childhood is widely regarded as the first book to offer a detailed philosophical examination of children's rights. David Archard provides a clear and accessible introduction to a topic that has assumed increasing relevance since the book's first publication. Divided clearly into three parts, it covers key topics such as:

• John Locke's writings on children
• Philippe Ariès's Centuries of Childhood
• children's moral and legal rights
• a child's right to vote and to sexual choice
• parental rights to privacy and autonomy
• defining and understanding child abuse.

The third edition has been fully revised and updated throughout with a new chapter providing an in-depth analysis of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and Part 2 has been restructured to move the reader from general theoretical considerations of children's rights through to practical issues. This volume is ideal reading for advanced studies across Philosophy, Social Work, Law, Childhood Studies, Politics, and Social Policy.

1 John Locke's children

10.4324/9781315740676-1

The title of this first chapter, ‘John Locke’s Children’, has an obvious and immediate first meaning. It signifies that the chapter outlines the philosophical views of Locke on children in contradistinction to adults, on the proper powers of adults in their control and tutelage of children, and on how children become adults. It is thus about how one very great philosopher views the topic of childhood and children. However, there is a second sense of the chapter title that should be acknowledged and endorsed. In writing about children, Locke bequeathed not only a topic fit for philosophical consideration but also a way of understanding that topic that engages significant and enduring philosophical concerns and commitments. Locke writes about children as a philosopher. He employs the distinctive methods of epistemology, philosophy of mind and of language, political philosophy and philosophy of education to understand his topic. He did so without the benefit of a pre-history of substantive philosophical writing in this area. Locke is not principally known, nor even by some philosophers known at all, as a philosopher of childhood. Yet his work, as we shall see, is impressive and has been deeply influential on subsequent thinking about the topic. Thus, we who now write on childhood and children are the beneficiaries of his seminal writing. We are in this sense and in these matters his philosophical children.

John Locke (1632–1704) is one of the most important and influential figures in the history of English-speaking philosophy. He is a progenitor of the empiricist and analytic tradition of philosophy, and widely regarded as the ‘father of English liberalism’. He did not write a philosophical treatise on childhood, although he did write Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)¹ which recommends the appropriate education for a young gentleman. These recommendations are surprisingly modern and liberal, permitting Some Thoughts to be viewed, along with Rousseau’s Émile (1762),² as the earliest manifesto for a ‘child-centred’ education. Indeed the fact that he may be placed at the beginning of a long tradition of thought about the best way to bring up children fully justifies the euphonic sub-title of Christina Hardyment’s Dream Babies: Childcare from Locke to Spock.³

Locke also wrote about children in other works devoted to the origins of civil government and the foundations of knowledge. He is thus typical of most philosophers in that his account of childhood has to be extracted from scattered remarks, and is not to be found explicitly and systematically expressed in a single work. Moreover, what Locke has to say about children in one context does not always sit easily with what he has to say about them in another. These tensions are due to writing about children from different perspectives. In this respect Locke’s is fairly typical of much contemporary philosophical writing on childhood. Locke writes of children as the recipients of an ideal upbringing, citizens in the making, fledgling but imperfect reasoners and blank sheets filled by experience. It is not easy to be all these things simultaneously. Similarly, modern writers seem often to demand of their ‘children’ that they be different things, according to the aspect under which they are being regarded.

Consequently, Locke is an illustrious representative of anglophone philosophy both in general and in its thinking about childhood. Locke’s philosophical children are good ones to start with, not least because their problems are abiding ones. Before I explore these problems in greater depth, let me sketch the various circumstances in which Locke wrote about children, how these different accounts roughly hang together and where difficulties begin to arise for a consistent overall theory of childhood.

In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689),⁴ Locke supplied the first full-blown, forceful and persuasive defence of an empiricist theory of mind and knowledge. Such a theory holds that all human knowledge derives from a single source, experience. Famously, Locke denied that any knowledge is inborn. Young children display no awareness of those ideas, theorems or propositions which other philosophers had claimed to be innate. If knowledge is acquired from experience then it is acquired gradually. Humans become knowledgeable users of reason. Since childhood is a stage in the developmental process whose end is adulthood, children would seem to be imperfect, incomplete versions of their adult selves. The Essay is usefully supplemented by the posthumously published Of the Conduct of the Understanding (1697)⁵ in which Locke offers a guide for the proper use of reason in the acquisition of truth in every area of human knowledge, scientific and moral.

In the first of his Two Treatises of Government (1698),⁶ Locke criticised Robert Filmer’s Tory, patriarchal account of political authority as bequeathed by God to Adam, and thence to his descendants, the kings. In the second Treatise Locke defended his own view of civil government as founded upon, and limited by, the freely given consent of rational individuals. While Locke believed that political power should not be thought of as parental, he readily conceded that parents should have power over their children. Children, for Locke, do not yet possess the rights of adult citizens.

In Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), Locke published letters he had written to his friend Edward Clarke on how best to educate the latter’s young son. The advice ranges from diet, through discussion of punishment for misconduct, to a suggested programme of studies. Throughout, Locke appears to insist that the child has needs and interests which should be recognised for what they are, and that a child should be reasoned with, not simply beaten or coerced into conformity with the rules of required behaviour. The principal aim of education was to produce a virtuous person, and the essence of virtue was the subjection of one’s character and appetites to rational self-control. To that end the child must eventually come to recognise, and be able to govern his behaviour in accordance with, reason.

What do these various accounts share? They have in common a view of children as not yet fully rational, only coming to be such as adults. It is to the achievement of reason that education is devoted; it is the acquiring of it, and of knowledge, that characterises human development from birth to maturity; and it is the absence of reason that disqualifies children from citizenship, and at the same time warrants their subjection to their parents. But even this briefest of sketches indicates where there are going to be problems. Here are some of the more obvious ones: is reason, if not actual knowledge, an inborn capacity, and, if not, is it something that is acquired in the normal course of human development or must it be learnt? If children do not possess rationality to some degree, how can an education which appeals to their reason have any effect? If children have some rationality then why should they not enjoy a proportionate freedom? If the authority of civil government rests on the consent of the governed, then why should not parental authority require the consent of the children? Correlatively, if the latter is ‘natural’ rather than artificially founded by independent wills, then why should not the former be of a similar character? If the extent of legitimate political power is limited by the rights of the governed and the proper ends of government then should not parental authority be constrained by the rights of children and the due purposes of parenting? I will explore these various difficulties by considering two broad problem areas: ‘coming to reason’ and ‘parental power’.

Coming to reason

Locke’s theory of civil government and parental authority seems to presume that children lack what adult human beings possess. Children, says Locke, are ‘travellers newly arrived in a strange country, of which they know nothing’ (Thoughts, §120). What makes them ‘strangers’ in our ‘country’ is their lack of both knowledge and moral sense. ‘Reason’ covers both aspects of what must be acquired if they are to become full members of our ‘country’. Children must be educated and brought to reason. A guiding thread in Locke’s view of this process is his emphasis upon the acquisition of powers rather than discrete items of knowledge or fixed principles. The acquisition of powers is best achieved, indeed may be perfected, through their exercise and practice. By this means the possibilities are great indeed:

We are born with faculties and powers capable of almost any thing, such at least as would carry us farther than can easily be imagined: but it is only the exercise of those powers, which gives us ability and skill in any thing, and leads us towards perfection.

(Conduct, §2)

With regard to how human beings acquire knowledge, Locke’s empiricism holds, famously, that the human mind may, at birth, be presumed to be a ‘white Paper, void of all Characters, without any Ideas’ (Essay, II.i.§2). It is experience alone which stocks the mind with its ideas, experience being both direct sensory awareness of the world and reflective awareness of the mind’s own operations. Human knowledge comprises ideas which are directly furnished by experience and what can further be learnt by reasoning on and about these ideas.

Now, why should a child not be thought capable of being the equal of an adult in respect of knowledge and rationality? Locke’s answer – though it is nowhere clearly stated – seems to be that both knowledge and rationality are incremental. In the first place, Locke does not hold to the simple thesis that a newborn infant’s mind is completely empty. He admits to the possibility of pre-natal experiences, and accepts that a child has inborn dispositions – for instance, to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Locke is mainly concerned to deny the strong innatist claim that a child is born with knowledge of such ideas, propositions or principles as ‘2 + 2 = 4’ or ‘God exists’. He wanted to distinguish between ‘natural tendencies imprinted on the Minds of Man’, which he granted, and ‘innate’‘Principles of Knowledge’ which he rejected (Essay, I.iii.§3).

In the Essay Locke suggests that the child’s first experiences are almost exclusively sensory, reflection upon the inward workings of the mind being a later development. Locke’s reasoning is simple enough. A child, new to the world, is deluged with impressions of what surrounds her; she has no time for introspection. But with the progressive acquisition of ideas, the mind becomes increasingly ‘awake’; it ‘thinks more, the more it has matter to think on’ (Essay, II.I.§22). In similar vein, Locke asserts that ‘the use of Reason becomes daily more visible, as these Materials, that give it Employment, increase’ (Essay, I.ii.§15). This might imply that a child’s mind is the equal of an adult’s; it is only that it is initially distracted from the business of introspection by the overwhelming acquisition of ideas from outside, ideas which it needs anyway in order to have something to think about. Thus, although Locke says that it is ‘In time [that] the Mind comes to reflect on its own Operations, about the Ideas got by Sensation’, he also says, within a line or two of this, that the mind is ‘fitted’ to gain experience from either sensation or reflection upon its workings as ‘the first Capacity of Human Intellect’ (Essay, II.I.§24).

Moreover, it is not just the faculty of introspection which Locke thinks inborn; God has given humans ‘a Mind that can Reason without being instructed in Methods of Syllogising: The Understanding is not taught to reason by these Rules; it has a native Faculty to perceive the Coherence, or Incoherence of its Ideas’ (Essay, IV.xvii.§4). The adult does not differ significantly from the child in basic cognitive abilities; he just has more time in which to reflect and more material on which to reflect. The adult’s reason is that of the child’s come ‘awake’, and made ‘visible’.

In his Thoughts, however, Locke is more circumspect. Here he tempers his recommendation to treat children as rational creatures with the observation that such treatment should be relative to the child’s particular capacities. And these, Locke thinks, increase with age. It is not just that children broaden the range of their experiences and thus have more to reason about; it is that their abilities to reason grow as they mature. The younger they are, the more the reasons appealed to by their teachers must be immediate, obvious and ‘level to their thoughts’. ‘Nobody’, Locke asserts, ‘can think a boy of three or seven years should be argued with as a grown man’ (Thoughts, §81). Since, as we shall see, Locke thought that parental authority was grounded in a child’s lack of reason, it follows that the exercise of the former should be proportionate to the degree of the latter: as children ‘grow up to the use of reason’‘the rigour of government’ may be ‘gently relaxed’ (Thoughts, §41).

The use of reason is then for Locke a faculty which is both inborn, ‘native’, and one that develops through a combination of natural maturation and educational encouragement. This helps to explain his apparent ambivalence on an issue which was beginning to assume prominence in contemporary debate – the relative contributions to character of nature and nurture. The Thoughts contains telling quotations for both sides of the argument. On the one hand, Locke declares that ‘nine parts of ten (of all men) are what they are … by their education’ (Thoughts, §1), and, echoing the Essay, that young children should be considered ‘only as white paper or wax to be moulded and fashioned as one pleases’ (Thoughts, §217); on the other hand, he insists that ‘God hath stamped certain characters upon men’s minds, which, like their shapes, may perhaps be a little mended but can hardly be totally altered and transformed into the contrary’ (Thoughts, §66).

It would seem consistent with the essential supposition of empiricism – that all knowledge comes from experience – to hold that a child’s mind is completely formed by her upbringing. Indeed Locke would probably think this to be true with respect to the ideational content of a mind. His apparently contrary comments about inflexible character refer to behavioural dispositions, temperamental traits such as temerity, laziness or love of power. Locke certainly thinks that character in this sense is inborn and relatively unmalleable. It is worth noting in passing, as most commentators do, that Locke does not subscribe to any naive belief in the inherent innocence or goodness of the child. His comments on the readily observable cruelty of young people are down to earth and perceptive. However, Locke did believe that a child, whatever his initial nature might be, could be brought up in the way of virtue, by being taught to subjugate his congenital dispositions to the dictates of reason.

The education in virtue is both possible and necessary. It is possible inasmuch as Locke believes that children can be taught moral rectitude. Virtue is ‘natural’ since it lies within the powers of man, but it is not independent of education and socialisation. It has to be taught. The education is necessary because children must become adult citizens living by the laws of nature. That means subordinating passions and desires to reason:

the great Principle and Foundation of all Virtue and Worth, is placed in this, That a Man is able to deny himself his own Desires, cross his own Inclinations, and purely follow what Reason directs as best, tho’ the appetite lean the other way.

(Thoughts, §38)

These same inclinations and desires can, however, be used by the educator to mould the child. One should try to bring a child to moral maturity by working with and not against the grain of her nature. This nature, like that of the adult she will become, has the ‘same Passions, the same Desires’ (Thoughts, §41). Locke thought that a child was best educated by being put into situations which discouraged the exercise of the bad character traits and kept away from situations which encouraged them. This helps to explain Locke’s noted insistence upon the educational value of habit. For Locke, the essence of moral education was the practice and cultivation of the powers of moral reason, not the learning by rote of fixed moral principles: ‘Children are not to be taught by Rules … What you think necessary for them to do, settle in them by an indispensable practice’ (Thoughts, §66).

His distaste for the teaching of ‘rules’ leads him to insist that ‘well principling’ consists in giving the young mind ‘that freedom, that disposition, and those habits that may enable him to attain any part of knowledge he shall apply himself to’ (Conduct, §12). Indeed, Locke argues against ‘instilling a reverence and veneration for certain dogmas’ (Conduct, §12) and argues instead for ‘a variety and freedom of thinking’. This is to be encouraged for...