The Research On Locke's Educational Thought

Locke, the British philosopher and politician in 17^th century, paid a great attention to education. He inherited and developed the materialistic empiricism since Bacon's period, coming up with the famous "White Board". He held that mankind was different for education.According to Locke, the purpose of education is to cultivate a standard gentleman that can advance the prosperity of a nation and can meet the needs of society, for which his education is called "a gentleman education". Discussing the contents of education, Locke distinguished the three components of education for the first time, named physical education, moral education and intellectual education. He thought that the moral education was the most important of the three, considering "good moral" and "personality" was more important than deriving knowledge. Locke is the first educationist to put forward and establish the plan of gentleman's health education in practical sense, which suggests that it is mankind's happiness that metal health depends on body health. Locke's intellectual education seems to be secondary in the system of gentleman education, including the learning problems on knowledge and academic skills. He cultivated and developed children's ideation by emphasizing learning knowledge and timeliness, opposing the unrealistic Scholastic Education. On teaching methodology, Locke proposed that we should pay attention to the children's age characteristics and teach students in accordance of their aptitude and cultivate children's curiosity and thirst for knowledge. All of these are Locke's great contributions.Locke's discussion on education reflected the British bourgeoisie's strong desire for developing capitalism, which had anti-feudalism sense. At the same time Locke was born by the class compromises. Therefore, his many viewpoints had dual characters. Although Locke's e philosophy of education had some limits, his moral education, physical education safeguard measures and intellectual education method agree with the purpose, concept and measures of the current Basic Education Reform, which has some reference significance to the current Basic Education Reform.