write an essay on learning vs understanding

The Difference Between Learning and Understanding

I have been accused of a number of occasions of taking way too long to answer a simple question. Some say that I will go on about things that absolutely have no bearing on the subject, before I finally get to the answer to a simple question. I must say that more often than not I am guilty as charged, but there is an actual method to my madness.

There is a great difference between simply learning a thing and truly understanding. Learning can be defined as the ability to memorize a certain set of supposed facts. When we go to school we generally learn things. Teachers go through a well outlined curriculum and teach a certain subject by presenting certain data as fact, and then expect the students to memorize these facts. Being a good learner usually depends on your ability to memorize this data well and then apply this data in a very limited and focused manner.

Truly understanding anything on the other hand involves being able to correlate a whole bunch of data in order to come up with a more holistic conclusion. While being a good learner is always a positive trait, being able to truly understand depends on your ability to comprehend the underpinnings of this data. You could say that while learning is the act of memorization, understanding is the ability to discover and see clearly the beliefs and connections that created this data in the first place.

Whenever someone asks me a question, I want them to be able to understand what I’m saying. If I were to expound a bunch of data, which I believe to be facts, then I would be doing two things that I do not intend to do:

1. I would first and foremost take it for granted that my data is fact. While I do have a bit of an ego, it is even beyond my presumption to believe that I hold facts while the rest of the world is either wrong or agrees with me. I will let science, religion, and politics handle facts. Whatever I might state as specific data; my personal belief is that this data can never be ultimate truth and that truth is only a relative thing that can only be found through individual perspective.

2. The second thing that I would be doing that I do not want to is to have someone ‘learn’ a basic idea without really ‘understanding’ anything. I think that we can all agree, thanks to our experience in school, that something learnt is easily forgotten. When you learn a thing and you try to memorize the data relating to that certain thing, it is very likely that you will be forgetting this data and therefore what you have learnt within short order. Understanding a thing on the other hand is something that you might remember for the rest of your life. Since understanding involves correlating data from many different aspects and different angles in order to understand the underpinning beliefs. It is far more difficult to forget what you now know intellectually when you have so many new neural connections to that idea. Understanding  also allows you to make your own judgments; it does this by first showing you the data, then demonstrating to you how this data interrelates into a belief system, and then you are free to discover your own beliefs in this area. Understanding demonstrates that all is hinged on belief, that this belief is relative; It is then up to you whether you wish to also believe what you now understand or to pursue your own beliefs in your own manner.

When somebody asks me a question, I want them to remember what I told them. I do not take it for granted that the person believes what I believe and it is always my personal belief that a person should be free to make up their own mind on any subject. If you ask me why neutrinos can move so quickly, then I will begin telling you about ‘Thales’ and his desire to characterize matter. Unless this person has the prior understanding of what physics is all about, then not telling this person about what physics is and what its core beliefs are, I would only be telling this person some data snippets that would never truly answer that person’s question.

Why is it so important that you understand something instead of just learning a thing? It is very important because it’s quite possible that the belief system that underscores this data is quite wrong. It is up to you to decide whether physics is right or wrong. Anyone who tries to tell you that physics is something beyond question is someone who is not to be trusted because they truly do not ‘understand’ what they are talking about. It is also possible that physics could be partly right and partly wrong, it could be that physics might be totally wrong to you personally; your subjective world is as important as any objective truth that is expounded by anyone else. Perhaps it is an egotistical desire of mine, I wish that everyone would understand so that they could begin to question what they have learnt.

I have spent over 20 years teaching. I understand what understanding is: living. You see and you understand. When you understand, what you understand just is. It can involve information, which supports, but it’s really a seeing. I do this all of the time. It got me through college, getting As, studying very little because I sought to understand what I was being taught, whether it had merit or not. If it didn’t have merit, I understood this, and also understood what the instructor wanted me to reiterate back, which I often did for the grade. Just finish the class. I have shared understanding to many students, and fortunately, many of them took to this way of learning: realization.

Thanks for your explanation. Now I “understand” the difference. During my education in primary school I didn’t understand lessons and I had tried to memorize them, but in high school and university, I was very curious to understand the realities behind them and how to apply them to my future job and my own life. Application and research of what we learn will help to understand them. So, learning do not worth without understanding.

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How to Write Stanford’s “Excited About Learning” Essay

This article was written based on the information and opinions presented by Johnathan Patin-Sauls and Vinay Bhaskara in a CollegeVine livestream. You can watch the full livestream for more info.

What’s Covered:

Choosing an idea vs. an experience, learning for the sake of learning, learning as a means to other ends, be specific.

Stanford University’s first essay prompt asks you to respond to the following:

“ The Stanford community is deeply curious and driven to learn in and out of the classroom. Reflect on an idea or experience that makes you genuinely excited about learning. (100-250 words)”

For this short answer question, your response is limited to a maximum of 250 words. In this article, we will discuss considerations for choosing to write about an idea or experience, ways to demonstrate a love or enthusiasm for learning, and why you should be as specific. For more information and guidance on writing the application essays for Stanford University, check out our post on how to write the Stanford University essays .

Regardless of if you choose either an idea or experience that makes you genuinely excited about learning as a topic, there are a few considerations for each.  

Most people gravitate towards writing about an idea. One challenge that arises with an idea-focused essay is that applicants who are passionate about an idea often become hyper focused on explaining the idea but neglect to connect this idea to who they are as a person and why this idea excites them. 

When writing about an experience, it is important to strike a balance between describing the experience and analyzing the impact of the experience on you, your goals, and your commitment to learning.

This essay question allows you to expand on your joy for learning and your genuine curiosity. Stanford is searching for students who are naturally curious and enjoy the process of learning and educating themselves. For example, a compelling essay could begin with a riveting story of getting lost while hiking the Appalachian Trail and describing how this experience led to a lifelong passion for studying primitive forms of navigation. 

There is a strong tendency among applicants to write about formal academic coursework, however, the most compelling essays will subvert expectations by taking the concept of learning beyond the classroom and demonstrating how learning manifests itself in unique contexts in your life.

If you’re someone for whom learning is a means to other ends, it is important that you convey a sense of genuine enthusiasm and purpose beyond, “I want to go to X school because it will help me get Y job for Z purpose.” You may be motivated to attend college to obtain a certain position and make a comfortable income, however these answers are not necessarily what admissions officers are looking for. Instead, it can be helpful to relate an idea or experience to something more personal to you.

Academic & Professional Trajectory

Consider relating the idea or experience you choose to a major, degree program, research initiative, or professor that interests you at Stanford. Then go beyond the academic context to explain how the idea or experience ties into your future career. 

For instance, if you are interested in the concept of universal health care, then you might describe your interest in applying to public health programs with faculty that specialize in national health care systems. You might then describe your long term career aspirations to work in the United States Senate on crafting and passing health care policy.

Personal Values & Experiences

Another way to tie the ideas in this essay back to a more personal topic is to discuss how the idea or experience informs who you are, how you treat others, or how you experience the world around you. 

You could also focus on an idea or experience that has challenged, frustrated, or even offended you, thereby reinforcing and further justifying the values you hold and your worldview.

Community Building & Social Connectedness

You may also explore how this idea or experience connects you to a particular community by helping you understand, build, and support members of the community. Stanford is looking to find students who will be engaged members of the student body and carry out the community’s core mission, values, and projects, so this essay can be an opportunity to highlight how you would contribute to Stanford. 

Be specific in your choice of idea or the way in which you describe an experience. For example, a response that focuses on the joys of learning philosophy is too broad to be particularly memorable or impactful. However, the mind-body problem looking at the debate concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness is a specific philosophical idea that lends itself to a rich discussion. 

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

Feb 16 Memorizing versus Understanding

By Yana Weinstein

( Cover image by Hands off my tags! Michael Gaida from Pixabay )

This post continues a series of posts on the value of memory. I wrote a few months ago about how memory is used in everything we do , and we recently published a post-humus guest blog by Ralph A. Raimi in defense of rote memory . Today I continue this theme by discussing an article from the 1990s (1)  that argues for the importance of both memorization (i.e., rote learning) and understanding. I came across this article while putting the finishing touches on the book Megan and I are writing, illustrated by Oliver Caviglioli and to be published by David Fulton (Routledge). Look out for it this summer! 

The article I found, titled "The Intention to Both Memorise and Understand: Another Approach to Learning?", first describes an earlier literature that drew a distinction between two approaches to learning. According to this older literature (2) , students approach learning in one of two ways: either in a kind of utilitarian, surface manner, wanting only to memorize as much as possible, in order to pass exams; or in a deeper, more meaningful manner, wanting to understand the material and relate it to their personal lives. A quotation from the explanation of this "deep" learning approach really resonated with me:

Using a deep approach a student has the intention to understand. Information may be remembered, but this is viewed as an almost unintentional by-product. (p. 343)

Reading this, I had a bit of an "aha" moment. It made me realize what teachers are talking about when they say they want their students to learn through understanding, rather than memory. When I hear that, I am often surprised because I hear it as a denial of the importance of memory as a process, whereas I don't believe there is any other way to demonstrate learning other than by encoding and retrieving from memory! But it's not that people don't believe memory is important or necessary - it's more that they believe understanding will naturally lead to memories being formed, without any effort to specifically  commit things to memory, and practice retrieving them. As I was writing this post, I shared the quotation with Dr. Jen Coane , who also studies memory. Her response was "But really remembering (and knowing) is hard work". This leads us to the main thrust of the paper: the author proposes a hybrid approach, where development of understanding takes place alongside or in conjunction with intentional encoding and strengthening of information in memory.

Evidence for this approach is cited mainly from education systems in Asian education systems, including Hong Kong, China, and Japan. The author makes the very important point that these systems are often mis-characterized in the West as being heavily based on passive, rote memorization. But based on studies that included careful observation of the teaching techniques used in these education systems, the author concludes that they actually rely on a hybrid understanding/memorization approach. This approach can go in two directions. One version is to develop understanding, followed by memorization. In this approach, students develop a deep understanding of the material (through what we might call elaboration ), and then students practice that information so that they can remember it accurately (through what we might call retrieval practice ). However, it is important to note that we encourage students to use retrieval practice in a meaningful, elaborative way rather than "just" for memorization . 

An alternative version of the hybrid approach is that students memorize some information first, and then over time come to understand it more and more deeply. Although this example is not used in the paper, I immediately thought of multiplication tables. There is a big debate in teaching regarding whether children should or should not memorize their multiplication tables. Briefly, those who argue against it hold that this is meaningless memorization and does not lead to understanding (3) , whereas those who argue for it maintain that it decreases working memory load so students can later concentrate on more advanced math without having to perform additional mental operations to multiply numbers (4) . For example, if you want to teach a child how to "solve for x" and the equation you give them is 12 x = 144, they could concentrate on solving the equation (i.e., rearranging it to x = 144 / 12 ), rather than laboriously doing the arithmetic. By the time children are able to solve these equations, they understand more about how numbers work. In this case, it can be said that memorization came before understanding.

I liked this article because it comes from an adjacent field to mine (Education, not Cognitive Psychology), but taps into some of the same ideas that we attempt to study. In a similar vein, I recently co-authored a piece comparing the teaching strategies used by Applied Behavior Analysts with those recommended by cognitive psychologists   (5) ; we found many of the same conclusions, but different terminology leading to a complete lack of cross-talk between the fields. It is sometimes difficult and uncomfortable to read literature from such fields, because terms that we so carefully define in one field are used somewhat different in another. However, I think it is a worthwhile exercise, and I would encourage other researchers and teachers reading this post to do so.

References:

(1)  Kember, D. (1996). The intention to both memorise and understand: Another approach to learning?  Higher Education ,  31 , 341-354.

(2) Biggs, J. (1987). Student approaches to learning and studying. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research. 

(3)  Smith, S. Z., & Smith, M. E. (2006). Assessing elementary understanding of multiplication concepts. School Science and mathematics, 106 , 140-149.

(4)  Lee, K., Ng, E. L., & Ng, S. F. (2009). The contributions of working memory and executive functioning to problem representation and solution generation in algebraic word problems. Journal of Educational Psychology, 101, 373-387.

(5)  Markovits, R. A., & Weinstein, Y. (2018). Can cognitive processes help explain the success of instructional techniques recommended by behavior analysts?  npj Science of Learning ,  3 , 2.

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The difference between learning and understanding

Learning is a fairly linear phenomenon. You examine a decision, look at the outcome, and determine the causal chain. It is incredibly useful, as well as simple and straightforward. This is, usually, the manner in which we educate others and ourselves. Do this and get that.On the Job training on the latest process or policy is usually much the same. People are told, or expected to know, some desired outcomes. They are shown the steps that achieve that outcome, and then are expected to master those steps. Perhaps, in an enlightenend organization, they might even be asked to improve upon those process steps. This is, essentially, the “Know What” paradigm in action – if you know what gets you to the target, just repeat it, and you will always reach the target.

Learning is about seeing things only for the result they provide. Understanding, however, necessitaties examining the context of a decision and the basis for the process in the first place. Whereas learning is forward-thinking (do-this-get-that), understanding is backward looking (do-this-because-of-that) and, therefore, understanding is an essential component of the “Know Why” paradigm.

Know What is the most simple method of directing an activity. Bosses, parents, bullies, and manipulators of all level will resort to this simplest of methods. Basically, it’s not much more than, “Do this, or else.” As such, people learn to avoid punishment. Or, in a better way, we employ methods such as “Do this, and I’ll give you that.” in order to create a reward. This way, people learn to seek compensation.

Know Why, however, is a more complex form of stirring people into action. Know why requires a conversation. It also requires that the person soliciting the activity has a deep enough understanding of the situation, the reasons why, and the ability to communicate them. Understanding is not directing, but guiding. It is also risky – people may reach different conclusions than what was intended. This is acceptable, however, since it enhances the understanding of the subject for both the teacher and the student.

Developing the habit of understanding is difficult. It is not the same as openly accepting ideas, but appreciating the thought patterns and circumstances that went into them. You might not agree with a point of view, but you should understand it. Interestingly enough, developing an understanding of things you disagree with tends to strengthen your beliefs and not weaken them.

Which, I have come to understand, is something that we should all try to learn.

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Learning and Understanding: Improving Advanced Study of Mathematics and Science in U.S. High Schools (2002)

Chapter: 6. learning with understanding: seven principles, 6 learning with understanding: seven principles.

During the last four decades, scientists have engaged in research that has increased our understanding of human cognition, providing greater insight into how knowledge is organized, how experience shapes understanding, how people monitor their own understanding, how learners differ from one another, and how people acquire expertise. From this emerging body of research, scientists and others have been able to synthesize a number of underlying principles of human learning. This growing understanding of how people learn has the potential to influence significantly the nature of education and its outcomes.

The committee’s appraisal of advanced study is organized around this research on how people learn (see, for example, Greeno, Collins, and Resnick, 1996; National Research Council [NRC], 2000b; 2001a; Shepard, 2000). Our appraisal also takes into account a growing understanding of how people develop expertise in a subject area (see, for example, Chi, Feltovich, and Glaser, 1981; NRC, 2000b). Understanding the nature of expertise can shed light on what successful learning might look like and help guide the development of curricula, pedagogy, and assessments that can move students toward more expert-like practices and understandings in a subject area. To make real differences in students’ skill, it is necessary both to understand the nature of expert practice and to devise methods that are appropriate to learning that practice.

The design of educational programs is always guided by beliefs about how students learn in an academic discipline. Whether explicit or implicit, these ideas affect what students in a program will be taught, how they will be taught, and how their learning will be assessed. Thus, educational program designers who believe students learn best through memorization and repeated practice will design their programs differently from those who hold that students learn best through active inquiry and investigation.

The model for advanced study proposed by the committee is supported by research on human learning and is organized around the goal of fostering

learning with deep conceptual understanding or, more simply, learning with understanding . Learning with understanding is strongly advocated by leading mathematics and science educators and researchers for all students, and also is reflected in the national goals and standards for mathematics and science curricula and teaching (American Association for Advancement of Science [AAAS], 1989, 1993; National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 1989, 1991, 2000; NRC, 1996). The committee sees as the goal for advanced study in mathematics and science an even deeper level of conceptual understanding and integration than would typically be expected in introductory courses.

Guidance on how to achieve learning with understanding is grounded in seven research-based principles of human learning that are presented below (see Box 6-1 ). 1 In Chapter 7 , these principles are used as the framework for the design of curricula, instruction, and assessments for advanced study—three facets of classroom activity that, when skillfully orchestrated by the teacher, jointly promote learning with understanding. These principles also serve as the foundation for the design of professional development, for it, too, is a form of advanced learning.

The design principles for curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development provide one of the organizing frameworks of the committee’s analysis of the AP and IB programs (see Chapters 8 and 9 , this volume). While it could be argued that all components of the educational system (e.g., preservice training and leadership) should be included (and we believe they should), our analysis was limited to these four facets. Although this framework was developed to assess current programs of advanced study, it also can serve as a guide or framework for those involved in developing, implementing, or evaluating new educational programs.

SEVEN PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN LEARNING

Principle 1: principled conceptual knowledge.

Learning with understanding is facilitated when new and existing knowledge is structured around the major concepts and principles of the discipline.

Highly proficient performance in any subject domain requires knowledge that is both accessible and usable. A rich body of content knowledge about a subject area is a necessary component of the ability to think and

solve problems in that domain, but knowing many disconnected facts is not enough. Research clearly demonstrates that experts’ content knowledge is structured around the major organizing principles and core concepts of the domain, the “big ideas” (e.g., Newton’s second law of motion in physics, the concept of evolution in biology, and the concept of limit in mathematics) (see, for example, Chi et al., 1981; Kozma and Russell, 1997). These big ideas lend coherence to experts’ vast knowledge base; help them discern the deep structure of problems; and, on that basis, recognize similarities with previously encountered problems. Research also shows that experts’ strategies for thinking and solving problems are closely linked to rich, well-organized bodies of knowledge about subject matter. Their knowledge is connected and organized, and it is “conditionalized” to specify the context in which it is applicable.

If one conceives of advanced study as moving students along a continuum toward greater expertise, then advanced study should have as its goal fostering students’ abilities to recognize and structure their growing body of content knowledge according to the most important principles of the discipline. Therefore, curriculum and instruction in advanced study should be designed to develop in learners the ability to see past the surface features of any problem to the deeper, more fundamental principles of the discipline.

Curricula that emphasize breadth of coverage and simple recall of facts may hinder students’ abilities to organize knowledge effectively because they do not learn anything in depth, and thus are not able to structure what they are learning around the major organizing principles and core concepts of the discipline. Even students who prefer to seek understanding are often forced into rote learning by the quantity of information they are asked to absorb.

Principle 2: Prior Knowledge

Learners use what they already know to construct new understandings.

When students come to advanced study, they already possess knowledge, skills, beliefs, concepts, conceptions, and misconceptions that can significantly influence how they think about the world, approach new learning, and go about solving unfamiliar problems (Wandersee, Mintzes, and Novak, 1994). People construct meaning for a new idea or process by relating it to ideas or processes they already understand. This prior knowledge can produce mistakes, but it can also produce correct insights. Some of this knowledge base is discipline specific, while some may be related to but not explicitly within a discipline. Research on cognition has shown that successful learning involves linking new knowledge to what is already known. These links can take different forms, such as adding to, modifying, or reorganizing knowledge or skills. How these links are made may vary in different subject areas and among students with varying talents, interests, and abilities (Paris and Ayers, 1994). Learning with understanding, however, involves more than appending new concepts and processes to existing knowledge; it also involves conceptual change and the creation of rich, integrated knowledge structures.

If students’ existing knowledge is not engaged, the understandings they develop through instruction can be very different from what their teacher may have intended; learners are more likely to construct interpretations that agree with their own prior knowledge even when those interpretations are in conflict with the teacher’s viewpoint. Thus, lecturing to students is often an ineffective tool for producing conceptual change. For example, Vosniadou and Brewer (1992) describe how learners who believed the world is flat perceived the earth as a three-dimensional pancake after being taught that the world is a sphere.

Moreover, when prior knowledge is not engaged, students are likely to fail to understand or even to separate knowledge learned in school from their beliefs and observations about the world outside the classroom. For

example, despite instruction to the contrary, students of all ages (including college graduates) often persist in their belief that seasons are caused by the earth’s distance from the sun, rather than the inclination of the earth’s axis relative to the plane of its orbit around the sun, which affects the amount of solar energy striking the northern and southern regions of the earth as it orbits the sun (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Science Education Department, 1987). Roth (1986) similarly found that students continued to believe plants obtain food from the soil, rather than making it in their leaves, even after they had been taught about photosynthesis; this belief persisted since many failed to recognize that the carbon dioxide extracted from the air has weight and makes up most of a plant’s mass.

Effective teaching involves gauging what learners already know about a subject and finding ways to build on that knowledge. When prior knowledge contains misconceptions, there is a need to reconstruct a whole relevant framework of concepts, not simply to correct the misconception or faulty idea. Effective instruction entails detecting those misconceptions and addressing them, sometimes by challenging them directly (Caravita and Hallden, 1994; Novak, 2002).

The central role played by prior knowledge in the ability to gain new knowledge and understanding has important implications for the preparation of students in the years preceding advanced study. To be successful in advanced study in science or mathematics, students must have acquired a sufficient knowledge base that includes concepts, factual content, and relevant procedures on which to build. This in turn implies that they must have had the opportunity to learn these things. Many students, however, particularly those who attend urban and rural schools, those who are members of certain ethnic or racial groups (African American, Hispanic, and Native American), and those who are poor, are significantly less likely to have equitable access to early opportunities for building this prerequisite knowledge base (Doran, Dugan, and Weffer, 1998; see also Chapter 2 , this volume). Inequitable access to adequate preparation can take several forms, including (1) lack of appropriate courses (Ekstrom, Goertz, and Rock, 1988); (2) lack of qualified teachers and high-quality instruction (Gamoran, 1992; Oakes, 1990); (3) placement in low-level classes where the curriculum focuses on less rigorous topics and low-level skills (Burgess, 1983, 1984; Nystrand and Gamoran, 1988; Oakes, 1985); (4) lack of access to resources, such as high-quality science and mathematics facilities, equipment, and textbooks (Oakes, Gamoran, and Page, 1992); and (5) lack of guidance and encouragement to prepare for advanced study (Lee and Ekstrom, 1987).

Students who lack opportunities to gain important knowledge and skills in the early grades may never get to participate in advanced classes where higher-order skills are typically taught (Burnett, 1995). Consequently, these

students may be precluded very early in their school careers from later participation in advanced study—even when they are interested and motivated to enroll. In essence, they are “tracked away.” The end result is that many students are denied access to important experiences that would prepare them to pursue the study of mathematics and sciences beyond high school.

Principle 3: Metacognition

Learning is facilitated through the use of metacognitive strategies that identify, monitor, and regulate cognitive processes.

To be effective problem solvers and learners, students need to determine what they already know and what else they need to know in any given situation. They must consider both factual knowledge—about the task, their goals, and their abilities—and strategic knowledge about how and when to use a specific procedure to solve the problem at hand (Ferrari and Sternberg, 1998). In other words, to be effective problem solvers, students must be metacognitive . Empirical studies show that students who are metacognitively aware perform better than those who are not (Garner and Alexander, 1989; Schoenfeld, 1987).

Metacognition is an important aspect of students’ intellectual development that enables them to benefit from instruction (Carr, Kurtz, Schneider, Turner, and Borkowski, 1989; Flavell, 1979; Garner, 1987; Novak, 1985; Van Zile-Tamsen, 1996) and helps them know what to do when things are not going as expected (Schoenfeld, 1983; Skemp, 1978, 1979). For example, research demonstrates that students with better-developed metacognitive strategies will abandon an unproductive problem-solving strategy very quickly and substitute a more productive one, whereas students with less effective metacognitive skills will continue to use the same strategy long after it has failed to produce results (Gobert and Clement, 1999). The basic metacognitive strategies include (1) connecting new information to former knowledge; (2) selecting thinking strategies deliberately; and (3) planning, monitoring, and evaluating thinking processes (Dirkes, 1985).

Experts have highly developed metacognitive skills related to their specific area of expertise. If students in a subject area are to develop problem-solving strategies consistent with the ways in which experts in the discipline approach problems, one important goal of advanced study should be to help students become more metacognitive. Fortunately, research indicates that students’ metacognitive abilities can be developed through explicit instruction and through opportunities to observe teachers or other content experts as they solve problems and consider ideas while making their thinking visible to those observing (Collins and Smith, 1982; Lester et al., 1994;

Schoenfeld, 1983, 1985). Having students construct concept maps 2 for a topic of study can also provide powerful metacognitive insights, especially when students work in teams of three or more (see Box 6-2 for a discussion of concept maps). It is important to note that the teaching of metacognitive skills is often best accomplished in specific content areas since the ability to monitor one’s understanding is closely tied to the activities and questions that are central to domain-specific knowledge and expertise (NRC, 2000b).

Principle 4: Differences Among Learners

Learners have different strategies, approaches, patterns of abilities, and learning styles that are a function of the interaction between their heredity and their prior experiences.

Individuals are born with potential that develops through their interaction with their environment to produce their current capabilities and talents. Thus among learners of the same age, there are important differences in cognitive abilities, such as linguistic and spatial aptitudes or the ability to work with symbolic quantities representing properties of the natural world, as well as in emotional, cultural, and motivational characteristics.

Additionally, by the time students reach high school, they have acquired their own preferences regarding how they like to learn and at what pace. Thus, some students will respond favorably to one kind of instruction, whereas others will benefit more from a different approach. Educators need to be sensitive to such differences so that instruction and curricular materials will be suitably matched to students’ developing abilities, knowledge base, preferences, and styles. ( Annex 6-1 illustrates some of the ways in which curriculum and instruction might be modified to meet the learning needs of high-ability learners.)

Appreciation of differences among learners also has implications for the design of appropriate assessments and evaluations of student learning. Students with different learning styles need a range of opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge and skills. For example, some students work well

under pressure, while the performance of others is significantly diminished by time constraints. Some excel at recalling information, while others are more adept at performance-based tasks. Some express themselves well in writing, while others do not. Thus using one form of assessment will work to the advantage of some students and to the disadvantage of others (Mintzes, Wandersee, and Novak, 2001; O’Neil and Brown, 1997; Shavelson, Baxter, and Pine, 1992; Sugrue, Valdes, Schlackman, and Webb, 1996).

Principle 5: Motivation

A learner’s motivation to learn and sense of self affects what is learned, how much is learned, and how much effort will be put into the learning process.

Humans are motivated to learn and to develop competence (Stipek, 1998; White, 1959). Motivation can be extrinsic (performance oriented), for example to get a good grade on a test or to be accepted by a good college, or intrinsic (learning oriented), for example to satisfy curiosity or to master challenging material. Regardless of the source, learners’ level of motivation strongly affects their willingness to persist in the face of difficulty. Intrinsic motivation is enhanced when learning tasks are perceived as being interesting and personally meaningful and are presented at the proper level of difficulty. A task that is too difficult can create frustration; one that is too easy can lead to boredom.

Research has revealed strong connections between learners’ beliefs about their own abilities in a subject area and their success in learning about that domain (Eccles, 1987, 1994; Garcia and Pintrich, 1994; Graham and Weiner, 1996; Markus and Wurf, 1987; Marsh, 1990; Weiner, 1985). Some beliefs about learning are quite general. For example, some students believe their ability to learn a particular subject or skill is predetermined, whereas others believe their ability to learn is substantially a function of effort (Dweck, 1989). Believing that abilities are developed through effort is most beneficial to the learner, and teachers and others should cultivate that belief (Graham and Weiner, 1996; Weiner, 1985). The use of instructional strategies that encourage conceptual understanding is an effective way to increase students’ interest and enhance their confidence about their abilities to learn a particular subject (Alaiyemola, Jegede, and Okebukola, 1990; Cavallo, 1996).

Cultivating the belief among a broad range of students that the ability to learn advanced science and mathematics is, for the most part, a function of effort rather than inherited talent, ability, and/or intelligence has other benefits as well. For example, the belief that successful learning in advanced study is a matter of effort fosters risk taking in course selection and promotes students’ motivation to succeed in challenging situations (Novak and

Gowin, 1984). A belief in the value of effort is especially important for students who are traditionally underrepresented in advanced study. For students to maintain their beliefs about the role of effort in successful performance, teachers and other school personnel must act in ways that do not contradict students’ sense that they are capable of understanding science and mathematics and that sustained effort will produce such understanding, even though there may be struggles along the way.

Several recent studies document the power of a high school culture that expects all students to spend time and effort on academic subjects and is driven by a belief that effort will pay off in high levels of academic achievement for everyone, regardless of prior academic status, family background, or future plans. When such norms and expectations are held in common for all students, they define the school’s culture. In such settings, remediation of skill deficits takes on a different character, teachers are able and willing to provide rigorous academic instruction to all students, and all students respond with effort and persistence (Bryk, Lee, and Holland, 1993; Lee, 2001; Lee, Bryk, and Smith, 1993; Lee and Smith, 1999; Marks, Doane, and Secada, 1996; Rutter, 1983).

Principle 6: Situated Learning

The practices and activities in which people engage while learning to shape what is learned.

Research on the situated nature of cognition indicates that the way people learn a particular domain of knowledge and skills and the context in which they learn it become a fundamental part of what is learned (Greeno, 1993; Lave, 1991). When students learn, they learn both information and a set of practices, and the two are inextricably related. McLellan (1996, p. 9) states that situated cognition “involves adapting knowledge and thinking skills to solve unique problems … and is based upon the concept that knowledge is contextually situated and is fundamentally influenced by the activity, context, and culture in which it is used.” Learning, like cognition, is shaped by the conventions, tools, and artifacts of the culture and the context in which it is situated.

Because the practices in which students engage as they acquire new concepts shape what and how the students learn, transfer is made possible to the extent that knowledge and learning are grounded in multiple contexts (Brown, Collins, and Duguid, 1989). Transfer is more difficult when a concept is taught in a limited set of contexts or through a limited set of activities. When concepts are taught only in one context, students are not exposed to the varied practices associated with those concepts. As a result, students often miss seeing the concepts’ applicability to solving novel problems en-

countered in real life, in other classes, or in other disciplines. It is only by encountering the same concept at work in multiple contexts that students can develop a deep understanding of the concept and how it can be used, as well as the ability to transfer what has been learned in one context to others (Anderson, Greeno, Reder, and Simon, 1997).

If the goal of education is to allow learners to apply what they learn in real situations, learning must involve applications and take place in the context of authentic activities (Brown et al., 1989). J. S. Brown and colleagues (1989, p. 34) define authentic activities as “ordinary practices of a culture”—activities that are similar to what actual practitioners do in real contexts. A. L. Brown and colleagues (1993) offer a somewhat different definition: given that the goal of education is to prepare students to be lifelong learners, activities are authentic if they foster the kinds of thinking that are important for learning in out-of-school settings, whether or not those activities mirror what practitioners do. Regardless of which definition is adopted, the importance of situating learning in authentic activities is clear. Collins (1988) notes the following four specific benefits: (1) students learn about the conditions for applying knowledge, (2) they are more likely to engage in invention and problem solving when learning in novel and diverse situations and settings, (3) they are able to see the implications of their knowledge, and (4) they are supported in structuring knowledge in ways that are appropriate for later use.

Teachers can engage learners in important practices that can be used in different situations by drawing upon real-world exercises, or exercises that foster problem-solving skills and strategies that are used in real-world situations. Such an approach provides language, activities, and procedures that can acculturate students into the community of scholars and lifelong learners. Problem-based and case-based learning are two instructional approaches that create opportunities for students to engage in practices similar to those of experts. Technology also can be used to bring real-world contexts into the classroom. The committee emphasizes that with all of these approaches, care must be taken to provide multiple opportunities for students to engage in activities in which the same concept is at work; otherwise learning could become overly contexualized.

Principle 7: Learning Communities

Learning is enhanced through socially supported interactions.

Learning can be enhanced when students have the opportunity to interact and collaborate with others on instructional tasks. In learning environments that encourage collaboration among peers, such as those in which most practicing scientists and mathematicians work, individuals build com-

munities of practice, have opportunities to test their own ideas, and learn by observing others. Research demonstrates that opportunities for students to articulate their ideas to peers and to hear and discuss others’ ideas in the context of the classroom is particularly effective in bringing about conceptual change (Alexopoulou and Driver, 1996; Carpenter and Lehrer, 1999; Cobb, Wood, and Yackel, 1993; Kobayashi, 1994; Towns and Grant, 1997; Wood, Cobb, and Yackel, 1991). Social interaction also is important for the development of expertise, metacognitive skills, and formation of the learner’s sense of self.

The social nature of learning has important implications for the consequences of the ways in which students are grouped for instruction. For example, students who are placed in low-track classes often have less time to collaborate and interact around instructional tasks. Research indicates that teachers in low-track science and mathematics classes spend more time than teachers in higher-track classes on routines, and more frequently provide seatwork and worksheet activities that are designed to be completed independently (Oakes, 1990). Additionally, teachers in higher-track classes often orchestrate more frequent and varied opportunities for students to participate in small-group problem-solving activities than are provided by teachers in lower-track classes, who tend to focus on behavior management and on maintaining control during learning activities. Some might contend that teachers in both types of classes are responding to the needs of their students. However, teachers must strike a balance between providing the structure that is often appropriate for low-ability students and the active engagement that allows these students to learn at deeper levels.

Newmann and Wehlage (1995) identify teaching strategies that promote intellectual quality and authenticity. One of the most powerful strategies is the “substantive conversation,” in which students engage in extended conversational exchanges with the teacher and/or peers about subject matter in a way that builds an improved or shared understanding of ideas or topics. The authors stress that such subject matter conversations go far beyond reporting facts, procedures, or definitions; they focus on making distinctions, applying ideas, forming generalizations, and raising questions. According to the results of research by Gamoran and Nystrand (1990), the opportunities for such substantive engagement are far fewer in low-track than in higher-track classes.

The seven principles of learning set forth in this chapter are not ends in themselves. Their usefulness lies in the guidance they provide for the design of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for

advanced study that fosters in students a deep conceptual understanding of a domain. The next chapter articulates design principles for advanced study that draw on these principles of learning.

ANNEX 6-1 CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH-ABILITY LEARNERS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION

Differences among learners have implications for how curriculum and instruction should be structured. 3 Provided below is an example of how a better understanding of learning can assist teachers in structuring their curricula and instruction more appropriately to meet the needs of a particular group of students. Different strategies would most likely be used to meet the needs of other students, although there might be some overlap.

Characteristic: High-ability learners display an exceptionally rich knowledge base in their specific talent domain. Within that domain, they tend to achieve formal operational thought earlier than other students and to display advanced problem-solving strategies. High-ability learners are also able to work with abstract and complex ideas in their talent domain at an earlier age.

Implication: High-ability learners are ready to access the high school mathematics and science curriculum earlier than other students. Thus the high school mathematics and science sequence should be offered to them beginning in middle school.

Characteristic: High-ability students pick up informally much of the content knowledge taught in school, and as a result, that knowledge tends to be idiosyncratic and not necessarily organized around the central concepts of the discipline.

Implication: Assessment of what the learner has already mastered through diagnostic testing is critical. Instruction needs to build on what is already known and on previous experiences, filling in the gaps and correct-

ing misconceptions. It also must help the student organize his or her knowledge around the central ideas of the discipline. A full course in a content area often is not needed; either it could be skipped, with gaps being filled in as needed, or the curriculum compacted. “The proper psychology of talent is one that tries to be reasonably specific in defining competencies as manifested in the world, with instruction aimed at developing the very competencies so defined” (Wallach, 1978, p. 617).

Characteristic: High-ability learners learn at a more rapid rate than other students and can engage in simultaneous rather than only linear processing of ideas in their talent domain.

Implication: The pace at which the curriculum is offered must be adjusted for these learners. The curriculum also must be at a more complex level, making interdisciplinary connections whenever possible. That is, the curriculum should allow for faster pacing of well-organized, compressed, and appropriate learning experiences that are, in the end, enriching and accelerative.

Characteristic: Many high-ability students will have mastered the content of high school mathematics and science courses before formally taking the courses, either on their own, through special programs, or through Web-based courses.

Implication: Opportunities for testing out of prerequisites should be provided. Many high-ability students could be placed directly in an AP science course, skipping the typical high school–level prerequisite, or begin the IB program earlier than is typical.

Characteristic: High-ability students often can solve problems by alternative means and not know the underlying concept being tapped by a test item (e.g., can solve an algebra problem but not know algebra).

Implication: Assessments should not be solely in multiple-choice format; students must be able to show their work in arriving at a solution.

Characteristic: The motivation of high-ability students to achieve often becomes diminished because of boredom in school, resulting in underachievement.

Implication: Because one facet of effective teaching involves assessing the student’s status in the learning process and posing problems slightly exceeding the level already mastered (Hunt, 1961), it is important to provide curricula for high-ability students that are developmentally appropriate for them. Doing so will not only meet the intellectually talented student’s educational needs, but also facilitate his or her development of good study skills, more realistic self-concepts, and achievement motivation. Growth in

achievement motivation and self-efficacy arises out of challenge and satisfaction in mastering tasks that appropriately match capabilities.

Characteristic: The capacity for learning of high-ability students is underestimated and thus becomes underdeveloped, especially if learning criteria lack sufficient challenge, and curriculum is not adequately knowledge rich and rigorous.

Implication: Curriculum must be targeted at developing especially deep and well-organized knowledge structures that with time will begin to approximate those of experts. Doing so will foster cognitive development, higher-level thinking skills, and creativity. The depth of the curriculum should allow gifted learners to continue exploring an area of special interest to the expert level. Curricula for these students should enable them to explore constantly changing knowledge and information and develop the attitude that knowledge is worth pursuing in a global society.

Characteristic: High-ability children are advanced in their critical and creative thinking skills. They tend to spend much more time up front (i.e., metacognitively) than in the execution phase of problem solving.

Implication: The basic thinking skills to be developed in high-ability students are critical thinking, creative thinking, problem finding and solving, research, and decision making. Those skills should be mastered within each content domain.

Characteristic: High-ability students prefer unstructured problems in which the task is less well defined. They also like to structure their own learning experiences. They do not require careful scaffolding of material or step-by-step learning experiences to master new material or concepts; in fact, they become frustrated with such approaches.

Implication: Opportunities to identify and solve problems should be provided. Interdisciplinarity, greater in-depth exploration of areas of interest, and autonomous learning should be encouraged. Meaningful project work in content areas, in which real-world products are generated, is appropriate as it allows students the opportunity to create on their own and to apply and expand ideas learned in class. To facilitate such work, curricula should encourage exposure to, selection of, and use of specialized and appropriate resources.

Characteristic: High-ability students have the capacity to make connections easily among disparate bodies of knowledge and to deal effectively with abstractions and complexity of thought.

Implication: Curricula ought to emphasize providing students with a deep understanding of the important concepts of a discipline and how they

are organized, as well as identify important pathways between disciplines so that separate facets of knowledge are understood as being integrated. Curricula should allow for the development and application of productive thinking skills to instill in students the capacity to reconceptualize existing knowledge and generate new knowledge.

Characteristic: Eminent persons tend to have been profoundly influenced by a single individual, such as an educator. Students in the top mathematical/science graduate programs have reported research experiences during high school at unusually high levels. Those who are precocious in creative production tend to exhibit outstanding achievement in adult life.

Implication: Mentorships, internships, or long-term research opportunities should be provided for advanced students.

Characteristic: High-ability students who become productive adults in a domain have passed through that domain’s specific stages. Doing so took them much time and sustained effort, with the talent development process having begun well before secondary school.

Implication: Accelerated learning experiences are critical, given that the development of talent proceeds from practice and mastery of increasingly more difficult and complex skills at an individual rate, and mastery of a domain’s knowledge base and the concomitant reorganization of cognitive structures are both necessary for creativity.

Characteristic: High-ability students develop greater expectations, feel better about themselves, and engage in higher-level processing or discourse when working with other students of similar ability.

Implication: High-ability students need the challenge and stimulation of being together for at least part of every school day, with expectations set high enough to challenge their potential ability to meet them.

This book takes a fresh look at programs for advanced studies for high school students in the United States, with a particular focus on the Advanced Placement and the International Baccalaureate programs, and asks how advanced studies can be significantly improved in general. It also examines two of the core issues surrounding these programs: they can have a profound impact on other components of the education system and participation in the programs has become key to admission at selective institutions of higher education.

By looking at what could enhance the quality of high school advanced study programs as well as what precedes and comes after these programs, this report provides teachers, parents, curriculum developers, administrators, college science and mathematics faculty, and the educational research community with a detailed assessment that can be used to guide change within advanced study programs.

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Reading and Writing for Understanding

• Posted July 21, 2005
• By Sarah O'Brien Mackey

Secondary school students can benefit enormously when teachers of all subjects integrate reading and writing strategies into their instruction, according to  Harvard Graduate School of Education Lecturer Vicki Jacobs . These strategies, typical of "reading and writing to learn" and "reading and writing across the curriculum," are problem-solving activities designed to help students move from simply knowing a fact to understanding a fact's significance. Helping students make that leap — from knowing to understanding — represents the very heart of the educational enterprise.

This summary is based on Jacobs' article, " Reading, Writing, and Understanding, " which appeared in the November 2002 edition of Educational Leadership .

Reading to Learn

Jacobs explains that students learn and practice beginning reading skills through about the third grade, building their knowledge about language and letter-sound relationships and developing fluency in their reading. Around fourth grade, students must begin to use these developing reading skills to learn — to make meaning, solve problems, and understanding something new. They need to comprehend what they read through a three-stage meaning-making process.

Stage One: Prereading

It's not uncommon for a struggling secondary reader to declare, "I read last night's homework, but I don't remember anything about it (let alone understand it)!" According to Jacobs, "How successfully students remember or understand the text depends, in part, on how explicitly teachers have prepared them to read it for clearly defined purposes."

During the prereading stage, teachers prepare students for their encounter with the text. They help students organize the background knowledge and experience they will use to solve the mystery of the text. To do so, they must understand the cultural and language-based contexts students bring to their reading, their previous successes or failures with the content, and general ability to read a particular kind of text. Based on this assessment, teachers can choose strategies that will serve as effective scaffolds between the students' "given" and the "new" of the text.

Asking such questions as, "What do I already know and what do I need to know before reading?" or "What do I think this passage will be about, given the headings, graphs, or pictures?" helps students anticipate the text, make personal connections with the text, and help to promote engagement and motivation. Brainstorming and graphic organizers also serve to strengthen students' vocabulary knowledge and study skills.

Stage Two: Guided Reading

Students move on to guided reading, during which they familiarize themselves with the surface meaning of the text and then probe it for deeper meaning. Effective guided-reading activities allow students to apply their background knowledge and experience to the "new." They provide students with means to revise predictions; search for tentative answers; gather, organize, analyze, and synthesize evidence; and begin to make assertions about their new understanding. Common guided-reading activities include response journals and collaborative work on open-ended problems. During guided reading, Jacobs recommends that teachers transform the factual questions that typically appear at the end of a chapter into questions that ask how or why the facts are important.

The ability to monitor one's own reading often distinguishes effective and struggling readers. Thus, guided-reading activities should provide students with the opportunity to reflect on the reading process itself — recording in a log how their background knowledge and experience influenced their understanding of text, identifying where they may have gotten lost during reading and why, and asking any questions they have about the text. As with prereading, guided-reading activities not only enhance comprehension but also promote vocabulary knowledge and study skills.

Stage Three: Postreading

During postreading, students test their understanding of the text by comparing it with that of their classmates. In doing so, they help one another revise and strengthen their arguments while reflecting and improving on their own.

Writing to Learn

Writing is often used as a means of evaluating students' understanding of a certain topic, but it is also a powerful tool for engaging students in the act of learning itself. Writing allows students to organize their thoughts and provides a means by which students can form and extend their thinking, thus deepening understanding. Like reading-to-learn, writing can be a meaning-making process.

Research suggests that the most effective way to improve students' writing is a process called inquiry. This process allows students to define and test what they would like to write before drafting. To help students prepare their arguments, teachers guide them through the three stages of writing-based inquiry:

• Stating specific, relevant details from personal experience;
• Proposing observations or interpretations of the text; and
• Testing these assertions by predicting and countering potential opposing arguments. Through inquiry, students discover and refine something worth writing about.

Writing-to-learn activities can include freewriting (writing, without editing, what comes to mind), narrative writing (drawing on personal experience), response writing (writing thoughts on a specific issue); loop writing (writing on one idea from different perspectives) and dialogue writing (for example, with an author or a character.) "Not surprisingly," writes Jacobs, "writing-to learn activities are also known as 'writing-to-read' strategies — means by which students can engage with text in order to understand it."

Reading, writing, and understanding

The relationship among reading, writing, and understanding is clear. Students engaged in reading-to-learn will also be prepared to write well. In turn, students who are engaged in writing-to-learn will become more effective readers. Through both approaches, students will gain a better understanding of material and a greater ability to demonstrate that understanding.

Staff Development

Jacobs recommends that teachers who are considering whether to implement reading-to-learn and writing-to-learn strategies into their classroom first define their own instructional goals. If teachers decide that their goals for students' learning include "understanding," then they might ask themselves such questions as, "What strategies do I use to prepare my students to read a text?" or "How explicitly do I share with students the purpose of an assignment?" As Jacobs sees it, "Only after teachers have examined whether teaching for understanding suits their instructional goals and after they have defined their role in facilitating understanding can they consider how the principles and practices of reading-to-learn and writing-to-learn might support their instruction."

For those teachers who decide that teaching for understanding does indeed suit their instructional goals, the framework offered in Jacobs' article can help them skillfully integrate reading-to-learn and writing-to-learn strategies across their instruction.

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Comparing and Contrasting

What this handout is about.

This handout will help you first to determine whether a particular assignment is asking for comparison/contrast and then to generate a list of similarities and differences, decide which similarities and differences to focus on, and organize your paper so that it will be clear and effective. It will also explain how you can (and why you should) develop a thesis that goes beyond “Thing A and Thing B are similar in many ways but different in others.”

Introduction

In your career as a student, you’ll encounter many different kinds of writing assignments, each with its own requirements. One of the most common is the comparison/contrast essay, in which you focus on the ways in which certain things or ideas—usually two of them—are similar to (this is the comparison) and/or different from (this is the contrast) one another. By assigning such essays, your instructors are encouraging you to make connections between texts or ideas, engage in critical thinking, and go beyond mere description or summary to generate interesting analysis: when you reflect on similarities and differences, you gain a deeper understanding of the items you are comparing, their relationship to each other, and what is most important about them.

Recognizing comparison/contrast in assignments

Some assignments use words—like compare, contrast, similarities, and differences—that make it easy for you to see that they are asking you to compare and/or contrast. Here are a few hypothetical examples:

• Compare and contrast Frye’s and Bartky’s accounts of oppression.
• Compare WWI to WWII, identifying similarities in the causes, development, and outcomes of the wars.
• Contrast Wordsworth and Coleridge; what are the major differences in their poetry?

Notice that some topics ask only for comparison, others only for contrast, and others for both.

But it’s not always so easy to tell whether an assignment is asking you to include comparison/contrast. And in some cases, comparison/contrast is only part of the essay—you begin by comparing and/or contrasting two or more things and then use what you’ve learned to construct an argument or evaluation. Consider these examples, noticing the language that is used to ask for the comparison/contrast and whether the comparison/contrast is only one part of a larger assignment:

• Choose a particular idea or theme, such as romantic love, death, or nature, and consider how it is treated in two Romantic poems.
• How do the different authors we have studied so far define and describe oppression?
• Compare Frye’s and Bartky’s accounts of oppression. What does each imply about women’s collusion in their own oppression? Which is more accurate?
• In the texts we’ve studied, soldiers who served in different wars offer differing accounts of their experiences and feelings both during and after the fighting. What commonalities are there in these accounts? What factors do you think are responsible for their differences?

You may want to check out our handout on understanding assignments for additional tips.

Using comparison/contrast for all kinds of writing projects

Sometimes you may want to use comparison/contrast techniques in your own pre-writing work to get ideas that you can later use for an argument, even if comparison/contrast isn’t an official requirement for the paper you’re writing. For example, if you wanted to argue that Frye’s account of oppression is better than both de Beauvoir’s and Bartky’s, comparing and contrasting the main arguments of those three authors might help you construct your evaluation—even though the topic may not have asked for comparison/contrast and the lists of similarities and differences you generate may not appear anywhere in the final draft of your paper.

Discovering similarities and differences

Making a Venn diagram or a chart can help you quickly and efficiently compare and contrast two or more things or ideas. To make a Venn diagram, simply draw some overlapping circles, one circle for each item you’re considering. In the central area where they overlap, list the traits the two items have in common. Assign each one of the areas that doesn’t overlap; in those areas, you can list the traits that make the things different. Here’s a very simple example, using two pizza places:

To make a chart, figure out what criteria you want to focus on in comparing the items. Along the left side of the page, list each of the criteria. Across the top, list the names of the items. You should then have a box per item for each criterion; you can fill the boxes in and then survey what you’ve discovered.

Here’s an example, this time using three pizza places:

As you generate points of comparison, consider the purpose and content of the assignment and the focus of the class. What do you think the professor wants you to learn by doing this comparison/contrast? How does it fit with what you have been studying so far and with the other assignments in the course? Are there any clues about what to focus on in the assignment itself?

Here are some general questions about different types of things you might have to compare. These are by no means complete or definitive lists; they’re just here to give you some ideas—you can generate your own questions for these and other types of comparison. You may want to begin by using the questions reporters traditionally ask: Who? What? Where? When? Why? How? If you’re talking about objects, you might also consider general properties like size, shape, color, sound, weight, taste, texture, smell, number, duration, and location.

Two historical periods or events

• When did they occur—do you know the date(s) and duration? What happened or changed during each? Why are they significant?
• What kinds of work did people do? What kinds of relationships did they have? What did they value?
• What kinds of governments were there? Who were important people involved?
• What caused events in these periods, and what consequences did they have later on?

Two ideas or theories

• What are they about?
• Did they originate at some particular time?
• Who created them? Who uses or defends them?
• What is the central focus, claim, or goal of each? What conclusions do they offer?
• How are they applied to situations/people/things/etc.?
• Which seems more plausible to you, and why? How broad is their scope?
• What kind of evidence is usually offered for them?

Two pieces of writing or art

• What are their titles? What do they describe or depict?
• What is their tone or mood? What is their form?
• Who created them? When were they created? Why do you think they were created as they were? What themes do they address?
• Do you think one is of higher quality or greater merit than the other(s)—and if so, why?
• For writing: what plot, characterization, setting, theme, tone, and type of narration are used?
• Where are they from? How old are they? What is the gender, race, class, etc. of each?
• What, if anything, are they known for? Do they have any relationship to each other?
• What are they like? What did/do they do? What do they believe? Why are they interesting?
• What stands out most about each of them?

Deciding what to focus on

By now you have probably generated a huge list of similarities and differences—congratulations! Next you must decide which of them are interesting, important, and relevant enough to be included in your paper. Ask yourself these questions:

• What’s relevant to the assignment?
• What’s relevant to the course?
• What’s interesting and informative?
• What matters to the argument you are going to make?
• What’s basic or central (and needs to be mentioned even if obvious)?
• Overall, what’s more important—the similarities or the differences?

Suppose that you are writing a paper comparing two novels. For most literature classes, the fact that they both use Caslon type (a kind of typeface, like the fonts you may use in your writing) is not going to be relevant, nor is the fact that one of them has a few illustrations and the other has none; literature classes are more likely to focus on subjects like characterization, plot, setting, the writer’s style and intentions, language, central themes, and so forth. However, if you were writing a paper for a class on typesetting or on how illustrations are used to enhance novels, the typeface and presence or absence of illustrations might be absolutely critical to include in your final paper.

Sometimes a particular point of comparison or contrast might be relevant but not terribly revealing or interesting. For example, if you are writing a paper about Wordsworth’s “Tintern Abbey” and Coleridge’s “Frost at Midnight,” pointing out that they both have nature as a central theme is relevant (comparisons of poetry often talk about themes) but not terribly interesting; your class has probably already had many discussions about the Romantic poets’ fondness for nature. Talking about the different ways nature is depicted or the different aspects of nature that are emphasized might be more interesting and show a more sophisticated understanding of the poems.

Your thesis

The thesis of your comparison/contrast paper is very important: it can help you create a focused argument and give your reader a road map so they don’t get lost in the sea of points you are about to make. As in any paper, you will want to replace vague reports of your general topic (for example, “This paper will compare and contrast two pizza places,” or “Pepper’s and Amante are similar in some ways and different in others,” or “Pepper’s and Amante are similar in many ways, but they have one major difference”) with something more detailed and specific. For example, you might say, “Pepper’s and Amante have similar prices and ingredients, but their atmospheres and willingness to deliver set them apart.”

Be careful, though—although this thesis is fairly specific and does propose a simple argument (that atmosphere and delivery make the two pizza places different), your instructor will often be looking for a bit more analysis. In this case, the obvious question is “So what? Why should anyone care that Pepper’s and Amante are different in this way?” One might also wonder why the writer chose those two particular pizza places to compare—why not Papa John’s, Dominos, or Pizza Hut? Again, thinking about the context the class provides may help you answer such questions and make a stronger argument. Here’s a revision of the thesis mentioned earlier:

Pepper’s and Amante both offer a greater variety of ingredients than other Chapel Hill/Carrboro pizza places (and than any of the national chains), but the funky, lively atmosphere at Pepper’s makes it a better place to give visiting friends and family a taste of local culture.

You may find our handout on constructing thesis statements useful at this stage.

Organizing your paper

There are many different ways to organize a comparison/contrast essay. Here are two:

Subject-by-subject

Begin by saying everything you have to say about the first subject you are discussing, then move on and make all the points you want to make about the second subject (and after that, the third, and so on, if you’re comparing/contrasting more than two things). If the paper is short, you might be able to fit all of your points about each item into a single paragraph, but it’s more likely that you’d have several paragraphs per item. Using our pizza place comparison/contrast as an example, after the introduction, you might have a paragraph about the ingredients available at Pepper’s, a paragraph about its location, and a paragraph about its ambience. Then you’d have three similar paragraphs about Amante, followed by your conclusion.

The danger of this subject-by-subject organization is that your paper will simply be a list of points: a certain number of points (in my example, three) about one subject, then a certain number of points about another. This is usually not what college instructors are looking for in a paper—generally they want you to compare or contrast two or more things very directly, rather than just listing the traits the things have and leaving it up to the reader to reflect on how those traits are similar or different and why those similarities or differences matter. Thus, if you use the subject-by-subject form, you will probably want to have a very strong, analytical thesis and at least one body paragraph that ties all of your different points together.

A subject-by-subject structure can be a logical choice if you are writing what is sometimes called a “lens” comparison, in which you use one subject or item (which isn’t really your main topic) to better understand another item (which is). For example, you might be asked to compare a poem you’ve already covered thoroughly in class with one you are reading on your own. It might make sense to give a brief summary of your main ideas about the first poem (this would be your first subject, the “lens”), and then spend most of your paper discussing how those points are similar to or different from your ideas about the second.

Point-by-point

Rather than addressing things one subject at a time, you may wish to talk about one point of comparison at a time. There are two main ways this might play out, depending on how much you have to say about each of the things you are comparing. If you have just a little, you might, in a single paragraph, discuss how a certain point of comparison/contrast relates to all the items you are discussing. For example, I might describe, in one paragraph, what the prices are like at both Pepper’s and Amante; in the next paragraph, I might compare the ingredients available; in a third, I might contrast the atmospheres of the two restaurants.

If I had a bit more to say about the items I was comparing/contrasting, I might devote a whole paragraph to how each point relates to each item. For example, I might have a whole paragraph about the clientele at Pepper’s, followed by a whole paragraph about the clientele at Amante; then I would move on and do two more paragraphs discussing my next point of comparison/contrast—like the ingredients available at each restaurant.

There are no hard and fast rules about organizing a comparison/contrast paper, of course. Just be sure that your reader can easily tell what’s going on! Be aware, too, of the placement of your different points. If you are writing a comparison/contrast in service of an argument, keep in mind that the last point you make is the one you are leaving your reader with. For example, if I am trying to argue that Amante is better than Pepper’s, I should end with a contrast that leaves Amante sounding good, rather than with a point of comparison that I have to admit makes Pepper’s look better. If you’ve decided that the differences between the items you’re comparing/contrasting are most important, you’ll want to end with the differences—and vice versa, if the similarities seem most important to you.

Our handout on organization can help you write good topic sentences and transitions and make sure that you have a good overall structure in place for your paper.

Cue words and other tips

To help your reader keep track of where you are in the comparison/contrast, you’ll want to be sure that your transitions and topic sentences are especially strong. Your thesis should already have given the reader an idea of the points you’ll be making and the organization you’ll be using, but you can help them out with some extra cues. The following words may be helpful to you in signaling your intentions:

• like, similar to, also, unlike, similarly, in the same way, likewise, again, compared to, in contrast, in like manner, contrasted with, on the contrary, however, although, yet, even though, still, but, nevertheless, conversely, at the same time, regardless, despite, while, on the one hand … on the other hand.

For example, you might have a topic sentence like one of these:

• Compared to Pepper’s, Amante is quiet.
• Like Amante, Pepper’s offers fresh garlic as a topping.
• Despite their different locations (downtown Chapel Hill and downtown Carrboro), Pepper’s and Amante are both fairly easy to get to.

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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General Definition of Learning and Its Forms Essay

Introduction.

The basic reason for learning is to archive an ability to communicate effectively and convey information efficiently. Future endeavours of a learner depends on his/her ability to understand the importance of knowledge acquisition and embrace the fact that learning determines one’s future prospects.

Appreciating the need to obtain skills and knowledge is crucial since the procedure of acquisition requires patience from both the learner and trainer. Learning involves the conscious mind that various learning regulations that are simple requirements as opposed to tough form of drilling as most learners think.

The learning process is however gradual for instance, when learning a new language, the skills acquisition procedures involves first attaining the listening before the speaking skills. The fluency, mastery or proficiency of skills occurs latter on during the process of learning when one starts to specialize in the field of study.

General Definition of Learning

According to (2008), learning is ability to understand behavioural changes occurring due to person’s ability to survey some insatiable aspects of life, which often occur due to curiosity.

Stipulation that learning is a practice that changes behaviours is a clear indication that the approach Pritchard considers shows that learning is the outcome or product of performing a certain action or undergoing a given process (2008). In this case, learning is recognizable since it is a highlight of various crucial aspects of a lifestyle especially changes of behaviour.

A good learner must place huge amount of effort such as keenness and patience within a give attempt. In line with Pritchard, one of the key aspects of learning involves ability to recognize that it is only possible to achieve improvements if the input is comprehensible and does not necessarily force productivity (2008). For that reason, the most effective way of learning is by ensuring adherence to professionalisms and proficiency.

Learning Skills

According to Leonard, various research findings attribute learning as an articulate procedure where one is able to consider both the input and output as essential aspects in accruing knowledge (2002). Effective learning must therefore involve some form of interaction between the learner and tutor since the learner must contribute through participation. The input is consequently the learner’s contribution, while the output from the learning process is the ability to comprehend and use the leant skills productively.

Learning new skills or acquiring knowledge depends on personal ability to understand and have a personal interpretation of the aspects that assist in logical revelation of various outputs (Swain, 2005). According to Swain, personal interpretation of various aspects forms the basis for learning or acquiring new skills effectively (2005).

On the same procession of defining learning, Swain’s explanation of learning includes ability to use a variety of learnt functions fluently, to build personal skills. Secondly, the learner must have the ability to take note of functions that can trigger the conscious mind into achieving an objective. Lastly, the learner must be in a position of engaging deep thoughts as a utility that enhances easy and enjoyable learning (2005).

Analysis of Learning Procedure

In accordance with Van Patten’s (2003) learner’s contribution involves ability to identify the unrestrained involvement that the learner hears or is able to read in context and meaning. Learning is thus a procedure that must involve an interactive environment and other illustrative aspects that assist to exemplify meaning.

A learned person expresses his/her understanding of meaning through manipulation of tasks or formulation of personal meaning during interaction. Failure to use the acquired skills leads to stalemate. This is a clear support to the notion ‘practice makes perfect’ and the expression applies to learning procedure as well.

With a close reference to swain’s explanation of the meaning of learning, students often fail to interpret or use the acquired knowledge in their day-to-day activities because they lack interest or have poor foundational skills (2005). Failure is not overcome through better or long-learning sessions but through practice, application or general use of the acquired skills.

Literature Review on Learning

Learning is a procedure that involves acquiring knowledge, which is achieved through experience, training and interaction (Lipshirtz, 2000). Ability to acquire, sustain and eventually change an aspect depending on interpretation of meaning and joint actions is very important. Lipshirtz also defines learning as an ongoing system set within a social-cognitive system (2000).

A sustainable form of learning therefore comprises of a coordinated system where various aspects are built in as procedures, guides and cultural setting for group or individuals to access, use as well as modify. This form of knowledge acquisition is a measure that involves integration of knowledge for expertise performances.

What Is Learning?

At no one given time has there been correct definition of learning. According to Wakefield, many scholars, lecturers and professors have tried to put down several explanations and meaning to learning with no avail (1996). Wakefield described learning as “a relatively permanent change in the behaviour of an individual based on his/her experiences or discoveries” (1996).

This definition meant that knowledge that learners get determines the quantity as well as quality of knowledge needed for various life applications. The definition as a result emphasized on the need to form a transition from possession of knowledge to knowing where that knowledge need to be applied, and how to apply.

What Is Knowledge?

Knowledge is far different from learning in a curriculum form of schedule. Acquiring knowledge is a more human-based procedure than just being taught. Various researchers have come up with their own ways of defining and interpreting the meaning of knowledge.

According to Eggen, ‘Bruning, Schraw and Ronning’ were theorists who compared three types of knowledge that comprised of Declarative, Procedural and Meta-cognitive knowledge (2001). These researchers found that declarative knowledge has reference to information and factual analysis.

The procedural form of knowledge is based on skills, which are mainly concern with performing various educative tasks and other related executive or formal assignments. The meta- cognitive was defined as the way people think and how people are able to create awareness about process of reflecting through various aspects (Eggen, 2001).

The knowledge that people encompass over particular subjects is called knowledge, based on a particular domain called the “Domain knowledge” (Eggen, 2001). This form includes declarative, procedural and meta-cognitive knowledge. In line with Eggen, the study of the nature of knowledge is known as epistemology (2001).

For this reasons, there has never been any theory about learning and knowledge that emerged to be superior to others. Theories have therefore been known to create platforms for practical assessment of the meaning of learning and progressive analysis.

These theories and practical implementation of learning therefore meet at a point called praxis, that means creating a method of teaching or explaining the meaning of learning (Eggen, 2001).

What Is Teaching?

Teaching is vital because it creates a link between the learning process and the knowledge acquired by the learner. The duty of the teacher is to guide through or assist students in gathering the required skills or knowledge about a certain aspect of life.

Teaching therefore provides the platform for interaction between the teacher and students. According to Schunk, teaching can be classified into three categories namely planning interaction and assessment (2011).

In planning, the teachers think about the outcome of their interaction with students. Here they design learning experiences where learners ought to be involved. Interaction is thus the rapport created between the teacher and the learner.

The teacher should also assess the teaching experience to find out chances of misunderstanding or lack of understanding and consequently assist the learners who never got their preferred outcome.

Learning Theories

Over the years, learning theories have been frightening most researchers since they worry that such studies have a connection to various dictionary terminologies and logical jargon. Learning theories can be referred to as the theoretical psychology of understanding concepts and diverse human actions such as need to acquire knowledge. Learning theories can also be interesting besides being complex.

The complexities and interests to advanced discoveries have resulted to implementation of more diverse approaches that assist in formulation of positive attitudes towards educational theories, especially those presented by different researches.

The greatest effect of diverse theories is often seen in learning institutions like Colleges and Universities, where performance can be analyzed and students classified in reference to their performance. Some students perform incredibly well in practical papers but fail in theory.

Some of the common learning theories form an analysis of these differences, where psychologists are keen on the trend that occur when changes are made on teaching procedures. Various theories also emphasize the need to unveil new or effective learning and teaching skills.

Behaviourism

In references to his 19 th century the book, ”The Origin of Species”, Charles Darwin concluded that despite the fact that human being are different and unique from other animals, they have similar biological characteristics to other members of the animal kingdom (Schunk, 2011).

Thorndike Theory

Arguably, from the preceding theories approaching the 20 th century, Thorndike made an experiment to study behaviour of cats and dogs. He designed a puzzle box where an animal was kept. This animal had to learn the procedure of pressing a lever that would consequently open a locked door.

The procedure was an experiment to measure the animals’ intelligence, since Edward wanted to know whether the animals learn through imitation or observation.

He noticed that an animal was likely to come out of a situation where it had been, by means of the same skill it used before, particularly when rewarded by the owner for the proficiency (Schunk, 2011). This confirmed that rewards act to strengthen stimulus-response associations.

Watson Theory

JB Watson based his research after the classical conditioning that was founded by Ivan Pavlov. The research revealed that a dog’s behaviour would turn into a habit (Schunk, 2011).

This was also part of his analysis of human learning. Just like the dog, human beings also have habits that originate from common behaviours. For instance, a reading habit can emerge from an initial simple and inevitable behaviour to reading with the intention of performs well.

Skinner Theory

In 1930s, BF skinner did numerous researches on rats and pigeons. They included teaching a pigeon to dance by bringing into play some rewards that were given for a good performance. After the experiment, skinner was able to discover same peculiar habits of learning in human beings (1966).

He wrote that “while we are awake, we act upon the environment constantly, and many of the consequences of our actions are reinforcing” (skinner, 1966). In his theory, he concluded that human beings possess various behavioural aspects as indicated below.

Criticism of behaviourism

• Views learning as a personal occurrence in a passive state
• Does not account all types of learning
• Does not explain forms of learning like languages

Gestalt Theory

According to Pritchard (2008), Gestalt theory was propagated by Kohler, Koffka and Wertheimer. The theory emphasized on the existence of higher order in cognitive process of managing behaviours. It states that knowledge is an element like the one of proximity, similarity, closure and simplicity elements, which are used to determine human behaviours.

This theory indicates that from 1887 to 1967 Kohler researched through chimpanzees as they solved their problems. Through his research analysis, he concluded that learning in apes took place through an act of insight.

In 1959, Worhteimer presented his research through use of examples from Galileo and Einsten’s findings, where he indicated that problem solving was the ability to see the overall structure of a problem and come up with a conclusive solution.

Cognitive Theory

This theory indicates that knowledge acquisition as a process of providing the learner with absolute guidance (Pritchard, 2008).

Piaget Theory

Between 1896 and 1980, Jean Piaget who was a psychologist and pioneer in the study of child intelligence believed that humans’ capacity to think and learn was an adaptation that helped them to deal effectively in their environment. His research was in three stages namely sensor-motor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal operational stages (Leonard, 2002).

Constructivism Theory

This theory views knowledge as a constructed entity. The theory is based on meaning, parts and application of knowledge. According to Schunk, between 1896-1934 Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist noted that humans are the only living things that had cultures (2011). The theory showed how children traced characters from their parents.

This is a clear indication that learning is therefore dependent on social interaction of human beings. On the other hand, Bruner’s research was based on child development as he worked with children in a similar manner as Piaget’s research. He identified three stages of development, which included enactive, iconic and symbolic stage (Schunk, 2011).

Forms of Learning

Administrative learning.

This is a more comparative method of knowledge acquisition that denies competitors chances of imitating others. Administrative learning is a continual procedure that caters for the cumulative procedure of molding unique characteristics of performance. Uniqueness makes it hard for others to impersonate.

The learning is thus a sustainable form that involves acquisition, distribution, application and translation of knowledge especially for the applications or daily operation procedures. Administrative learning is illustrated in the chart below (Reason, 2010).

According to Reason (2010), the school setting has the potential to produce various forms of resources such as human ability, social relationships and organizational capital, which are essential aspects of ensuring sustainability.

The enhanced learning therefore provides learners with some form of independent abilities such as professionalism that support other dependent aspects such as human, social and organizational capital. These human values have interactional effects that influence behaviour and action and eventually produce a form of sustainability.

Human Capital for Sustained Learning

A School or learning institution has potential to instil required knowledge as a measure of enhancing growth. The ability to support unique entities or resources in support for higher knowledge levels is the sustainable human capital (VanPatten, 2003).

Some unique learning activities implemented in institutions include selection of information, and training or exposure to activities in the aim of enhancing required experiences or expertise. There is a huge advantage when an individual is involved in learning since it leverages the team resourcefulness through organizational contribution.

Other benefits of having a school setting include the ability to have limited and controlled form of competition, that enhances batter knowledge based growth or participations.

The learner within a school setting are obliged to find measures of disseminating acquired knowledge or individual resources to various sectors especially on the work-based platforms for extra benefits and applications. The organizational change therefore emerges from the new skills that various school-based challenges present.

Learning institutions assist in enforcing or discovering and nurturing young talents. The institutions also cater for unique skills as well as strategic knowledge. Knowledge is also distributed to those who need it and there is an overall benefit for firms. Need to advance and manage human capital remain one of the main reason why people have to guarantee that learning is the most feasible way of advancing.

According to VanPatten, development of human capital means ability to nurture performance proficiency, reasonable agility and individual’s unique skills (2003). Learning institutions also provide organizations with key resources that enhance management of system structures, reputation and intellectual abilities.

However, school-based learning is a process that is highly dependent on previous experiences especially on the individual efforts and amount of accumulated knowledge. Learning is hence a process that depends on social growth, collaboration and emulation efforts in an intrinsic and collective manner.

The involvement of individuals causes formation of logistic activities and unique techniques that makeup the cultural routine. Institutional learning is thus a form of interaction where learners and tutors form a formal but social form of interaction and build rapport to enhance exchange of knowledge.

In line with Lipshirtz, learning is a social capital way of enhancing interaction to share knowledge (2000). The process of learning is unique in every organization and therefore difficult to control or impersonate especially among competitors.

Sustainable Organizational Learning

Learning calls for those involved to implement a competitive performance level. The differences associated with performances provide learners with the advantage of ability to form various improvements that respond to advancement of the work environment. For example, learning enables people to accept and implement technological changes as they occur.

In line with Reason, “leading a learning process requires people who are willing to discover the reasons for problems’ existence, thus posing questions to existing systems and challenging the occurring paradoxes” (2010). In current situations, learning institutions indicate that there is a fast and aggressive transformation of technology and business markets.

This is a call for implementation of latest applications and other achievement aspects. The social and technical characteristics also assist in maintaining a competitive edge due to need for enhanced complexity in performances, as a way of making certain that learners get useful knowledge.

Performance challenges involve learning and translation of knowledge requires the school organization to can come up and implement various ways of transferring knowledge distinctively in the aim of meeting various requirements such as support of competence among aspiring professionals.

The procedural activities of a school have a social correlation between the way a school functions and the internal policies, teaching strategies and organizational culture of the institution. These are the reasons why it is possible that learners are able to understand, facilitate and implement various behavioral changes that are concern with improvement of performance levels.

The recourse-based theory of acquiring knowledge assists in analysis of tangible aspects that relate to competitiveness of the environment and devotion of various internal strengths.

A learning institution is in a position of devoting the learning process to the development issues such as environmental provision. Acquiring knowledge therefore assists in neutralizing threats, while making the best use of competitiveness and resources for excellent performance.

Development depends solemnly on acquisition, transfer and sharing or knowledge and developmental skills. The technological advancement of various sectors is a clear indication that every person must acquire the required skills for enhancing performance. Knowledge is an intellectual asset that determines the sustainability of organizations through enhanced competition and maintenance of skill that enhance further knowledge growth that is important for the competitive markets.

Knowledge acquisition and management is therefore an arrangement that presents people with the ability to share information, skills and strategies. Learning is a system that is increasing competitiveness and thus enhancing quality of goods and services.

Eggen, P. & Kauchak D. (2001). Educational Psychology: Windows on Classrooms . 5 th Edition. New Jersey: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Leonard, D. C. (2002). Learning theories, A to Z . Connecticut, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group.

Lipshirtz, R. (2000). Exploring the divide-Organizational learning and learning Organization . The learning Organization, 10, 4: 202-215.

Pritchard, A. (2008). Ways of learning: learning theories and learning styles in the

classroom . (2 nd Ed). New York, NY: Routledge Publishers.

Reason, C. (2010). Leading a learning organization: The science of working with others . Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Schunk, D. H. (2011). Learning Theories: An Educational Perspective. Boston, Ma: Allyn & Bacon, Incorporated.

Skinner, B.F. (1966). Science and Human Behaviour . New York: MacMillan

Swain, M. (2005). The Output Hypothesis: Theory and Research . In E. Hinkel (Ed) Handbook on Research in second language teaching and learning, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

VanPatten, B. (2003). From Input to Output: A Teacher’s Guide to Second Language Acquisition . In James F. Lee＆Bill Vanpatten, The McGraw-Hill Second language professional series. Direction in second Language learning. USA: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Wakefield, J.F. (1996). Educational Psychology: Learning to be a Problem-Solver . Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

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Classroom Q&A

With larry ferlazzo.

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions to [email protected]. Read more from this blog.

‘Memorization Often Comes Without Understanding’

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(This is the final post in a two-part series. You can see Part One here .)

The new question-of-the-week is:

What is the appropriate role of student memorization in teaching and learning?

In Part One , Blake Harvard, Donna L Shrum, Keisha Rembert, and Sarah Cooper contribute their responses. You can listen to a 10-minute conversation I had with Donna, Blake, and Keisha on my BAM! Radio Show . You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

Today, Jason Batterson, Eric Jensen, and Carla Marschall finish up the series.

I published a post this past weekend sharing advice for how teachers might want to begin their distance/hybrid teaching year.

That post was just a “taste” of what is to come beginning on Aug. 1. You can expect to see at least 25 posts (and probably a lot more) in this column over the next two months answering many of the critical questions educators are asking themselves and others as we enter a potentially crazy year. And the responses will be coming from educators who have reflected on their own experiences of last spring, as well as what will have happened during the first few weeks of school this year.

But, first, here’s Part Two on memorization...

Math and memorization

Jason Batterson is the creator and lead author of the Beast Academy elementary math curriculum at Art of Problem Solving (AoPS). Before joining AoPS, he taught and coached math in Raleigh, N.C., coaching multiple team and individual state champions in algebra, geometry, and MATHCOUNTS. His first book, Competition Math for Middle School , has become a primary resource for introducing students across the nation to competition-level mathematics.

I can only speak to mathematics education, but I suspect many of the principles below apply to all areas of teaching and learning.

Students have a much easier time remembering things that they understand. Unfortunately, memorization often comes without understanding. For example, there are dozens of area formulas that students try to memorize by reading them from a list over and over again. They commit these formulas to memory for just long enough to pass the test, then move on to whatever they need to memorize next. These students are doomed to repeat the process a year later when the topic comes up again. On the other hand, students who can relate all of these formulas to just a few well-understood facts and principles have very little to memorize and can apply what they know moving forward.

Most students know how to find the area of a rectangle. If they can relate it to areas of other shapes like parallelograms, triangles, and trapezoids, they can often discover these area formulas on their own. Even better, if they can’t remember a formula for a particular shape, they can usually find its area by dividing it into pieces they understand. Building upon a solid foundation, students can move on to more complex shapes, even ones that are three-dimensional.

Formulas are not the only things students memorize at their peril. For many, math is learned as a series of steps to be memorized and repeated, over and over. You may remember learning a process like the one below for converting a mixed number into a fraction.

Students can perform these steps repeatedly without ever knowing why they work, and they can only apply them to a very specific type of problem. It’s much better for students to think through the conversion using what they know about fractions.

Notice that these steps require the same computations as before, but they give meaning to the steps. We multiply 4×5 because we want to convert 4 into 20 fifths. We add the 2 fifths we already had to get 20+2=22 fifths. Students who understand fractions this way are likely to discover the traditional algorithm on their own, and it’s much easier to remember something you’ve discovered.

Memorization, particularly when it comes to formulas and algorithms, is almost always unnecessary for the student who thoroughly understands a few basic concepts. These students can then apply what they know to a broad range of problems and situations.

Understanding One Key Exception:

There is one area where memorization is absolutely critical . As an 8th grade classroom teacher, there was one very accurate predictor of success that I used in my classroom every year: a timed multiplication-facts quiz. Students who struggle with multiplication facts are at an incredible disadvantage when it comes to virtually every skill taught in an 8th grade classroom.

Consider fractions. Why are fractions so difficult for so many students? For one thing, it’s virtually impossible to do anything with fractions if you don’t know your multiplication facts. Multiplying fractions is difficult for obvious reasons. Converting a mixed number to a fraction also requires multiplication. Adding two fractions with unlike denominators requires finding a common denominator, which is really frustrating if you don’t know your multiplication facts. Simplifying a fraction like 45/63? If you don’t know your multiplication facts, you don’t even notice that 45 and 63 are both divisible by 9.

If you’re a math nerd reading this who is still unconvinced, try a simple computation with fractions in any base other than 10. (For example, try simplifying 13/22 in base-5 without converting to base-10.) It’s really, really hard to wrap your mind around and gives a glimpse into the mind of a frustrated student who doesn’t know their times tables.

So, there is at least one area of mathematics where memorization is really important. But for the most part, math students should be doing very little memorization.

“The role of memory is critical!”

Eric Jensen is a former teacher who grew up in San Diego. With a Ph.D. in human development, he synthesizes brain research and is listed among the top 30 educators in the world at Global Gurus.org . He’s written over 30 books and co-founded an academic-enrichment program, held in 14 countries with over 70,000 graduates:

I have asked large groups of teachers, nationwide, over the last 10 years: “What are the biggest things that annoy you?” In the top three (their order changes) are consistently discipline issues, re-teaching, and getting kids to grade level. Many experienced teachers and trainers would tell you that all three are actually related.

How? They all three are common issues for teachers who come from the framework of: “I taught them, they just are not getting it.” Or, “Our content is what kids need to get.” I am sorry to say, they are wrong.

The short answer to the question at the top (in bold) is, “The role of memory is critical!”

I have written about, taught, and continue to teach teachers memory tools. They belong in our schools because of three things:

1) Memory is the residue (and evidence of) learning . Learning is the residue (and evidence of) teaching. What you teach is irrelevant; what students can show evidence of (memory) is everything. My question is, “How soon can you take ownership over the problem and start helping students perform better?”

2) Memory skills are part of a cluster of “Learn to Learn Skills.” Those skills include (among others), summarizing, retrieving, and critical reading. If you do not teach students memory skills, and reinforce what has been learned, why are you teaching anything? Effect sizes of memory are over the top! My question is, “How will students learn these skills unless you teach them?”

3) Memory can help students get to grade level. Kids who grow up in poverty (51 percent of those in public schools) underperform in five critical areas. Language is first, and the next two are both memory skills (long-term and working memory). Clear evidence shows chronic stress impairs declarative-memory formation. The question is, “How badly do you want your students to reach grade level or above?”

Yes, I am an absolute believer (and I say this in my books) that memory skills (short term, working memory, and long term) are ALL critical to teach. Anyone who thinks memory is unimportant should spend some time with a patient who has Alzheimer’s disease.

Memory must be integrated

Carla Marschall is experienced in P-12 curriculum development and implementation, having worked in a variety of curriculum leadership roles in international schools in Switzerland, Germany, and Hong Kong over the past 10 years. She currently works as the head of curriculum development and research at United World College of South East Asia in Singapore. She is co-author of the book Concept-Based Inquiry in Action (Corwin, 2018):

Recall, repetition, and drill. Flash cards, cramming, and regurgitating facts. These are words and images that come to mind when we think about memorization in the classroom. However, when memorization occurs meaningfully, when memorization goes hand in hand with the development of student understanding, it is a powerful tool for empowering students. It all comes down to how the memorization of content connects to the larger aims of our teaching and learning. Do we want to create critical thinkers who can articulate their own ideas and transfer these to new contexts? Do we want our students to “connect the dots” and see patterns within and across subjects? If so, memorization must be integrated purposefully into student learning experiences.

When we think about memorization, we often view it as an isolated activity. Learning vocabulary in a foreign language by heart, recalling formulae in mathematics. These discrete activities seem disconnected from the “big ideas” we want students to understand. But we know from cognitive science that the rote learning of facts is actually a less effective way to encode and store information in our memory. It’s like trying to catch a fish with our bare hands. When we try to memorize facts with no context, the working memory goes into overdrive, and information consequently slips through its metaphorical fingers.

Information in the brain is organized conceptually: Our mental schemas categorize and structure ideas and relationships between them so we can access them easily. This means that we store individual facts under larger conceptual headers in the brain. We may, for instance, place the idea of a giraffe under “Animals” and the notion of a bridge under “Structures.” By organizing our teaching around conceptual understandings, statements of conceptual relationship that transfer, we make content “stick” and become meaningful in the process. This strengthens our students’ mental schemas, allowing them to see ways to apply their learning. What strategies can we implement to make students’ memorization meaningful in this way?

Be Strategic About Content

We need to ask ourselves: “Why do students need to memorize this particular content?” By starting from what we want students to understand, we can identify essential content. This enables us to scaffold students’ thinking from the factual to conceptual level, making it transferable to new contexts. Then, students can use memorized content in more complex ways throughout a unit of learning, for instance through projects or performance tasks.

Make Use of Retrieval Practice to Strengthen Student Ideas

Through retrieval practice, learning strategies that ask students to recall information, the memory is strengthened, and forgetting information is less likely to occur. By strategically using testing, spacing, and interleaving, we support the development of student understanding. The research on retrieval practice is clear: These learning strategies aren’t just about memorization for memorization’s sake. When students develop mastery of classroom content, they can use information flexibly, see connections, and articulate “big ideas.” Likewise, using retrieval practice as a learning strategy allows us to locate knowledge gaps that may hinder the development of conceptual understanding.

Ask Students to Use Factual Content as Evidence for Ideas

When we ask students to use factual content as evidence for their ideas, we give the task of memorizing an authentic purpose. Through class discussions, collaborative learning opportunities, and assessment tasks, we can require students to “back up” their thinking using information they have memorized. By asking students to provide factual content as proof for their ideas, we reduce the likelihood of students overgeneralizing or forming misconceptions.

Memorization that is contextualized and meaningful is therefore crucial to developing student understanding. By analyzing the purpose of the recall activities we give our students, we can make choices about what learning may be superfluous, disjointed. or irrelevant. By organizing our teaching and learning experiences around transferable understandings, we can help our students make connections and engage in deep learning.

Thanks to Eric, Jason, and Carla for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at [email protected] . When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

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Forms of writing

Essay writing.

• Report writing
• Reflective writing
• Writing for business contexts
• Writing a memorandum
• Email etiquette
• Producing Word documents and GoogleDocs

Essays are often used to demonstrate in-depth understanding of a particular topic. There are two main types of essays:

• Descriptive – when you give a thorough description of a particular topic
• Persuasive – when you present an argument and demonstrate that you have at least looked at both sides

1. Plan your essay

Deconstruct the question

A crucial first step is to understand exactly what the question requires of you. View the deconstructing a question resources .

Brainstorm an essay map

You will be asked to write an essay based on content you have learnt in class. Once you know exactly what the question is asking of you, do a quick brainstorm to map what you already know about the topic and what you need to find out.

Find and review information sources

Your lecturer will likely ask you to include course readings and to refer to additional readings. A good place to start is to refer to your course readings, revise these and see who the authors refer to in their reference list. You will also need to conduct a focused search for further information. View resources on finding quality sources of information .

Start writing

2. Write your essay

The Introduction

The Introduction sets the scene for the essay and gives the reader a clear idea of what they can expect. A good introduction briefly introduces the topic and gives signposts to the main points that the essay will address.

The Body consists of paragraphs that address your essay topic. Paragraphs should focus on one theme and they should be structured in a logical manner. View resources on writing paragraphs .

The Conclusion

The Conclusion summarises key points of the essay. A good conclusion doesn’t simply regurgitate content, rather it gives the reader a concise summary of the key points and a clear idea of your stance on the topic. The conclusion should not contain any new information.

3. Revise, edit and refine your essay

• Check the essay question – does your essay address the question?
• Check the marking criteria in the assignment rubric – if the lecturer wants you to address specific points, make sure you do so
• Read it out loud – by reading your work out loud, you get a better sense of how the reader will interpret your work
• Give it to someone to check for flow and to proof-read. If you’ve written a good essay it will make sense to someone who has no previous knowledge of the topic. This shows that your essay is clear and is structured in a way that develops understanding for the reader
• Proof-read your work – make sure you proof-read your work to identify spelling and grammar errors
• Check your referencing – make sure your work adheres to   APA referencing standards

Further information

• Massey University’s  assignment planner  will map a timeline to complete key essay writing steps
• Use this list of linking words to help you link paragraphs and/or sentences within paragraphs
• Refer to examples of essays on AWA . 
• Our resources on paraphrasing will help you incorporate evidence into your writing
• Our resources on grammar will help you edit and refine your essay

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John Locke (b. 1632, d. 1704) was a British philosopher, Oxford academic and medical researcher. Locke’s monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) is one of the first great defenses of modern empiricism and concerns itself with determining the limits of human understanding in respect to a wide spectrum of topics. It thus tells us in some detail what one can legitimately claim to know and what one cannot. Locke’s association with Anthony Ashley Cooper (later the First Earl of Shaftesbury) led him to become successively a government official charged with collecting information about trade and colonies, economic writer, opposition political activist, and finally a revolutionary whose cause ultimately triumphed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Among Locke’s political works he is most famous for The Second Treatise of Government in which he argues that sovereignty resides in the people and explains the nature of legitimate government in terms of natural rights and the social contract. He is also famous for calling for the separation of Church and State in his Letter Concerning Toleration . Much of Locke’s work is characterized by opposition to authoritarianism. This is apparent both on the level of the individual person and on the level of institutions such as government and church. For the individual, Locke wants each of us to use reason to search after truth rather than simply accept the opinion of authorities or be subject to superstition. He wants us to proportion assent to propositions to the evidence for them. On the level of institutions it becomes important to distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate functions of institutions and to make the corresponding distinction for the uses of force by these institutions. Locke believes that using reason to try to grasp the truth, and determine the legitimate functions of institutions will optimize human flourishing for the individual and society both in respect to its material and spiritual welfare. This in turn, amounts to following natural law and the fulfillment of the divine purpose for humanity.

1.1 Locke’s Life up to His Meeting with Lord Ashley in 1666

1.2 locke and lord shaftesbury 1666 to 1688, 1.3 the end of locke’s life 1689–1704, 2.2 book ii, 2.3 book iii, 2.4 book iv, 2.5 knowledge and probability, 2.6 reason, faith and enthusiasm, 3. locke’s major works on education, 4.1 the second treatise of government, 4.2 human nature and god’s purposes, 4.3 of war and slavery, 4.4 of property, 4.5 the social contract theory, 4.6 the function of civil government, 4.7 rebellion and regicide, 5. locke and religious toleration, primary sources, secondary sources, other internet resources, related entries, 1. historical background and locke’s life.

John Locke (1632–1704) was one of the greatest philosophers in Europe at the end of the seventeenth century. Locke grew up and lived through one of the most extraordinary centuries of English political and intellectual history. It was a century in which conflicts between Crown and Parliament and the overlapping conflicts between Protestants, Anglicans and Catholics swirled into civil war in the 1640s. With the defeat and death of Charles I, there began a great experiment in governmental institutions including the abolishment of the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Anglican church, and the establishment of Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate in the 1650s. The collapse of the Protectorate after the death of Cromwell was followed by the Restoration of Charles II—the return of the monarchy, the House of Lords and the Anglican Church. This period lasted from 1660 to 1688. It was marked by continued conflicts between King and Parliament and debates over religious toleration for Protestant dissenters and Catholics. This period ends with the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in which James II was driven from England and replaced by William of Orange and his wife Mary. The final period during which Locke lived involved the consolidation of power by William and Mary, and the beginning of William’s efforts to oppose the domination of Europe by the France of Louis XIV, which later culminated in the military victories of John Churchill—the Duke of Marlborough.

Locke was born in Wrington to Puritan parents of modest means. His father was a country lawyer who served in a cavalry company on the Puritan side in the early stages of the English Civil War. His father’s commander, Alexander Popham, became the local MP, and it was his patronage which allowed the young John Locke to gain an excellent education. In 1647 Locke went to Westminster School in London.

From Westminster school he went to Christ Church, Oxford, in the autumn of 1652 at the age of twenty. As Westminster school was the most important English school, so Christ Church was the most important Oxford college. Education at Oxford was medieval. Locke, like Hobbes before him, found the Aristotelian philosophy he was taught at Oxford of little use. There was, however, more at Oxford than Aristotle. The new experimental philosophy had arrived. John Wilkins, Cromwell’s brother in law, had become Warden of Wadham College. The group around Wilkins was the nucleus of what was to become the English Royal Society. The Society grew out of informal meetings and discussion groups and moved to London after the Restoration and became a formal institution in the 1660s with charters from Charles II. The Society saw its aims in contrast with the Scholastic/Aristotelian traditions that dominated the universities. The program was to study nature rather than books. [ 1 ] Many of Wilkins associates were people interested in pursuing medicine by observation rather than the reading of classic texts. Bacon’s interest in careful experimentation and the systematic collection of facts from which generalizations could be made was characteristic of this group. One of Locke’s friends from Westminster school, Richard Lower, introduced Locke to medicine and the experimental philosophy being pursued by the virtuosi at Wadham.

Locke received his B.A. in February 1656. His career at Oxford, however, continued beyond his undergraduate days. In June of 1658, Locke qualified as a Master of Arts and was elected a Senior Student of Christ Church College. The rank was equivalent to a Fellow at any of the other colleges, but was not permanent. Locke had yet to determine what his career was to be. Locke was elected Lecturer in Greek at Christ Church in December of 1660 and he was elected Lecturer in Rhetoric in 1663. At this point, Locke needed to make a decision. The statutes of Christ Church laid it down that fifty five of the senior studentships should be reserved for men in orders or reading for orders. Only five could be held by others, two in medicine, two in law and one in moral philosophy. Thus, there was good reason for Locke to become a clergyman. Since his graduation Locke had been studying medicine. Locke decided to become a doctor.

John Wilkins had left Oxford with the Restoration of Charles II. The new leader of the Oxford scientific group was Robert Boyle. He was also Locke’s scientific mentor. Boyle (with the help of his astonishing assistant Robert Hooke) built an air pump which led to the formulation of Boyle’s law and devised a barometer as a weather indicator. The work on the air pump led to a controversy with Thomas Hobbes because Boyle’s explanations of the working of the air pump were incompatible with Hobbes’ micro-corpuscular theory. This controversy continued for ten years. Boyle was, however, most influential as a theorist. He was a mechanical philosopher who treated the world as reducible to matter in motion. But he had no micro-corpuscular account of the air.

Locke read Boyle before he read Descartes. When he did read Descartes, he saw the great French philosopher as providing a viable alternative to the sterile Aristotelianism he had been taught at Oxford. In writing An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke adopted Descartes’ ‘way of ideas’; though it is transformed so as to become an organic part of Locke’s philosophy. Still, while admiring Descartes, Locke’s involvement with the Oxford scientists gave him a perspective that made him critical of the rationalist elements in Descartes’ philosophy.

In the Epistle to the Reader at the beginning of the Essay Locke remarks:

The commonwealth of learning is not at this time without master-builders, whose mighty designs, in advancing the sciences, will leave lasting monuments to the admiration of posterity: but everyone must not hope to be a Boyle or a Sydenham; and in an age that produces such masters as the great Huygenius and the incomparable Mr. Newton, with some others of that strain, it is ambition enough to be employed as an under-labourer in clearing the ground a little, and removing some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge …. (N: 9–10; all quotations are from the Nidditch edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding [N])

Locke knew all of these men and their work. Locke, Boyle and Newton were all founding or early members of the English Royal Society. It is from Boyle that Locke learned about atomism (or the corpuscular hypothesis) and it is from Boyle’s book The Origin of Forms and Qualities that Locke took the language of primary and secondary qualities. Sydenham was an English physician and Locke did medical research with him. Sydenham championed careful observation of disease and rejected appeal to underlying causes. Both Boyle and Newton did work on colors that did not involve micro-corpuscular explanations. Locke read Newton’s Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis while in exile in Holland, and consulted Huygens as to the soundness of its mathematics. Locke and Newton became friends after Locke’s return from Holland in 1688. It may be that in referring to himself as an ‘under-labourer’, Locke is not only displaying a certain literary modesty, he is contrasting the positive discoveries of these men, with his own attempt to show the inadequacies of the Aristotelian and Scholastic and to some degree the Cartesian philosophies. There are, however, many aspects of Locke’s project to which this image of an under-labourer does not do justice (see Jolley 1999: 15–17). While the corpuscular philosophy and Newton’s discoveries clearly influenced Locke, it is the Baconian program of producing natural histories that Locke makes reference to when he talks about the Essay in the Introduction. He writes:

It shall suffice to my present Purpose, to consider the discerning Faculties of a Man, as they are employ’d about the Objects, which they have to do with: and I shall imagine that I have not wholly misimploy’d my self in the Thoughts I shall have on this Occasion, if in this Historical, Plain Method, I can give any Account of the Ways, whereby our Understanding comes to attain those Notions of Things, and can set down any Measure of the Certainty of our Knowledge…. (I.1.2, N: 43–4—the three numbers, are book, chapter and section numbers respectively, followed by the page number in the Nidditch edition)

The ‘Historical, Plain Method’ is apparently to give a genetic account of how we come by our ideas. Presumably this will reveal the degree of certainty of the knowledge based on such ideas. Locke’s own active involvement with the scientific movement was largely through his informal studies of medicine. Dr. David Thomas was his friend and collaborator. Locke and Thomas had a laboratory in Oxford which was very likely, in effect, a pharmacy. In 1666 Lord Ashley, one of the richest men in England, came to Oxford in order to drink some medicinal waters there. He had asked Dr. Thomas to provide them. Thomas had to be out of town and asked Locke to see that the water was delivered. As a result of this encounter, Ashley invited Locke to come to London as his personal physician. In 1667 Locke did move to London becoming not only Lord Ashley’s personal physician, but secretary, researcher, political operative and friend. Living with him Locke found himself at the very heart of English politics in the 1670s and 1680s.

Locke’s chief work while living at Lord Ashley’s residence, Exeter House, in 1668 was as Ashley’s physician. Locke used his medical training to organize a successful operation on Ashley. This was perhaps the most carefully documented operation in the 17th century. Locke consulted doctors across the country to determine what the best practices were for this operation and made cleanliness a priority. In doing so he saved his patron’s life and thus changed English history.

Locke had a number of other jobs. He worked as secretary of the Board of Trade and Plantations and Secretary to the Lords Proprietors of the Carolinas. Lord Ashley was one of the advocates of the view that England would prosper through trade and that colonies could play an important role in promoting trade. Ashley persuaded Charles II to create a Board of Trade and Plantations to collect information about trade and colonies, and Locke became its secretary. In his capacity as the secretary of the Board of Trade Locke was the collection point for information from around the globe about trade and colonies for the English government. Among Ashley’s commercial projects was an effort to found colonies in the Carolinas. In his capacity as the secretary to the Lords Proprietors, Locke was involved in the writing of the fundamental constitution of the Carolinas. There is some controversy about the extent of Locke’s role in writing the constitution. [ 2 ] In addition to issues about trade and colonies, Locke was involved through Shaftesbury in other controversies about public policy. There was a monetary crisis in England involving the value of money, and the clipping of coins. Locke wrote papers for Lord Ashley on economic matters, including the coinage crisis.

While living in London at Exeter House, Locke continued to be involved in philosophical discussions. He tells us that:

Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this Essay, I should tell thee, that five or six friends meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that rose on every side. After we had awhile puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course; and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with. This I proposed to the company, who all readily assented; and thereupon it was agreed that this should be our first inquiry. Some hasty and undigested thoughts, on a subject I had never before considered, which I set down against our next meeting, gave the first entrance into this Discourse; which having been thus begun by chance, was continued by intreaty; written by incoherent parcels; and after long intervals of neglect, resumed again, as my humour or occasions permitted; and at last, in a retirement where an attendance on my health gave me leisure, it was brought into that order thou now seest it. (Epistle to the Reader, N: 7)

James Tyrrell, one of Locke’s friends was at that meeting. He recalls the discussion being about the principles of morality and revealed religion (Cranston 1957: 140–1). Thus the Oxford scholar and medical researcher came to begin the work which was to occupy him off and on over the next twenty years.

In 1674 after Shaftesbury had left the government, Locke went back to Oxford, where he acquired the degree Bachelor of medicine, and a license to practice medicine, and then went to France (Cranston 1957: 160). In France Locke went from Calais to Paris, Lyons and on to Montpellier, where he spent the next fifteen months. Much of Locke’s time was spent learning about Protestantism in France. The Edict of Nantes (promulgated by Henry IV in 1598) was in force, and so there was a degree of religious toleration in France. Louis XIV was to revoke the edict in 1685 and French Protestants were then killed while some 400,000 went into exile.

While Locke was in France, Shaftesbury’s fortunes fluctuated. In 1676 Shaftesbury was imprisoned in the tower. His imprisonment lasted for a year. In 1678, after the mysterious murder of a London judge, informers (most notably Titus Oates) started coming forward to reveal a supposed Catholic conspiracy to assassinate the King and put his brother on the throne. This whipped up public anti-Catholic frenzy. Though Shaftesbury had not fabricated the conspiracy story, nor did he prompt Oates to come forward, he did exploit the situation to the advantage of his party. In the public chaos surrounding the sensational revelations, Shaftesbury organized an extensive party network, exercised great control over elections, and built up a large parliamentary majority. His strategy was to secure the passage of an Exclusion bill that would prevent Charles II’s openly Catholic brother from becoming King. Although the Exclusion bill passed in the Commons it was rejected in the House of Lords because of the King’s strong opposition to it. As the panic over the Popish plot receded, Shaftesbury was left without a following or a cause. Shaftesbury was seized on July 21, 1681 and again put in the tower. He was tried on trumped-up charges of treason but acquitted by a London grand jury (filled with his supporters) in November.

At this point some of the Country Party leaders began plotting an armed insurrection which, had it come off, would have begun with the assassination of Charles and his brother on their way back to London from the races at Newmarket. The chances of such a rising occurring were not as good as the plotters supposed. Memories of the turmoil of the civil war were still relatively fresh. Eventually Shaftesbury, who was moving from safe house to safe house, gave up and fled to Holland in November 1682. He died there in January 1683. Locke stayed in England until the Rye House Plot (named after the house from which the plotters were to fire upon the King and his brother) was discovered in June of 1683. Locke left for the West country to put his affairs in order the very week the plot was revealed to the government and by September he was in exile in Holland. [ 3 ]

While in exile, Locke finished An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and published a fifty-page advanced notice of it in French. (This was to provide the intellectual world on the continent with most of their information about the Essay until Pierre Coste’s French translation appeared in 1704.) He also wrote and published his Epistola de Tolerentia in Latin. Richard Ashcraft, in his Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (1986) suggests that while in Holland, Locke was not only finishing An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and nursing his health, he was closely associated with the English revolutionaries in exile. The English government was much concerned with this group. They tried to get a number of them, including Locke, extradited to England. Locke’s studentship at Oxford was taken away from him. In the meanwhile, the English intelligence service infiltrated the rebel group in Holland and effectively thwarted their efforts—at least for a while. While Locke was living in exile in Holland, Charles II died on Feb. 6, 1685, and was succeeded by his brother, who became James II of England. Soon after this, the rebels in Holland sent a force of soldiers under the Duke of Monmouth to England to try to overthrow James II. The revolt was crushed, and Monmouth was captured and executed (Ashcraft 1986). For a meticulous, if cautious review, of the evidence concerning Locke’s involvement with the English rebels in exile see Roger Woolhouse’s Locke: A Biography (2007).

Ultimately, however, the rebels were successful. James II alienated most of his supporters, and William of Orange was invited to bring a Dutch force to England. After William’s army landed, James II, realizing that he could not mount an effective resistance, fled the country to exile in France. This became known as the Glorious Revolution of 1688. It is a watershed in English history. For it marks the point at which the balance of power in the English government passed from the King to the Parliament. Locke returned to England in February 1689.

After his return from exile, Locke published An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and The Two Treatises of Government . In addition, Popple’s translation of Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration was also published. It is worth noting that the Two Treatises and the Letter Concerning Toleration were published anonymously. Locke took up residence in the country at Oates in Essex, the home of Sir Francis and Lady Masham (Damaris Cudworth). Locke had met Damaris Cudworth in 1682 and became involved intellectually and romantically with her. She was the daughter of Ralph Cudworth, the Cambridge Platonist, and a philosopher in her own right. After Locke went into exile in Holland in 1683, she married Sir Francis Masham. Locke and Lady Masham remained good friends and intellectual companions to the end of Locke’s life. During the remaining years of his life, Locke oversaw four more editions of the Essay and engaged in controversies over the Essay most notably in a series of published letters with Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester. In a similar way, Locke defended the Letter Concerning Toleration against a series of attacks. He wrote The Reasonableness of Christianity and Some Thoughts on Education during this period as well.

Nor was Locke finished with public affairs. In 1696 the Board of Trade was revived. Locke played an important part in its revival and served as the most influential member on it until 1700. The new Board of Trade had administrative powers and was, in fact, concerned with a wide range of issues, from the Irish wool trade and the suppression of piracy, to the treatment of the poor in England and the governance of the colonies. It was, in Peter Laslett’s phrase “the body which administered the United States before the American Revolution” (Laslett 1954 [1990: 127]). During these last eight years of his life, Locke was asthmatic, and he suffered so much from it that he could only bear the smoke of London during the four warmer months of the year. Locke plainly engaged in the activities of the Board out of a strong sense of patriotic duty. After his retirement from the Board of Trade in 1700, Locke remained in retirement at Oates until his death on Sunday 28 October 1704.

2. The Limits of Human Understanding

Locke is often classified as the first of the great English empiricists (ignoring the claims of Bacon and Hobbes). This reputation rests on Locke’s greatest work, the monumental An Essay Concerning Human Understanding . Locke explains his project in several places. Perhaps the most important of his goals is to determine the limits of human understanding. Locke writes:

For I thought that the first Step towards satisfying the several Enquiries, the Mind of Man was apt to run into, was, to take a Survey of our own Understandings, examine our own Powers, and see to what Things they were adapted. Till that was done, I suspected that we began at the wrong end, and in vain sought for Satisfaction in a quiet and secure Possession of Truths, that most concern’d us whilst we let loose our Thoughts into the vast Ocean of Being , as if all the boundless Extent, were the natural and undoubted Possessions of our Understandings, wherein there was nothing that escaped its Decisions, or that escaped its Comprehension. Thus Men, extending their Enquiries beyond their Capacities, and letting their Thoughts wander into those depths where they can find no sure Footing; ’tis no Wonder, that they raise Questions and multiply Disputes, which never coming to any clear Resolution, are proper to only continue and increase their Doubts, and to confirm them at last in a perfect Skepticism. Wheras were the Capacities of our Understanding well considered, the Extent of our Knowledge once discovered, and the Horizon found, which sets the boundary between the enlightened and the dark Parts of Things; between what is and what is not comprehensible by us, Men would perhaps with less scruple acquiesce in the avow’d Ignorance of the one; and employ their Thoughts and Discourse, with more Advantage and Satisfaction in the other. (I.1.7, N: 47)

Some philosophers before Locke had suggested that it would be good to find the limits of the Understanding, but what Locke does is to carry out this project in detail. In the four books of the Essay Locke considers the sources and nature of human knowledge. Book I argues that we have no innate knowledge. (In this he resembles Berkeley and Hume, and differs from Descartes and Leibniz.) So, at birth, the human mind is a sort of blank slate on which experience writes. In Book II Locke claims that ideas are the materials of knowledge and all ideas come from experience. The term ‘idea’, Locke tells us “…stands for whatsoever is the Object of the Understanding, when a man thinks” (I.1.8, N: 47). Experience is of two kinds, sensation and reflection. One of these—sensation—tells us about things and processes in the external world. The other—reflection—tells us about the operations of our own minds. Reflection is a sort of internal sense that makes us conscious of the mental processes we are engaged in. Some ideas we get only from sensation, some only from reflection and some from both.

Locke has an atomic or perhaps more accurately a corpuscular theory of ideas. [ 4 ] There is, that is to say, an analogy between the way atoms or corpuscles combine into complexes to form physical objects and the way ideas combine. Ideas are either simple or complex. We cannot create simple ideas, we can only get them from experience. In this respect the mind is passive. Once the mind has a store of simple ideas, it can combine them into complex ideas of a variety of kinds. In this respect the mind is active. Thus, Locke subscribes to a version of the empiricist axiom that there is nothing in the intellect that was not previously in the senses—where the senses are broadened to include reflection. Book III deals with the nature of language, its connections with ideas and its role in knowledge. Book IV, the culmination of the previous reflections, explains the nature and limits of knowledge, probability, and the relation of reason and faith. Let us now consider the Essay in some detail.

At the beginning of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke says that since his purpose is “to enquire into the Original, Certainty and Extent of human knowledge, together with the grounds and degrees of Belief, Opinion and Assent” he is going to begin with ideas—the materials out of which knowledge is constructed. His first task is to “enquire into the Original of these Ideas…and the ways whereby the Understanding comes to be furnished with them” (I.1.3, N: 44). The role of Book I of the Essay is to make the case that being innate is not a way in which the understanding is furnished with principles and ideas. Locke treats innateness as an empirical hypothesis and argues that there is no good evidence to support it.

Locke describes innate ideas as “some primary notions…Characters as it were stamped upon the Mind of Man, which the Soul receives in its very first Being; and brings into the world with it” (I.2.1, N: 48). In pursuing this enquiry, Locke rejects the claim that there are speculative innate principles (I.2), practical innate moral principles (I.3) or that we have innate ideas of God, identity or impossibility (I.4). Locke rejects arguments from universal assent and attacks dispositional accounts of innate principles. Thus, in considering what would count as evidence from universal assent to such propositions as “What is, is” or “It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be” he holds that children and idiots should be aware of such truths if they were innate but that they “have not the least apprehension or thought of them”. Why should children and idiots be aware of and able to articulate such propositions? Locke says:

It seems to me a near Contradiction to say that there are truths imprinted on the Soul, which it perceives or understands not; imprinting if it signify anything, being nothing else but the making certain Truths to be perceived. (I.2.5, N: 49)

So, Locke’s first point is that if propositions were innate they should be immediately perceived—by infants and idiots (and indeed everyone else)—but there is no evidence that they are. Locke then proceeds to attack dispositional accounts that say, roughly, that innate propositions are capable of being perceived under certain circumstances. Until these circumstances come about the propositions remain unperceived in the mind. With the advent of these conditions, the propositions are then perceived. Locke gives the following argument against innate propositions being dispositional:

For if any one [proposition] may [be in the mind but not be known]; then, by the same Reason, all Propositions that are true, and the Mind is ever capable of assenting to, may be said to be in the Mind, and to be imprinted: since if any one can be said to be in the Mind, which it never yet knew, it must be only because it is capable of knowing it; and so the Mind is of all Truths it ever shall know. (I.2.5, N: 50)

The essence of this argument and many of Locke’s other arguments against dispositional accounts of innate propositions is that such dispositional accounts do not provide an adequate criterion for distinguishing innate propositions from other propositions that the mind may come to discover. Thus, even if some criterion is proposed, it will turn out not to do the work it is supposed to do.

When Locke turns from speculative principles to the question of whether there are innate practical moral principles, many of the arguments against innate speculative principles continue to apply, but there are some additional considerations. Practical principles, such as the Golden Rule, are not self-evident in the way such speculative principles as “What is, is” are. Thus, one can clearly and sensibly ask reasons for why one should hold the Golden Rule true or obey it (I.3.4, N: 68). There are substantial differences between people over the content of practical principles. Thus, they are even less likely candidates to be innate propositions or to meet the criterion of universal assent. In the fourth chapter of Book I, Locke raises similar points about the ideas which compose both speculative and practical principles. The point is that if the ideas that are constitutive of the principles are not innate, this gives us even more reason to hold that the principles are not innate. He examines the ideas of identity, impossibility and God to make these points.

In Book I Locke says little about who holds the doctrine of innate principles that he is attacking. For this reason he has sometimes been accused of attacking straw men. John Yolton has persuasively argued (Yolton 1956) that the view that innate ideas and principles were necessary for the stability of religion, morality and natural law was widespread in England in the seventeenth century, and that in attacking both the naive and the dispositional account of innate ideas and innate principles, Locke is attacking positions which were widely held and continued to be held after the publication of the Essay . Thus, the charge that Locke’s account of innate principles is made of straw, is not a just criticism. But there are also some important connections with particular philosophers and schools that are worth noting and some points about innate ideas and inquiry.

At I. 4. 24. Locke tells us that the doctrine of innate principles once accepted “eased the lazy from the pains of search” and that the doctrine is an inquiry stopper that is used by those who “affected to be Masters and Teachers” to illegitimately gain control of the minds of their students. Locke rather clearly has in mind the Aristotelians and scholastics at the universities. Thus Locke’s attack on innate principles is connected with his anti-authoritarianism. It is an expression of his view of the importance of free and autonomous inquiry in the search for truth. Ultimately, Locke holds, this is the best road to knowledge and happiness. Locke, like Descartes, is tearing down the foundations of the old Aristotelian scholastic house of knowledge. But while Descartes focused on the empiricism at the foundation of the structure, Locke is focusing on the claims that innate ideas provide its first principles. The attack on innate ideas is thus the first step in the demolition of the scholastic model of science and knowledge. Ironically, it is also clear from II.1.9. that Locke sees Descartes’ claim that his essence is to be a thinking thing as entailing a doctrine of innate ideas and principles.

In Book II of the Essay , Locke gives his positive account of how we acquire the materials of knowledge. Locke distinguishes a variety of different kinds of ideas in Book II. Locke holds that the mind is a tabula rasa or blank sheet until experience in the form of sensation and reflection provide the basic materials—simple ideas—out of which most of our more complex knowledge is constructed. While the mind may be a blank slate in regard to content, it is plain that Locke thinks we are born with a variety of faculties to receive and abilities to manipulate or process the content once we acquire it. Thus, for example, the mind can engage in three different types of action in putting simple ideas together. The first of these kinds of action is to combine them into complex ideas. Complex ideas are of two kinds, ideas of substances and ideas of modes. Substances are independent existences. Beings that count as substances include God, angels, humans, animals, plants and a variety of constructed things. Modes are dependent existences. These include mathematical and moral ideas, and all the conventional language of religion, politics and culture. The second action which the mind performs is the bringing of two ideas, whether simple or complex, by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them. This gives us our ideas of relations (II.12.1, N: 163). The third act of the mind is the production of our general ideas by abstraction from particulars, leaving out the particular circumstances of time and place, which would limit the application of an idea to a particular individual. In addition to these abilities, there are such faculties as memory which allow for the storing of ideas.

Having set forth the general machinery of how simple and complex ideas of substances, modes, relations, and so forth are derived from sensation and reflection, Locke also explains how a variety of particular kinds of ideas, such as the ideas of solidity, number, space, time, power, identity, and moral relations arise from sensation and reflection. Several of these are of particular interest. Locke’s chapter on power gives rise to a discussion of free will and voluntary action (see the entry on Locke on freedom ). Locke also made a number of interesting claims in the philosophy of mind. He suggested, for example, that for all we know, God could as easily add the powers of perception and thought to matter organized in the right way as he could add those powers to an immaterial substance which would then be joined to matter organized in the right way. His account of personal identity in II. xxvii was revolutionary. (See the entry on Locke on personal identity) . Both of these topics and related ones are treated in the supplementary document: Some Interesting Issues in Locke’s Philosophy of Mind

In what follows, we focus on some central issues in Locke’s account of physical objects. (See also the entry Locke’s philosophy of science , which pursues a number of topics related to Locke’s account of physical objects that are of considerable importance but largely beyond the scope of this general account of Locke’s philosophy.) These include Locke on knowledge in natural philosophy, the limitations of the corpuscular philosophy and Locke’s relation to Newton.

Locke offers an account of physical objects based on the mechanical philosophy and the corpuscular hypothesis. The adherents of the mechanical philosophy held that all material phenomena can be explained by matter in motion and the impact of one body on another. They viewed matter as passive. They rejected the “occult qualities” and “causation at a distance” of the Aristotelian and Scholastic philosophy. Robert Boyle’s corpuscularian hypothesis treated the material world as made up of particles. Some corpuscularians held that corpuscles could be further divided and that the universe was full of matter with no void space. Atomists, on the other hand, held that the particles were indivisible and that the material world is composed of atoms and the void or empty space in which the atoms move. Locke was an atomist.

Atoms have properties. They are extended, they are solid, they have a particular shape and they are in motion or rest. They combine together to produce the familiar stuff and physical objects, the gold and the wood, the horses and violets, the tables and chairs of our world. These familiar things also have properties. They are extended, solid, have a particular shape, and are in motion and at rest. In addition to these properties that they share with the atoms that compose them, they have other properties such as colors, smells, tastes that they get by standing in relation to perceivers. The distinction between these two kinds of properties goes back to the Greek atomists. It is articulated by Galileo and Descartes as well as Locke’s mentor Robert Boyle.

Locke makes this distinction in Book II Chapter 8 of the Essay and using Boyle’s terminology calls the two different classes of properties the primary and secondary qualities of an object. This distinction is made by both of the main branches of the mechanical philosophy of the seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Both the Cartesian plenum theorists, who held that the world was full of infinitely divisible matter and that there was no void space, and the atomists such as Gassendi, who held that there were indivisible atoms and void space in which the atoms move, made the distinction between these two classes of properties. Still, the differences between these two branches of the mechanical philosophy affect their account of primary qualities. In the chapter on Solidity (II.4) Locke rejects the Cartesian definition of body as simply extended and argues that bodies are both extended and impenetrable or solid. The inclusion of solidity in Locke’s account of bodies and of primary qualities distinguishes them from the void space in which they move.

The primary qualities of an object are properties which the object possesses independent of us—such as occupying space, being either in motion or at rest, having solidity and texture. The secondary qualities are powers in bodies to produce ideas in us like color, taste, smell and so on that are caused by the interaction of our particular perceptual apparatus with the primary qualities of the object. Our ideas of primary qualities resemble the qualities in the object, while our ideas of secondary qualities do not resemble the powers that cause them. Locke also distinguishes a second class of secondary properties that are the powers that one substance has to effect another, e.g. the power of a fire to melt a piece of wax.

There has been considerable scholarly debate concerning the details of Locke’s account of the distinction. Among the issues are which qualities Locke assigns to each of the two categories. Locke gives several lists. Another issue is what the criterion is for putting a quality in one list rather than another. Does Locke hold that all the ideas of secondary qualities come to us by one sense while the ideas of primary qualities come to us through two or is Locke not making the distinction in this way? Another issue is whether there are only primary qualities of atoms or whether compounds of atoms also have primary qualities. And while Locke claims our ideas of primary qualities resemble the primary qualities in objects, and the ideas of secondary qualities do not resemble their causes in the object, what does ‘resemble’ mean in this context? Related to this issue is how we are supposed to know about particles that we cannot sense. It seems clear that Locke holds that there are certain analogies between the middle sized macroscopic objects we encounter in the world, e.g. porphyry and manna for example, and the particles that compose these things. Maurice Mandelbaum called this process ‘transdiction’. These analogies allow us to say certain things about the nature of particles and primary and secondary qualities. For example we can infer that atoms are solid and that heat is a greater rate of motion of atoms while cold is a slower motion. But these analogies may not get us very far in grasping the necessary connections between qualities in nature. Yet another issue is whether Locke sees the distinction as reductionistic. If what we mean by reductionistic here is that only the primary qualities are real and these explain the secondary qualities then there does not seem to be a clear answer. Secondary qualities surely are nothing more than certain primary qualities that affect us in certain ways. This seems to be reductionistic. But on Locke’s account of “real ideas” in II.30 both the ideas of primary and secondary qualities count as real. And while Locke holds that our ideas of secondary qualities are caused by primary qualities, in certain important respects the primary qualities do not explain them. Locke holds that we cannot even conceive how the size, figure and motion of particles could cause any sensation in us. So, knowing the size, figure and motion of the particles would be of no use to us in this regard (see IV.3.11–40, N: 544–546).

Locke probably holds some version of the representational theory of perception, though some scholars dispute this. On such a theory what the mind immediately perceives are ideas, and the ideas are caused by and represent the objects which cause them. Thus perception is a triadic relation, rather than simply being a dyadic relation between an object and a perceiver. Such a dyadic relational theory is often called naive realism because it suggests that the perceiver is directly perceiving the object, and naive because this view is open to a variety of serious objections. Some versions of the representational theory are open to serious objections as well. If, for example, one treats ideas as things, then one can imagine that because one sees ideas, the ideas actually block one from seeing things in the external world. The idea would be like a picture or painting. The picture would copy the original object in the external world, but because our immediate object of perception is the picture we would be prevented from seeing the original just as standing in front of a painting on an easel might prevent us from seeing the person being painted. Thus, this is sometimes called the picture/original theory of perception. Alternatively, Jonathan Bennett called it “the veil of perception” to emphasize that ‘seeing’ the ideas prevents us from seeing the external world. One philosopher who arguably held such a view was Nicholas Malebranche, a follower of Descartes. Antoine Arnauld, by contrast, while believing in the representative character of ideas, is a direct realist about perception. Arnauld engaged in a lengthy controversy with Malebranche, and criticized Malebranche’s account of ideas. Locke follows Arnauld in his criticism of Malebranche on this point (Locke, 1823, Vol. IX: 250). Yet Berkeley attributed the veil of perception interpretation of the representational theory of perception to Locke as have many later commentators including Bennett. A.D. Woozley puts the difficulty of doing this succinctly:

…it is scarcely credible both that Locke should be able to see and state so clearly the fundamental objection to the picture-original theory of sense perception, and that he should have held the same theory himself. (Woozley 1964: 27)

Just what Locke’s account of perception involves, is still a matter of scholarly debate. A review of this issue at a symposium including John Rogers, Gideon Yaffe, Lex Newman, Tom Lennon, and Vere Chappell at a meeting of the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association in 2003 and later expanded and published in the Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (2004, volume 85, issue 3) found most of the symposiasts holding the view that Locke holds a representative theory of perception but that he is not a skeptic about the external world in the way that the veil of perception doctrine might suggest.

Another issue that has been a matter of controversy since the first publication of the Essay is what Locke means by the term ‘substance’. The primary/secondary quality distinction gets us a certain ways in understanding physical objects, but Locke is puzzled about what underlies or supports the primary qualities themselves. He is also puzzled about what material and immaterial substances might have in common that would lead us to apply the same word to both. These kinds of reflections led him to the relative and obscure idea of substance in general. This is an “I know not what” which is the support of qualities which cannot subsist by themselves. We experience properties appearing in regular clumps, but we must infer that there is something that supports or perhaps ‘holds together’ those qualities. For we have no experience of that supporting substance. It is clear that Locke sees no alternative to the claim that there are substances supporting qualities. He does not, for example, have a theory of tropes (tropes are properties that can exist independently of substances) which he might use to dispense with the notion of substance. (In fact, he may be rejecting something like a theory of tropes when he rejects the Aristotelian doctrine of real qualities and insists on the need for substances.) He is thus not at all a skeptic about ‘substance’ in the way that Hume is. But, it is also quite clear that he is regularly insistent about the limitations of our ideas of substances. Bishop Stillingfleet accused Locke of putting substance out of the reasonable part of the world. But Locke is not doing that.

Since Berkeley, Locke’s doctrine of the substratum or substance in general has been attacked as incoherent. It seems to imply that we have a particular without any properties, and this seems like a notion that is inconsistent with empiricism. We have no experience of such an entity and so no way to derive such an idea from experience. Locke himself acknowledges this point (I.4.18, N: 95). In order to avoid this problem, Michael Ayers has proposed that we must understand the notions of ‘substratum’ and ‘substance in general’ in terms of Locke’s distinction between real and nominal essences and particularly his doctrine of real essences developed in Book III of the Essay rather than as a separate problem from that of knowing real essences. The real essence of a material thing is its atomic constitution. This atomic constitution is the causal basis of all the observable properties of the thing, from which we create nominal essences. Were the real essence known, all the observable properties could be deduced from it. Locke claims that the real essences of material things are quite unknown to us. Locke’s concept of substance in general is also a ‘something I know not what’. Thus, on Ayers’ interpretation ‘substance in general’ means something like ‘whatever it is that supports qualities’ while the real essence means ‘this particular atomic constitution that explains this set of observable qualities’. Thus, Ayers wants to treat the unknown substratum as picking out the same thing as the real essence—thus eliminating the need for particulars without properties. This proposed way of interpreting Locke has been criticized by scholars both because of a lack of textural support, and on the stronger grounds that it conflicts with some things that Locke does say (see Jolley 1999: 71–3). As we have reached one of the important concepts in Book III, let us turn to that Book and Locke’s discussion of language.

Locke devotes Book III of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding to language. This is a strong indication that Locke thinks issues about language were of considerable importance in attaining knowledge. At the beginning of the Book he notes the importance of abstract general ideas to knowledge. These serve as sorts under which we rank all the vast multitude of particular existences. Thus, abstract ideas and classification are of central importance in Locke’s discussion of language and its importance for knowledge. Without general terms and classes we would be faced with the impossible task of trying to know a vast world of particulars.

There is a clear connection between Books II and III in that Locke claims that words stand for ideas. In his discussion of language Locke distinguishes words according to the categories of ideas established in Book II of the Essay . So there are ideas of substances, simple modes, mixed modes, relations and so on. It is in this context that Locke makes the distinction between real and nominal essences noted above. Perhaps because of his focus on the role that kind terms play in classification, Locke pays vastly more attention to nouns than to verbs. Locke recognizes that not all words relate to ideas. There are also the many particles, words that “…signify the connexion that the Mind gives to Ideas, or Propositions, one with another” (II.7.1, N: 471). Still, it is the relation of words and ideas that gets most of Locke’s attention in Book III.

Norman Kretzmann calls the claim that “words in their primary or immediate signification signify nothing but the ideas in the mind of him that uses them ” (III.2.2) “Locke’s main semantic thesis” (see Kretzmann 1968:179). This thesis has often been criticized as a classic blunder in semantic theory. Thus Mill, for example, wrote, “When I say, ‘the sun is the cause of the day’, I do not mean that my idea of the sun causes or excites in me the idea of day” (Mill 1843: bk 1, ch. 2, § 1). This criticism of Locke’s account of language parallels the “veil of perception” critique of his account of perception and suggests that Locke is not distinguishing the meaning of a word from its reference. Kretzmann, however, argues persuasively that Locke distinguishes between meaning and reference and that ideas provide the meaning but not the reference of words. Thus, the line of criticism represented by the quotation from Mill is ill founded.

In addition to the kinds of ideas noted above, there are also particular and abstract ideas. Particular ideas have in them the ideas of particular places and times which limit the application of the idea to a single individual, while abstract general ideas leave out the ideas of particular times and places in order to allow the idea to apply to other similar qualities or things. There has been considerable philosophical and scholarly debate about the nature of the process of abstraction and Locke’s account of it. Berkeley argued that the process as Locke conceives it is incoherent. In part this is because Berkeley is an imagist—that is he believes that all ideas are images. If one is an imagist it becomes impossible to imagine what idea could include both the ideas of a right and equilateral triangle. Michael Ayers has recently argued that Locke too was an imagist. This would make Berkeley’s criticism of Locke very much to the point. Ayers’ claim, however, has been disputed (see, for example, Soles 1999). The process of abstraction is of considerable importance to human knowledge. Locke thinks most words we use are general (III.1.1, N: 409). Clearly, it is only general or sortal ideas that can serve in a classificatory scheme.

In his discussion of names of substances and in the contrast between names of substances and names of modes, a number of interesting features of Locke’s views about language and knowledge emerge. Physical substances are atoms and things made up of atoms. But we have no experience of the atomic structure of horses and tables. We know horses and tables mainly by secondary qualities such as color, taste and smell and so on and primary qualities such as shape, motion and extension. So, since the real essence (the atomic constitution) of a horse is unknown to us, our word ‘horse’ cannot get its meaning from that real essence. What the general word signifies is the complex of ideas we have decided are parts of the idea of that sort of thing. These ideas we get from experience. Locke calls such a general idea that picks out a sort, the nominal essence of that sort.

One of the central issues in Book III has to do with classification. On what basis do we divide things into kinds and organize those kinds into a system of species and genera? In the Aristotelian and Scholastic tradition that Locke rejects, necessary properties are those that an individual must have in order to exist and continue to exist. These contrast with accidental properties. Accidental properties are those that an individual can gain and lose and yet continue in existence. If a set of necessary properties is shared by a number of individuals, that set of properties constitutes the essence of a natural kind. The borders between kinds are supposed to be sharp and determinate. The aim of Aristotelian science is to discover the essences of natural kinds. Kinds can then be organized hierarchically into a classificatory system of species and genera. This classification of the world by natural kinds will be unique and privileged because it alone corresponds to the structure of the world. This doctrine of essences and kinds is often called Aristotelian essentialism. Locke rejects a variety of aspects of this doctrine. He rejects the notion that an individual has an essence apart from being treated as belonging to a kind. He also rejects the claim that there is a single classification of things in nature that the natural philosopher should seek to discover. He holds that there are many possible ways to classify the world each of which might be particularly useful depending on one’s purposes.

Locke’s pragmatic account of language and the distinction between nominal and real essences constitute an anti-essentialist alternative to this Aristotelian essentialism and its correlative account of the classification of natural kinds. He claims that there are no fixed boundaries in nature to be discovered—that is there are no clear demarcation points between species. There are always borderline cases. There is debate over whether Locke’s view is that this lack of fixed boundaries is true on both the level of appearances and nominal essences, and atomic constitutions and real essences, or on the level of nominal essences alone. The first view is that Locke holds that there are no Aristotelian natural kinds on either the level of appearance or atomic reality. The second view holds that Locke thinks there are Aristotelian natural kinds on the atomic level, it is simply that we cannot get at them or know what they are. On either of these interpretations, the real essence cannot provide the meaning to names of substances. A.O. Lovejoy in the Great Chain of Being , and David Wiggins are proponents of the second interpretation while Michael Ayers and William Uzgalis argue for the first (Uzgalis 1988; Ayers 1991: II. 70).

By contrast, the ideas that we use to make up our nominal essences come to us from experience. Locke claims that the mind is active in making our ideas of sorts and that there are so many properties to choose among that it is possible for different people to make quite different ideas of the essence of a certain substance. This has given some commentators the impression that the making of sorts is utterly arbitrary and conventional for Locke and that there is no basis for criticizing a particular nominal essence. Sometimes Locke says things that might suggest this. But this impression should be resisted. Peter Anstey has characterized Locke’s conventionalism about classificatory terms as both constrained and convergent (Anstey 2011: 209, 212). Locke claims that while the making of nominal essences is the work of the understanding, that work is constrained both by usage (where words stand for ideas that are already in use) and by the fact that substance words are supposed to copy the properties of the substances they refer to. Locke says that our ideas of kinds of substances have as their archetype the complex of properties that produce the appearances we use to make our nominal essences and which cause the unity of the complex of ideas that appear to us regularly conjoined. The very notion of an archetype implies constraints on what properties (and hence what ideas) can go together. If there were no such constraints there could be no archetype. (For further discussion of the nominal-real essence distinction see the entry Locke on Real Essences) .

Let us begin with the usage of words. It is important in a community of language users that words be used with the same meaning. If this condition is met it facilitates the chief end of language which is communication. If one fails to use words with the meaning that most people attach to them, one will fail to communicate effectively with others. Thus one would defeat the main purpose of language. It should also be noted that traditions of usage for Locke can be modified. Otherwise we would not be able to improve our knowledge and understanding by getting more clear and determinate ideas.

In the making of the names of substances, there is a period of discovery as the abstract general idea is put together (e.g. the discovery of violets or gold) and then the naming of that idea and then its introduction into language. Language itself is viewed as an instrument for carrying out the mainly prosaic purposes and practices of everyday life. Ordinary people are the chief makers of language.

Vulgar Notions suit vulgar Discourses; and both though confused enough, yet serve pretty well for the Market and the Wake. Merchants and Lovers, Cooks and Taylors, have Words wherewith to dispatch their ordinary affairs; and so, I think, might Philosophers and Disputants too, if they had a mind to understand and to be clearly understood. (III.11.10, N: 514)

These ordinary people use a few apparent qualities, mainly ideas of secondary qualities to make ideas and words that will serve their purposes.

Natural philosophers (i.e. scientists) come along later to try to determine if the connections between properties which the ordinary folk have put together in a particular idea in fact holds in nature. Scientists are seeking to find the necessary connections between properties. Still, even scientists, in Locke’s view, are restricted to using observable (and mainly secondary) qualities to categorize things in nature. Sometimes, the scientists may find that the ordinary folk had erred, as when they called whales ‘fish’. A whale is not a fish, as it turns out, but a mammal. There is a characteristic group of qualities that fish have that whales do not have. There is a characteristic group of qualities that mammals have that whales also have. To classify a whale as a fish, therefore, is a mistake. Similarly, we might make an idea of gold that only included being a soft metal and gold color. If so, we would be unable to distinguish between gold and fool’s gold. Thus, since it is the mind that makes complex ideas (they are ‘the workmanship of the understanding’), one is free to put together any combination of ideas one wishes and call it what one will. But the product of such work is open to criticism, either on the grounds that it does not conform to already current usage or that it inadequately represents the archetypes that it is supposed to copy in the world. We engage in such criticism in order to improve human understanding of the material world and thus the human condition. This is the convergent character of Locke’s conventionalism. In becoming more accurate, the nominal essence converges on the real essence.

However, we should not forget the master-builders that Locke mentions at the beginning of the Essay . Stephen Gaukroger (2010) claims that Locke’s great achievement was to provide a philosophical justification for the kind of experimental philosophy that Boyle’s work on the air pump, and his and Newton’s work on colors, as well as Sydenham’s observational medicine. All of these had been attacked for not providing explanations in terms of matter theory. Thus, Locke is justifying the autonomy of experimental philosophy. Such experimental explanations depend solely on the relation between phenomena, even when there is some micro-corpuscular basis for the phenomena being explained. According to Gaukroger, this is Locke’s contribution to the collapse of mechanism. For the details of the problem and its solution, see Chapters 4 and 5 of Gaukroger (2010).

The distinction between modes and substances is surely one of the most important in Locke’s philosophy. In contrast with substances, modes are dependent existences—they can be thought of as the ordering of substances. These are technical terms for Locke, so we should see how they are defined. Locke writes:

First, Modes I call such complex Ideas , which however compounded, contain not in themselves the supposition of subsisting by themselves; such are the ideas signified by the Words Triangle, Gratitude, Murther, etc . (II.12.4, N: 165)

Locke goes on to distinguish between simple and mixed modes. He writes:

Of these Modes , there are two sorts, which deserve distinct consideration. First, there are some that are only variations, or different combinations of the same simple Idea , without the mixture of any other, as a dozen or score; which are nothing but the ideas of so many distinct unities being added together, and these I call simple Modes , as being contained within the bounds of one simple Idea . Secondly, There are others, compounded of Ideas of several kinds, put together to make one complex one; v.g. Beauty , consisting of a certain combination of Colour and Figure, causing Delight to the Beholder; Theft , which being the concealed change of the Possession of any thing, without the consent of the Proprietor, contains, as is visible, a combination of several Ideas of several kinds; and these I call Mixed Modes . (II.12.5, N: 165)

When we make ideas of modes, the mind is again active, but the archetype is in our mind. The question becomes whether things in the world fit our ideas, and not whether our ideas correspond to the nature of things in the world. Our ideas are adequate. Thus we define ‘bachelor’ as an unmarried, adult, male human being. If we find that someone does not fit this definition, this does not reflect badly on our definition, it simply means that that individual does not belong to the class of bachelors. Modes give us the ideas of mathematics, of morality, of religion and politics and indeed of human conventions in general. Since these modal ideas are not only made by us but serve as standards that things in the world either fit or do not fit and thus belong or do not belong to that sort, ideas of modes are clear and distinct, adequate and complete. Thus in modes, we get the real and nominal essences combined. One can give precise definitions of mathematical terms (that is, give necessary and sufficient conditions), and one can give deductive demonstrations of mathematical truths. Locke sometimes says that morality too is capable of deductive demonstration. Though pressed by his friend William Molyneux to produce such a demonstrative morality, Locke never did so. The entry Locke’s moral philosophy provides an excellent discussion of Locke’s views on morality and issues related to them for which there is no room in this general account. The terms of political discourse also have some of the same modal features for Locke. When Locke defines the states of nature, slavery, and war in the Second Treatise of Government , for example, we are presumably getting precise modal definitions from which one can deduce consequences. It is possible, however, that with politics we are getting a study that requires both experience as well as the deductive modal aspect.

In the fourth book of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke tells us what knowledge is and what humans can know and what they cannot (not simply what they do and do not happen to know). Locke defines knowledge as “the perception of the connexion and agreement or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our Ideas” (IV.1.1, N: 525). This definition of knowledge contrasts with the Cartesian definition of knowledge as any ideas that are clear and distinct. Locke’s account of knowledge allows him to say that we can know substances in spite of the fact that our ideas of them always include the obscure and relative idea of substance in general. Still, Locke’s definition of knowledge raises in this domain a problem analogous to those we have seen with perception and language. If knowledge is the “perception of … the agreement or disagreement … of any of our Ideas”—are we not trapped in the circle of our own ideas? What about knowing the real existence of things? Locke is plainly aware of this problem, and very likely holds that the implausibility of skeptical hypotheses, such as Descartes’ Dream hypothesis (he doesn’t even bother to mention Descartes’ malin genie or Evil Demon hypothesis), along with the causal connections between qualities and ideas in his own system is enough to solve the problem. It is also worth noting that there are significant differences between Locke’s brand of empiricism and that of Berkeley that would make it easier for Locke to solve the veil of perception problem than Berkeley. Locke, for example, makes transdictive inferences about atoms where Berkeley is unwilling to allow that such inferences are legitimate. This implies that Locke has a semantics that allows him to talk about the unexperienced causes of experience (such as atoms) where Berkeley cannot. (See Mackie’s perceptive discussion of the veil of perception problem, in Problems from Locke , 1976: 51 through 67.)

What then can we know and with what degree of certainty? We can know that God exists with the second highest degree of assurance, that of demonstration. We also know that we exist with the highest degree of certainty. The truths of morality and mathematics we can know with certainty as well, because these are modal ideas whose adequacy is guaranteed by the fact that we make such ideas as ideal models which other things must fit, rather than trying to copy some external archetype which we can only grasp inadequately. On the other hand, our efforts to grasp the nature of external objects are limited largely to the connection between their apparent qualities. The real essence of elephants and gold is hidden from us: though in general we suppose them to be some distinct combination of atoms which cause the grouping of apparent qualities which leads us to see elephants and violets, gold and lead as distinct kinds. Our knowledge of material things is probabilistic and thus opinion rather than knowledge. Thus our “knowledge” of external objects is inferior to our knowledge of mathematics and morality, of ourselves, and of God. We do have sensitive knowledge of external objects, which is limited to things we are presently experiencing. While Locke holds that we only have knowledge of a limited number of things, he thinks we can judge the truth or falsity of many propositions in addition to those we can legitimately claim to know. This brings us to a discussion of probability.

Knowledge involves the seeing of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas. What then is probability and how does it relate to knowledge? Locke writes:

The Understanding Faculties being given to Man, not barely for Speculation, but also for the Conduct of his Life, Man would be at a great loss, if he had nothing to direct him, but what has the Certainty of true Knowledge … Therefore, as God has set some Things in broad day-light; as he has given us some certain Knowledge…So in the greater part of our Concernment, he has afforded us only the twilight, as I may say so, of Probability, suitable, I presume, to that State of Mediocrity and Probationership, he has been pleased to place us in here, wherein to check our over-confidence and presumption, we might by every day’s Experience be made sensible of our short sightedness and liableness to Error… (IV.14.1–2, N: 652)

So, apart from the few important things that we can know for certain, e.g. the existence of ourselves and God, the nature of mathematics and morality broadly construed, for the most part we must lead our lives without knowledge. What then is probability? Locke writes:

As Demonstration is the shewing of the agreement or disagreement of two Ideas, by the intervention of one or more Proofs, which have a constant, immutable, and visible connexion one with another: so Probability is nothing but the appearance of such an Agreement or Disagreement, by the intervention of Proofs, whose connection is not constant and immutable, or at least is not perceived to be so, but is or appears, for the most part to be so, and is enough to induce the Mind to judge the Proposition to be true, or false, rather than the contrary. (IV.15.1, N: 654)

Probable reasoning, on this account, is an argument, similar in certain ways to the demonstrative reasoning that produces knowledge but different also in certain crucial respects. It is an argument that provides evidence that leads the mind to judge a proposition true or false but without a guarantee that the judgment is correct. This kind of probable judgment comes in degrees, ranging from near demonstrations and certainty to unlikeliness and improbability in the vicinity of impossibility. It is correlated with degrees of assent ranging from full assurance down to conjecture, doubt and distrust.

The new science of mathematical probability had come into being on the continent just around the time that Locke was writing the Essay . His account of probability, however, shows little or no awareness of mathematical probability. Rather it reflects an older tradition that treated testimony as probable reasoning. Given that Locke’s aim, above all, is to discuss what degree of assent we should give to various religious propositions, the older conception of probability very likely serves his purposes best. Thus, when Locke comes to describe the grounds for probability he cites the conformity of the proposition to our knowledge, observation and experience, and the testimony of others who are reporting their observation and experience. Concerning the latter we must consider the number of witnesses, their integrity, their skill in observation, counter testimony and so on. In judging rationally how much to assent to a probable proposition, these are the relevant considerations that the mind should review. We should, Locke also suggests, be tolerant of differing opinions as we have more reason to retain the opinions we have than to give them up to strangers or adversaries who may well have some interest in our doing so.

Locke distinguishes two sorts of probable propositions. The first of these have to do with particular existences or matters of fact, and the second that are beyond the testimony of the senses. Matters of fact are open to observation and experience, and so all of the tests noted above for determining rational assent to propositions about them are available to us. Things are quite otherwise with matters that are beyond the testimony of the senses. These include the knowledge of finite immaterial spirits such as angels or things such as atoms that are too small to be sensed, or the plants, animals or inhabitants of other planets that are beyond our range of sensation because of their distance from us. Concerning this latter category, Locke says we must depend on analogy as the only help for our reasoning. He writes:

Thus the observing that the bare rubbing of two bodies violently one upon the other, produce heat, and very often fire it self, we have reason to think, that what we call Heat and Fire consist of the violent agitation of the imperceptible minute parts of the burning matter…. (IV.16.12, N: 665–6)

We reason about angels by considering the Great Chain of Being; figuring that while we have no experience of angels, the ranks of species above us is likely as numerous as that below of which we do have experience. This reasoning is, however, only probable.

The relative merits of the senses, reason and faith for attaining truth and the guidance of life were a significant issue during this period. As noted above James Tyrrell recalled that the original impetus for the writing of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding was a discussion about the principles of morality and revealed religion. In Book IV Chapters 17, 18, and 19 Locke deals with the nature of reason, the relation of reason to faith and the nature of enthusiasm. Locke remarks that all sects make use of reason as far as they can. It is only when this fails them that they have recourse to faith and claim that what is revealed is above reason. But he adds:

And I do not see how they can argue with anyone or even convince a gainsayer who uses the same plea, without setting down strict boundaries between faith and reason. (IV.18.2, N: 689)

Locke then defines reason as

the discovery of the certainty or probability of such propositions or truths, which the mind arrives at by deduction made from such ideas, as it has got by the use of its natural faculties; viz, by the use of sensation or reflection. (IV.18.2, N: 689)

Faith, on the other hand, is assent to any proposition “…upon the credit of the proposer, as coming from God, in some extraordinary way of communication”. That is we have faith in what is disclosed by revelation and which cannot be discovered by reason. Locke also distinguishes between the original revelation by God to some person, and traditional revelation which is the original revelation “…delivered over to others in Words, and the ordinary ways of our conveying our Conceptions one to another” (IV.18.3, N: 690).

Locke makes the point that some things could be discovered both by reason and by revelation—God could reveal the propositions of Euclid’s geometry, or they could be discovered by reason. In such cases there would be little use for faith. Traditional revelation can never produce as much certainty as the contemplation of the agreement or disagreement of our own ideas. Similarly revelations about matters of fact do not produce as much certainty as having the experience oneself. Revelation, then, cannot contradict what we know to be true. If it could, it would undermine the trustworthiness of all of our faculties. This would be a disastrous result. Where revelation comes into its own is where reason cannot reach. Where we have few or no ideas for reason to contradict or confirm, these are the proper matters for faith.

…that Part of the Angels rebelled against GOD, and thereby lost their first happy state: and that the dead shall rise, and live again: These and the like, being Beyond the Discovery of Reason, are purely matters of Faith; with which Reason has nothing to do. (IV.18.8, N: 694)

Still, reason does have a crucial role to play in respect to revelation. Locke writes:

Because the Mind, not being certain of the Truth of that it evidently does not know, but only yielding to the Probability that appears to it, is bound to give up its assent to such Testimony, which, it is satisfied, comes from one who cannot err, and will not deceive. But yet, it still belongs to Reason, to judge of the truth of its being a Revelation, and of the significance of the Words, wherein it is delivered. (IV.18.8, N: 694)

So, in respect to the crucial question of how we are to know whether a revelation is genuine, we are supposed to use reason and the canons of probability to judge. Locke claims that if the boundaries between faith and reason are not clearly marked, then there will be no place for reason in religion and one then gets all the “extravagant Opinions and Ceremonies, that are to be found in the religions of the world…” (IV.18.11, N: 696).

Should one accept revelation without using reason to judge whether it is genuine revelation or not, one gets what Locke calls a third principle of assent besides reason and revelation, namely enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a vain or unfounded confidence in divine favor or communication. It implies that there is no need to use reason to judge whether such favor or communication is genuine or not. Clearly when such communications are not genuine they are “the ungrounded Fancies of a Man’s own Brain” (IV.19.2, N: 698). This kind of enthusiasm was characteristic of Protestant extremists going back to the era of the civil war. Locke was not alone in rejecting enthusiasm, but he rejects it in the strongest terms. Enthusiasm violates the fundamental principle by which the understanding operates—that assent be proportioned to the evidence. To abandon that fundamental principle would be catastrophic. This is a point that Locke also makes in The Conduct of the Understanding and The Reasonableness of Christianity . Locke wants each of us to use our understanding to search after truth. Of enthusiasts, those who would abandon reason and claim to know on the basis of faith alone, Locke writes:

…he that takes away Reason to make way for Revelation, puts out the Light of both, and does much what the same, as if he would perswade a Man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote Light of an invisible Star by a Telescope. (IV.19.4, N: 698)

Rather than engage in the tedious labor required to reason correctly to judge of the genuineness of their revelation, enthusiasts persuade themselves that they are possessed of immediate revelation. This leads to “odd Opinions and extravagant actions” that are characteristic of enthusiasm and which should warn that this is a wrong principle. Thus, Locke strongly rejects any attempt to make inward persuasion not judged by reason a legitimate principle.

We turn now to a consideration of Locke’s educational works.

Locke’s Some Thoughts Concerning Education and his Conduct of the Understanding form a nice bridge between An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and his political works. Ruth Grant and Nathan Tarcov write in the introduction to their edition of these works:

The idea of liberty, so crucial to all of Locke’s writings on politics and education, is traced in the Essay to reflection on the power of the mind over one’s own actions, especially the power to suspend actions in the pursuit of the satisfaction of one’s own desires until after a full consideration of their objects (II.21.47, N: 51–52). The Essay thus shows how the independence of mind pursued in the Conduct is possible. (G&T 1996: xvi)

Some Thoughts Concerning Education was first published in 1693. This book collected together advice that Locke had been giving his friend Edward Clarke about the education of Clarke’s son (and also his daughters) since 1684. In preparing the revision for the fourth edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding Locke began writing a chapter called “The Conduct of the Understanding”. This became quite long and was never added to the Essay or even finished. It was left to Locke’s literary executors to decide what to do with it. The Conduct was published by Peter King in his posthumous edition of some of Locke’s works in 1706. As Locke was composing these works, some of the material from the Conduct eventually made its way into the Thoughts . Grant and Tarcov write that the Thoughts and the Conduct “complement each other well: the Thoughts focuses on the education of children by their parents, whereas the Conduct addresses the self-education of adults” (G&T 1996: vii). Though they also note tensions between the two that illustrate paradoxes in liberal society. The Thoughts is addressed to the education of the sons and daughters of the English gentry in the late seventeenth century. It is in some ways thus significantly more limited to its time and place than the Conduct . Yet, its insistence on the inculcating such virtues as

justice as respect for the rights of others, civility, liberality, humanity, self-denial, industry, thrift, courage, truthfulness, and a willingness to question prejudice, authority and the biases of one’s own self-interest

very likely represents the qualities needed for citizens in a liberal society (G&T 1996: xiii).

Locke’s Thoughts represents the culmination of a century of what has been called “the discovery of the child”. In the Middle Ages the child was regarded as

only a simple plaything, as a simple animal, or a miniature adult who dressed, played and was supposed to act like his elders…Their ages were unimportant and therefore seldom known. Their education was undifferentiated, either by age, ability or intended occupation. (Axtell 1968: 63–4)

Locke treated children as human beings in whom the gradual development of rationality needed to be fostered by parents. Locke urged parents to spend time with their children and tailor their education to their character and idiosyncrasies, to develop both a sound body and character, and to make play the chief strategy for learning rather than rote learning or punishment. Thus, he urged learning languages by learning to converse in them before learning rules of grammar. Locke also suggests that the child learn at least one manual trade.

In advocating a kind of education that made people who think for themselves, Locke was preparing people to effectively make decisions in their own lives—to engage in individual self-government—and to participate in the government of their country. The Conduct reveals the connections Locke sees between reason, freedom and morality. Reason is required for good self-government because reason insofar as it is free from partiality, intolerance and passion and able to question authority leads to fair judgment and action. We thus have a responsibility to cultivate reason in order to avoid the moral failings of passion, partiality and so forth (G&T 1996: xii). This is, in Tarcov’s phrase, Locke’s education for liberty.

We turn now to Locke’s political writings. (See the entry on Locke’s political philosophy , which focuses on five topics (the state of nature, natural law, property, consent and toleration) and goes into these topics in more depth than is possible in a general account and provides much useful information on the debates about them.)

4. The Two Treatises Of Government

Lord Shaftsbury had been dismissed from his post as Lord Chancellor in 1673 and had become one of the leaders of the opposition party, the Country Party. In 1679 the chief issue was the attempt by the Country Party leaders to exclude James, Duke of York from succeeding his brother Charles II to the throne. They wanted to do this because James was a Catholic, and England by this time was a firmly Protestant country. They had acquired a majority in the House of Commons through serious grass roots election campaigns, and passed an exclusion bill, but given the King’s unwillingness to see his brother excluded from the throne, the bill failed in the House of Lords. They tried a couple of more times without success. Having failed by parliamentary means, some of the Country Party leaders started plotting armed rebellion.

The Two Treatises of Government were published in 1689, long after the rebellion plotted by the Country party leaders had failed to materialize and after Shaftsbury had fled the country for Holland and died. The introduction of the Two Treatises was written after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and gave the impression that the book was written to justify the Glorious Revolution. We now know that the Two Treatises of Government were written during the Exclusion crisis in 1681 and may have been intended in part to justify the general armed rising which the Country Party leaders were planning.

There were serious obstacles to a rebellion to force James’ exclusion from the throne. The English Anglican gentry needed to support such an action. But the Anglican church from childhood on taught that: “…men’s political duties were exhaustively determined by their terrestrial superiors, that under grave conscientious scruples they might rightly decline to carry out those decrees of authority which were in direct breach of divine law, they could under no circumstances have a right to resist such authority”. (Dunn, 1968, 48) Since by 1679 it was abundantly clear that the King opposed excluding his brother from the throne, to favor exclusion implied “explicit and self-conscious resistance to the sovereign”. Passive resistance would simply not do. On the other hand, the royal policy “outraged their deepest religious prejudices and stimulated their most obscure emotional anxieties.” So, the gentry were deeply conflicted and neither of the choices available to them looked very palatable. John Dunn goes on to remark: “To exert influence upon their choice it was above all necessary to present a more coherent ordering of their values, to show that the political tradition within which the dissenters saw their conduct was not necessarily empirically absurd or socially subversive. The gentry had to be persuaded that there could be reason for rebellion which could make it neither blasphemous or suicidal.” (Dunn, 1968, 49) To achieve this goal Locke picked the most relevant and extreme of the supporters of the divine right of Kings to attack. Sir Robert Filmer (c 1588–1653), a man of the generation of Charles I and the English Civil War, who had defended the crown in various works. His most famous work, however, Patriarcha , was published posthumously in 1680 and represented the most complete and coherent exposition of the view Locke wished to deny. Filmer held that men were born into helpless servitude to an authoritarian family, a social hierarchy and a sovereign whose only constraint was his relationship with God. Under these circumstances, anything other than passive obedience would be “vicious, blasphemous and intellectually absurd.” So, Locke needed to refute Filmer and in Dunn’s words: “rescue the contractarian account of political obligation from the criticism of impiety and absurdity. Only in this way could he restore to the Anglican gentry a coherent basis for moral autonomy or a practical initiative in the field of politics.” (Dunn, 1968, 50)

The First Treatise of Government is a polemical work aimed at refuting the theological basis for the patriarchal version of the Divine Right of Kings doctrine put forth by Sir Robert Filmer. Locke singles out Filmer’s contention that men are not “naturally free” as the key issue, for that is the “ground” or premise on which Filmer erects his argument for the claim that all “legitimate” government is “absolute monarchy”—kings being descended from the first man, Adam, and their subjects being naturally slaves. Early in the First Treatise Locke denies that either scripture or reason supports Filmer’s premise or arguments. In what follows in the First Treatise , Locke minutely examines key Biblical passages.

While The Second Treatise of Government provides Locke’s positive theory of government, it also continues his argument against Sir Robert Filmer’s claims that monarchs legitimately hold absolute power over their subjects. Locke holds that Filmer’s view is sufficiently incoherent to lead to governments being established by force and violence. Thus, Locke claims he must provide an alternative account of the origin of government “lest men fall into the dangerous belief that all government in the world is merely the product of force and violence” ( Treatises II,1,4). Locke’s account involves several devices which were common in seventeenth and eighteenth century political philosophy—natural rights theory and the social contract. Natural rights are those rights which we are supposed to have as human beings before ever government comes into being. We might suppose, that like other animals, we have a natural right to struggle for our survival. Locke will argue that we have a right to the means to survive. When Locke comes to explain how government comes into being, he uses the idea that people agree that their condition in the state of nature is unsatisfactory, and so agree to transfer some of their rights to a central government, while retaining others. This is the theory of the social contract. There are many versions of natural rights theory and the social contract in seventeenth and eighteenth century European political philosophy, some conservative and some radical. Locke’s version belongs on the radical side of the spectrum. These radical natural right theories influenced the ideologies of the American and French revolutions.

Locke’s strategy for refuting Filmer’s claims that monarchs have absolute power over their subjects is to show that Filmer is conflating a whole variety of limited powers, all of which might be held by one man and thus give the false appearance that a king has absolute power over wives, children, servants and slaves as well as subjects of a commonwealth. When properly distinguished, however, and the limitations of each displayed, it becomes clear that monarchs have no legitimate absolute power over their subjects.

An important part of Locke’s project in the Second Treatise is to figure out what the role of legitimate government is, thus allowing him to distinguish the nature of illegitimate government. Once this is done, the basis for legitimate revolution becomes clear. Figuring out what the proper or legitimate role of civil government is would be a difficult task indeed if one were to examine the vast complexity of existing governments. How should one proceed? One strategy is to consider what life is like in the absence of civil government. Presumably this is a simpler state, one which may be easier to understand. Then one might see what role civil government ought to play. This is the strategy which Locke pursues, following Hobbes and others. So, in the first chapter of the Second Treatise Locke defines political power.

Political power , then, I take to be a right of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the common-wealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public good. ( Treatises, II, 1,3)

In the second chapter of The Second Treatise Locke describes the state in which there is no government with real political power. This is the state of nature. It is sometimes assumed that the state of nature is a state in which there is no government at all. This is only partially true. It is possible to have in the state of nature either no government, illegitimate government, or legitimate government with less than full political power. (See the section on the state of nature in the entry on Locke’s political philosophy.)

If we consider the state of nature before there was government, it is a state of political equality in which there is no natural superior or inferior. From this equality flows the obligation to mutual love and the duties that people owe one another, and the great maxims of justice and charity. Was there ever such a state? There has been considerable debate about this. Still, it is plain that both Hobbes and Locke would answer this question affirmatively. Whenever people have not agreed to establish a common political authority, they remain in the state of nature. It’s like saying that people are in the state of being naturally single until they are married. Locke clearly thinks one can find the state of nature in his time at least in the “inland, vacant places of America” ( Second Treatise V. 36) and in the relations between different peoples. Perhaps the historical development of states also went though the stages of a state of nature. An alternative possibility is that the state of nature is not a real historical state, but rather a theoretical construct, intended to help determine the proper function of government. If one rejects the historicity of states of nature, one may still find them a useful analytical device. For Locke, it is very likely both.

According to Locke, God created man and we are, in effect, God’s property. The chief end set us by our creator as a species and as individuals is survival. A wise and omnipotent God, having made people and sent them into this world:

…by his order and about his business, they are his property whose workmanship they are, made to last during his, not one another’s pleasure: and being furnished with like faculties, sharing all in one community of nature, there cannot be supposed any subordination among us, that may authorize us to destroy one another, as if we were made for one another’s uses, as the inferior ranks of creatures are for our’s. ( Treatises II,2,6)

It follows immediately that “he has no liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, yet when some nobler use than its bare possession calls for it” ( Treatises II.2.6). So, murder and suicide violate the divine purpose.

If one takes survival as the end, then we may ask what are the means necessary to that end. On Locke’s account, these turn out to be life, liberty, health and property. Since the end is set by God, on Locke’s view we have a right to the means to that end. So we have rights to life, liberty, health and property. These are natural rights, that is they are rights that we have in a state of nature before the introduction of civil government, and all people have these rights equally.

There is also a law of nature. It is the Golden Rule, interpreted in terms of natural rights. Thus Locke writes:

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges everyone: and reason which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions…. ( Treatises II.2.6)

Locke tells us that the law of nature is revealed by reason. Locke makes the point about the law that it commands what is best for us. If it did not, he says, the law would vanish for it would not be obeyed. It is in this sense that Locke means that reason reveals the law. If you reflect on what is best for yourself and others, given the goal of survival and our natural equality, you will come to this conclusion. (See the section on the law of nature in the entry on Locke’s Political Philosophy.)

Locke does not intend his account of the state of nature as a sort of utopia. Rather it serves as an analytical device that explains why it becomes necessary to introduce civil government and what the legitimate function of civil government is. Thus, as Locke conceives it, there are problems with life in the state of nature. The law of nature, like civil laws can be violated. There are no police, prosecutors or judges in the state of nature as these are all representatives of a government with full political power. The victims, then, must enforce the law of nature in the state of nature. In addition to our other rights in the state of nature, we have the rights to enforce the law and to judge on our own behalf. We may, Locke tells us, help one another. We may intervene in cases where our own interests are not directly under threat to help enforce the law of nature. This right eventually serves as the justification for legitimate rebellion. Still, in the state of nature, the person who is most likely to enforce the law under these circumstances is the person who has been wronged. The basic principle of justice is that the punishment should be proportionate to the crime. But when the victims are judging the seriousness of the crime, they are more likely to judge it of greater severity than might an impartial judge. As a result, there will be regular miscarriages of justice. This is perhaps the most important problem with the state of nature.

In chapters 3 and 4, Locke defines the states of war and slavery. The state of war is a state in which someone has a sedate and settled intention of violating someone’s right to life (and thus all their other rights). Such a person puts themselves into a state of war with the person whose life they intend to take. In such a war the person who intends to violate someone’s right to life is an unjust aggressor. This is not the normal relationship between people enjoined by the law of nature in the state of nature. Locke is distancing himself from Hobbes who had made the state of nature and the state of war equivalent terms. For Locke, the state of nature is ordinarily one in which we follow the Golden Rule interpreted in terms of natural rights, and thus love our fellow human creatures. The state of war only comes about when someone proposes to violate someone else’s rights. Thus, on Locke’s theory of war, there will always be an innocent victim on one side and an unjust aggressor on the other.

Slavery is the state of being in the absolute or arbitrary power of another. On Locke’s definition of slavery, there is only one rather remarkable way to become a legitimate slave. In order to do so, one must be an unjust aggressor defeated in war. The just victor then has the option to either kill the aggressor or enslave them. Locke tells us that the state of slavery is the continuation of the state of war between a lawful conqueror and a captive, in which the conqueror delays taking the life of the captive, and instead makes use of him. This is a continued war because if conqueror and captive make some compact for obedience on the one side and limited power on the other, the state of slavery ceases and becomes a relation between a master and a servant in which the master only has limited power over his servant. The reason that slavery ceases with the compact is that “no man, can, by agreement pass over to another that which he hath not in himself, a power over his own life” ( Treatises II.4.24). Legitimate slavery is an important concept in Locke’s political philosophy largely because it tells us what the legitimate extent of despotic power is and defines and illuminates by contrast the nature of illegitimate slavery. Illegitimate slavery is that state in which someone possesses absolute or despotic power over someone else without just cause. Locke holds that it is this illegitimate state of slavery which absolute monarchs wish to impose upon their subjects. It is very likely for this reason that legitimate slavery is so narrowly defined. This shows that the chapter on slavery plays a crucial role in Locke’s argument against Sir Robert Filmer and thus could not have been easily dispensed with. Still, it is possible that Locke had an additional purpose or perhaps a quite different reason for writing about slavery.

There has been a steady stream of articles and books over the last sixty years arguing that given Locke’s involvement with trade and colonial government, the theory of slavery in the Second Treatise was intended to justify the institutions and practices of Afro-American slavery. If this were the case, Locke’s philosophy would not contradict his actions as an investor and colonial administrator. However, there are strong objections to this view. Had he intended to justify Afro-American slavery, Locke would have done much better with a vastly more inclusive definition of legitimate slavery than the one he gives. It is sometimes suggested that Locke’s account of “just war” is so vague that it could easily be twisted to justify the institutions and practices of Afro-American slavery. This, however, is also not the case. In the chapter “Of Conquest” Locke explicitly lists the limits of the legitimate power of conquerors. These limits on who can become a legitimate slave and what the powers of a just conqueror are ensure that this theory of conquest and slavery would condemn the institutions and practices of Afro-American slavery in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Nonetheless, the debate continues. One element of the debate has to do with Locke’s role in the writing of the Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas . David Armitage in his 2004 article “John Locke, Carolina and the Two Treatises of Government” argues that Locke was involved in a revision of the Fundamental Constitution of the Carolinas at the very time he was writing The Two Treatises of Government . The provision that “Every Freedman of the Carolinas has absolute power and authority over his negro slaves” remained in the document unchanged. In his 2016 book The Ashley Cooper Plan , Thomas Wilson gives a detailed account of Ashley Cooper’s intentions for the Carolina colony and how Cooper’s intent was thwarted by Barbadian slave owners who changed Carolina society from a society with slaves to a slave society. L. H. Roper, in his 2004 book Conceiving Carolina: Property, Planters and Plots 1662–1729 , offers a different account of what went wrong, focusing on conflicts over the trade in Indian slaves. James Farr’s article “Locke, Natural Law and New World Slavery” (2008) is one of the best statements of the position that Locke intended his theory of slavery to apply to English absolutism and not Afro-American slavery while noting that Locke’s involvement with slavery has ruined his reputation as the great champion of liberty Roger Woolhouse in his recent biography of Locke (Woolhouse 2007: 187) remarks that “Though there is no consensus on the whole question, there certainly seems to be ‘a glaring contradiction between his theories and Afro-American slavery’”.

Recently, there has been a debate over whose theory of slavery and absolutism Locke was attacking. Johan Olsthoorn and Laurens van Apeldoorn (2020) argue that Locke’s account of slavery and in particular, that no person can consensually establish absolute rule over themselves with all its consequences has little force against other classical contract theories, in particular those of Grotius and Puffendorf. Both Grotius and Puffendorf defended both absolutism and colonial slavery.

Felis Waldmann in “Slavery and Absolutism in Locke’s Two Treatises: A Response to Olsthoorn and van Apeldoorn” objects to a number of their claims finding others not relevant. Most notably, he objects to these claims: First, “Locke is working with an idiosyncratic conception of slavery and absolute rule repudiated by prominent early modern thinkers defending political absolutism.” Second: “Like Filmer, Locke maintains that absolute rulers may arbitrarily kill and maim their subjects at will, by dint of having a dominium in the latter’s lives.” Finally, he objects to the claim that: “Early modern natural lawyers, from Grotius onward, conceptualized slavery rather differently, insisting that enslaved people were not owned in the way we own things (which may be destroyed at will)” (Waldmann 7).

In brief, Waldmann’s response to the first claim is that Filmer accurately represented the Royalist position in the late 1670s and early 1680s and so Locke’s account is not a straw man. Thus, Locke is attacking Filmer’s account of slavery and not some weak and extreme version of the argument for absolutism that no one held. Waldmann suggests that the second claim magnifies this tendency of the two authors’ portrayal of Locke’s argument as not responding to the standard arguments for absolutism. Thus, Olsthoorn and van Apeldoorn attribute Filmer’s position to Locke. Waldmann concludes that the claims of Olsthoorn and van Apeldoorn that since Locke’s position on slavery was significantly different from those of Grotius and Puffendorf, it had little force against them is, in fact, the case. But he thinks this is of little importance since Locke was not arguing against them. One suggestion he considers plausible is that Locke is aiming his argument against the possibility of self-enslavement at Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes was recognized by his contemporaries as asserting both that one could by contract enslave oneself and that the king had dominium, over his subjects.

William Uzgalis, in his 2017 chapter “John Locke, Slavery and Indian Lands,” holds that Locke has two theories of slavery, one of them of legitimate slavery and the other of illegitimate slavery. Note that the authors discussed above simply don’t make this distinction. If they had, it would be plain that while Locke shares with Filmer the dominium conception of slavery that allows a master to kill or maim a slave, neither theory belongs to Filmer, and if Locke is correct about royal absolutism and given the character of the practices of the slave trade and colonial slavery, both absolutism at home and the slave trade and colonial slavery fall under the theory of illegitimate slavery. Neither Grotius, Puffendorf or Hobbes has an explicit theory of illegitimate slavery. Uzgalis also notes that Grotius and Puffendorf provided claims that Locke could have adopted had he wished to justify the slave trade and slavery in the colonies. Still, he denies them all, and with good reason. He would have substantially weakened his argument against the kind of absolutism he attributed to Filmer and the Stuarts had he done so. This suggests that he was crafting an alternative theory and not arguing against its competitors, with the exception, perhaps, of Hobbes.

Holly Brewer in her 2017 article “Slavery, Sovereignty, and ‘Inheritable Blood’, Reconsidering John Locke and the Origins of American Slavery” argues for a different approach to these questions. She presents evidence that the Stuart kings, and Charles II and his brother James, Duke of York, in particular, were not just interested in absolute government at home; they actively promoted the Royal Africa Company, the slave trade and slavery in the colonies as it provided considerable amounts of money to the royal coffers. James was the Governor (the President) of the Royal Africa Company and Admiral of the English fleet. Lord Shaftesbury, Locke’s patron, was the sub-governor, and Locke assisted him. Using the fleet, James attacked and captured Dutch forts on the coast of Africa to make bases for the Royal Africa Company and deprive the Dutch of them. The Stuarts minted guinea coins to celebrate these efforts. After becoming King, James continued as Governor of the Royal Africa Company. Thus Brewer underlines the similarities and connections between the absolutism Locke objected to at home and the slave trade and slavery in the colonies. She argues that the spread of slavery needs to be understood as an English imperial policy and not something that occurred in different times and places unconnected with one another. She also claims that while Locke was a member of King William III’s Board of Trade in the waning years of the seventeenth century, he sought to undo Stuart policies concerning slavery in the colonies.

Chapter 5 “Of Property” is one of the most famous, influential and important chapters in the Second Treatise of Government . Indeed, some of the most controversial issues about the Second Treatise come from varying interpretations of it. In this chapter Locke, in effect, describes the evolution of the state of nature to the point where it becomes expedient for those in it to found a civil government. So, it is not only an account of the nature and origin of private property but leads up to the explanation of why civil government replaces the state of nature (see the section on property in the entry on Locke’s political philosophy).

In discussing the origin of private property Locke begins by noting that God gave the earth to all men in common. Thus there is a question about how private property comes to be. Locke finds it a serious difficulty. He points out, however, that we are supposed to make use of the earth “for the best advantage of life and convenience” ( Treatises II.5.25). What then is the means to appropriate property from the common store? Locke argues that private property does not come about by universal consent. If one had to go about and ask everyone if one could eat these berries, one would starve to death before getting everyone’s agreement. Locke holds that we have property in our own person. And the labor of our body and the work of our hands properly belong to us. So, when one picks up acorns or berries, they thereby belong to the person who picked them up. There has been some controversy about what Locke means by “labor”. Daniel Russell claims that for Locke, labor is a goal-directed activity that converts materials that might meet our needs into resources that actually do (Russell 2004). This interpretation of what Locke means by “labor” connects nicely with his claim that we have a natural law obligation first to preserve ourselves and then to help in the preservation and flourishing of others.

One might think that one could then acquire as much as one wished, but this is not the case. Locke introduces at least two important qualifications on how much property can be acquired. The first qualification has to do with waste. Locke writes:

As much as anyone can make use of to any advantage of life before it spoils, so much by his labor he may fix a property in; whatever is beyond this, is more than his share, and belongs to others. ( Treatises II.5.31)

Since originally, populations were small and resources great, living within the bounds set by reason, there would be little quarrel or contention over property, for a single man could make use of only a very small part of what was available.

Note that Locke has, thus far, been talking about hunting and gathering, and the kinds of limitations which reason imposes on the kind of property that hunters and gatherers hold. In the next section he turns to agriculture and the ownership of land and the kinds of limitations there are on that kind of property. In effect, we see the evolution of the state of nature from a hunter/gatherer kind of society to that of a farming and agricultural society. Once again it is labor which imposes limitations upon how much land can be enclosed. It is only as much as one can work. But there is an additional qualification. Locke says:

Nor was this appropriation of any parcel of land , by improving it, any prejudice to any other man, since there was still enough, and as good left; and more than the as yet unprovided could use. So that, in effect, there was never the less for others because of his inclosure for himself: for he that leaves as much as another can make use of, does as good as take nothing at all. No body could consider himself injured by the drinking of another man, though he took a good draught, who had a whole river of the same water left to quench his thirst: and the case of land and water, where there is enough, is perfectly the same. ( Treatises II.5.33)

The next stage in the evolution of the state of nature involves the introduction of money. Locke remarks that:

… before the desire of having more than one needed had altered the intrinsic value of things, which depends only on their usefulness to the life of man; or had agreed, that a little piece of yellow metal, which would keep without wasting or decay, should be worth a great piece of flesh, or a whole heap of corn; though men had a right to appropriate by their labor, each one of himself, as much of the things of nature, as he could use; yet this could not be much, nor to the prejudice of others, where the same plenty was left to those who would use the same industry. ( Treatises II.5.37)

So, before the introduction of money, there was a degree of economic equality imposed on mankind both by reason and the barter system. And men were largely confined to the satisfaction of their needs and conveniences. Most of the necessities of life are relatively short lived—berries, plums, venison and so forth. One could reasonably barter one’s berries for nuts which would last not weeks but perhaps a whole year. And says Locke:

…if he would give his nuts for a piece of metal, pleased with its color, or exchange his sheep for shells, or wool for a sparkling pebble or diamond, and keep those by him all his life, he invaded not the right of others, he might heap up as much of these durable things as he pleased; the exceeding of the bounds of his property not lying in the largeness of his possessions, but the perishing of anything uselessly in it. ( Treatises II.5.146)

The introduction of money is necessary for the differential increase in property, with resulting economic inequality. Without money there would be no point in going beyond the economic equality of the earlier stage. In a money economy, different degrees of industry could give men vastly different proportions.

This partage of things in an inequality of private possessions, men have made practicable out of the bounds of society, and without compact, only by putting a value on gold and silver, and tacitly agreeing to the use of money: for in governments, the laws regulate the rights of property, and the possession of land is determined by positive constitutions. ( Treatises II.5.50)

The implication is that it is the introduction of money, which causes inequality, which in turn multiplies the causes of quarrels and contentions and increased numbers of violations of the law of nature. This leads to the decision to create a civil government. Before turning to the institution of civil government, however, we should ask what happens to the qualifications on the acquisition of property after the advent of money? One answer proposed by C. B. Macpherson in The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism is that the qualifications are completely set aside, and we now have a system for the unlimited acquisition of private property. This does not seem to be correct. It seems plain, rather, that at least the non-spoilage qualification is satisfied, because money does not spoil. The other qualifications may be rendered somewhat irrelevant by the advent of the conventions about property adopted in civil society. This leaves open the question of whether Locke approved of these changes. Macpherson, who takes Locke to be a spokesman for a proto-capitalist system, sees Locke as advocating the unlimited acquisition of wealth. James Tully, on the other side, in A Discourse of Property holds that Locke sees the new conditions, the change in values and the economic inequality which arise as a result of the advent of money, as the fall of man. Tully sees Locke as a persistent and powerful critic of self-interest. This remarkable difference in interpretation has been a significant topic for debates among scholars over the last forty years. Though the Second Treatise of Government may leave this question difficult to determine, one might consider Locke’s remark in Some Thoughts Concerning Education that

Covetousness and the desire to having in our possession and our dominion more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out and the contrary quality of being ready to impart to others inculcated. (G&T 1996: 81)

Let us then turn to the institution of civil government.

Just as natural rights and natural law theory had a fluorescence in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, so did the social contract theory. Why is Locke a social contract theorist? Is it merely that this was one prevailing way of thinking about government at the time which Locke blindly adopted? The answer is that there is something about Locke’s project which pushes him strongly in the direction of the social contract. One might hold that governments were originally instituted by force, and that no agreement was involved. Were Locke to adopt this view, he would be forced to go back on many of the things which are at the heart of his project in the Second Treatise , though cases like the Norman conquest force him to admit that citizens may come to accept a government that was originally forced on them. Remember that the Second Treatise provides Locke’s positive theory of government, and that he explicitly says that he must provide an alternative to the view

that all government in the world is merely the product of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules than that of the beasts, where the strongest carries it … . ( Treatises II, 1, 4)

So, while Locke might admit that some governments come about through force or violence, he would be destroying the most central and vital distinction, that between legitimate and illegitimate civil government, if he admitted that legitimate government can come about in this way. So, for Locke, legitimate government is instituted by the explicit consent of those governed. (See the section on consent, political obligation, and the ends of government in the entry on Locke’s political philosophy.) Those who make this agreement transfer to the government their right of executing the law of nature and judging their own case. These are the powers which they give to the central government, and this is what makes the justice system of governments a legitimate function of such governments.

Ruth Grant has persuasively argued that the establishment of government is in effect a two step process. Universal consent is necessary to form a political community. Consent to join a community once given is binding and cannot be withdrawn. This makes political communities stable. Grant writes: “Having established that the membership in a community entails the obligation to abide by the will of the community, the question remains: Who rules?” (1987: 114–115). The answer to this question is determined by majority rule. The point is that universal consent is necessary to establish a political community, majority consent to answer the question who is to rule such a community. Universal consent and majority consent are thus different in kind, not just in degree. Grant writes:

Locke’s argument for the right of the majority is the theoretical ground for the distinction between duty to society and duty to government, the distinction that permits an argument for resistance without anarchy. When the designated government dissolves, men remain obligated to society acting through majority rule. (1987: 119)

It is entirely possible for the majority to confer the rule of the community on a king and his heirs, or a group of oligarchs or on a democratic assembly. Thus, the social contract is not inextricably linked to democracy. Still, a government of any kind must perform the legitimate function of a civil government.

Locke is now in a position to explain the function of a legitimate government and distinguish it from illegitimate government. The aim of such a legitimate government is to preserve, so far as possible, the rights to life, liberty, health and property of its citizens, and to prosecute and punish those of its citizens who violate the rights of others and to pursue the public good even where this may conflict with the rights of individuals. In doing this it provides something unavailable in the state of nature, an impartial judge to determine the severity of the crime, and to set a punishment proportionate to the crime. This is one of the main reasons why civil society is an improvement on the state of nature. An illegitimate government will fail to protect the rights to life, liberty, health and property of its subjects, and in the worst cases, such an illegitimate government will claim to be able to violate the rights of its subjects, that is it will claim to have despotic power over its subjects. Since Locke is arguing against the position of Sir Robert Filmer who held that patriarchal power and political power are the same, and that in effect these amount to despotic power, Locke is at pains to distinguish these three forms of power, and to show that they are not equivalent. Thus at the beginning of chapter 15 “Of Paternal, Political and Despotic Power Considered Together” he writes:

THOUGH I have had occasion to speak of these before, yet the great mistakes of late about government, having as I suppose arisen from confounding these distinct powers one with another, it may not be amiss, to consider them together.

Chapters 6 and 7 give Locke’s account of paternal and political power respectively. Paternal power is limited. It lasts only through the minority of children, and has other limitations. Political power, derived as it is from the transfer of the power of individuals to enforce the law of nature, has with it the right to kill in the interest of preserving the rights of the citizens or otherwise supporting the public good. Legitimate despotic power, by contrast, implies the right to take the life, liberty, health and at least some of the property of any person subject to such a power.

At the end of the Second Treatise we learn about the nature of illegitimate civil governments and the conditions under which rebellion and regicide are legitimate and appropriate. As noted above, scholars now hold that the book was written during the Exclusion Crisis, and may have been written to justify a general insurrection and the assassination of the king of England and his brother. The argument for legitimate revolution follows from making the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate civil government. A legitimate civil government seeks to preserve its subjects’ life, health, liberty, and property insofar as this is compatible with the public good. Because it does this, it deserves obedience. An illegitimate civil government seeks to systematically violate the natural rights of its subjects. It seeks to make them illegitimate slaves. Because an illegitimate civil government does this, it puts itself in a state of nature and a state of war with its subjects. The magistrate or king of such a state violates the law of nature and so makes himself into a dangerous beast of prey who operates on the principle that might makes right, or that the strongest carries it. In such circumstances, rebellion is legitimate, as is the killing of such a dangerous beast of prey. Thus Locke justifies rebellion and regicide under certain circumstances. Presumably, this justification was going to be offered for the killing of the King of England and his brother had the Rye House Plot succeeded. Even if this was not Locke’s intention, it still would have served that purpose admirably.

The issue of religious toleration was of widespread interest in Europe in the seventeenth century, largely because religious intolerance with accompanying violence was so pervasive. The Reformation had split Europe into competing religious camps, and this provoked civil wars and massive religious persecutions. John Marshall, in his massive study John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture notes that the 1680s were the climactic decade for this kind of persecution. The Dutch Republic, where Locke spent years in exile, had been founded as a secular state which would allow religious differences. This was a reaction to the Catholic persecution of Protestants. However, once the Calvinist Church gained power, they began persecuting other sects, such as the Remonstrants, who disagreed with them. Nonetheless, The Dutch Republic remained the most tolerant country in Europe. In France, religious conflict had been temporarily quieted by the edict of Nantes. But in 1685, the year in which Locke wrote the First Letter concerning religious toleration, Louis XIV had revoked the Edict of Nantes, and the Huguenots were being persecuted. Though prohibited from doing so, some 200,000 emigrated, while probably 700,000 were forced to convert to Catholicism. People in England were keenly aware of the events taking place in France.

In England itself, religious conflict dominated the seventeenth century, contributing in important respects to the coming of the English Civil War, and the abolishing of the Anglican Church during the Protectorate. After the Restoration of Charles II, Anglicans in parliament passed laws that repressed both Catholics and Protestant sects such as Presbyterians, Baptists, Quakers and Unitarians who did not agree with the doctrines or practices of the state Church. Of these various dissenting sects, some were closer to the Anglicans, others more remote. One reason, among others, why King Charles may have found Shaftesbury useful was that they were both concerned about religious toleration. They parted when it became clear that the King was mainly interested in toleration for Catholics, and Shaftesbury for Protestant dissenters.

One widely discussed strategy for reducing religious conflict in England was called comprehension. The idea was to reduce the doctrines and practices of the Anglican church to a minimum so that most, if not all, of the dissenting sects would be included in the state church. For those which even this measure would not serve, there was to be toleration. Toleration we may define as a lack of state persecution. Neither of these strategies made much progress during the course of the Restoration.

When Locke fled to Holland after the discovery of the Rye house plot, he became involved with a group of scholars advocating religious toleration. This group included Benjamin Furly, a quaker with whom Locke lived for a while, the noted philosopher Pierre Bayle, several Dutch theologians, and many others. This group read all the arguments for religious intolerance and discussed them in book and conversation clubs. Members of the group considered toleration not only for Protestants and Protestant dissenters but Jews, Moslems, and Catholics. A recent discovery of a page of Locke’s reflections on toleration of Catholics shows that Locke considered even the pros and cons of toleration for Catholics (Walmsley and Waldmann 2019). Some members of the group also wrote tolerationist articles and books. They helped each other get jobs. Some of their members founded journals that reviewed books and articles on religious, scientific, and other topics. The group took the notion of free speech, civility, and politeness in discourse seriously. They called themselves the ‘the Republic of Letters’ or in Locke’s phrase ‘the commonwealth of learning.’

What were Locke’s religious views and where did he fit into the debates about religious toleration? This is a quite difficult question to answer. Religion and Christianity in particular, is perhaps the most important influence on the shape of Locke’s philosophy. But what kind of Christian was Locke? Locke’s family were Puritans. At Oxford, Locke avoided becoming an Anglican priest. Still, Locke himself claimed to be an Anglican until he died and Locke’s nineteenth-century biographer Fox Bourne thought that Locke was an Anglican. Others have identified him with the Latitudinarians—a movement among Anglicans to argue for a reasonable Christianity that dissenters ought to accept. Still, there are some reasons to think that Locke was neither an orthodox Anglican or a Latitudinarian. Locke got Isaac Newton to write Newton’s most powerful anti-Trinitarian tract. Locke arranged to have the work published anonymously in Holland though in the end, Newton decided not to publish (McLachlan 1941). This strongly suggests that Locke too was by this time an Arian or unitarian. (Arius, c. 250–336, asserted the primacy of the Father over the Son and thus rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and was condemned as a heretic at the Council of Nicaea in 325. Newton held that the Church had gone in the wrong direction in condemning Arius.) Given that one main theme of Locke’s Letter on Toleration is that there should be a separation between Church and State, this does not seem like the view of a man devoted to a state religion. It might appear that Locke’s writing The Reasonableness of Christianity in which he argues that the basic doctrines of Christianity are few and compatible with reason make him a Latitudinarian. Yet Richard Ashcraft has argued that comprehension for the Anglicans meant conforming to the existing practices of the Anglican Church; that is, the abandonment of religious dissent. Ashcraft also suggests that Latitudinarians were thus not a moderate middle ground between contending extremes but part of one of the extremes—“the acceptable face of the persecution of religious dissent” (Ashcraft 1992: 155). Ashcraft holds that while the Latitudinarians may have represented the “rational theology” of the Anglican church, there was a competing dissenting “rational theology”. Thus, while it is true that Locke had Latitudinarian friends, given Ashcraft’s distinction between Anglican and dissenting “rational theologies”, it is entirely possible that The Reasonableness of Christianity is a work of dissenting “rational theology”.

Locke had been thinking, talking and writing about religious toleration since 1659. His views evolved. In the early 1660s he very likely was an orthodox Anglican. He and Shaftesbury had instituted religious toleration in the Fundamental Constitutions of the Carolinas (1669). He wrote the Epistola de Tolerantia in Latin in 1685 while in exile in Holland. He very likely was seeing Protestant refugees pouring over the borders from France where Louis XIV had just revoked the Edict of Nantes. Holland itself was a Calvinist theocracy with significant problems with religious toleration. But Locke’s Letter does not confine itself to the issues of the time. Locke gives a principled account of religious toleration, though this is mixed in with arguments which apply only to Christians, and perhaps in some cases only to Protestants. He excluded both Catholics and atheists from religious toleration. In the case of Catholics it was because he regarded them as agents of a foreign power. Because they do not believe in God, atheists, on Locke’s account: “Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist” (Mendus 1991: 47). He gives his general defense of religious toleration while continuing the anti-Papist rhetoric of the Country party which sought to exclude James II from the throne.

Locke’s arguments for religious toleration connect nicely to his account of civil government. Locke defines life, liberty, health and property as our civil interests. These are the proper concern of a magistrate or civil government. The magistrate can use force and violence where this is necessary to preserve civil interests against attack. This is the central function of the state. One’s religious concerns with salvation, however, are not within the domain of civil interests, and so lie outside of the legitimate concern of the magistrate or the civil government. In effect, Locke adds an additional right to the natural rights of life, liberty, health and property—the right of freedom to choose one’s own road to salvation. (See the section on Toleration in the entry on Locke’s Political Philosophy.)

Locke holds that the use of force by the state to get people to hold certain beliefs or engage in certain ceremonies or practices is illegitimate. The chief means which the magistrate has at her disposal is force, but force is not an effective means for changing or maintaining belief. Suppose then, that the magistrate uses force so as to make people profess that they believe. Locke writes:

A sweet religion, indeed, that obliges men to dissemble, and tell lies to both God and man, for the salvation of their souls! If the magistrate thinks to save men thus, he seems to understand little of the way of salvation; and if he does it not in order to save them, why is he so solicitous of the articles of faith as to enact them by a law? (Mendus 1991: 41)

So, religious persecution by the state is inappropriate. Locke holds that “Whatever is lawful in the commonwealth cannot be prohibited by the magistrate in the church”. This means that the use of bread and wine, or even the sacrificing of a calf could not be prohibited by the magistrate.

If there are competing churches, one might ask which one should have the power? The answer is clearly that power should go to the true church and not to the heretical church. But Locke claims this amounts to saying nothing. For every church believes itself to be the true church, and there is no judge but God who can determine which of these claims is correct. Thus, skepticism about the possibility of religious knowledge is central to Locke’s argument for religious toleration.

Finally, for an account of the influence of Locke’s works, see the supplementary document: Supplement on the Influence of Locke’s Works

Locke’s Works

Oxford University Press is in the process of producing a new edition of all of Locke’s works. This will supersede The Works of John Locke of which the 1823 edition is probably the most standard. The new Clarendon editions began with Peter Nidditch’s edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding in 1975. The Oxford Clarendon editions contain much of the material of the Lovelace collection, purchased and donated to Oxford by Paul Mellon. This treasure trove of Locke’s works and letters, which includes early drafts of the Essay and much other material, comes down from Peter King, Locke’s nephew, who inherited Locke’s papers. Access to these papers has given scholars in the twentieth century a much better view of Locke’s philosophical development and provided a window into the details of his activities which is truly remarkable. Hence the new edition of Locke’s works will very likely be definitive.

• [N] An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , Peter H. Nidditch (ed.), 1975. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198243861.book.1/actrade-9780198243861-book-1
• Some Thoughts Concerning Education , John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton (eds.), 1989. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245827.book.1/actrade-9780198245827-book-1
• Drafts for the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and Other Philosophical Writings: In Three Volumes , Vol. 1: Drafts A and B, Peter H. Nidditch and G. A. J. Rogers (eds.), 1990. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245452.book.1/actrade-9780198245452-book-1
• The Reasonableness of Christianity: As Delivered in the Scriptures , John C. Higgins-Biddle (ed.), 2000. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245254.book.1/actrade-9780198245254-book-1
• An Essay Concerning Toleration: And Other Writings on Law and Politics, 1667–1683 , J. R. Milton and Philip Milton (eds.), 2006. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780199575732.book.1/actrade-9780199575732-book-1
• Vindications of the Reasonableness of Christianity , Victor Nuovo (ed.), 2012. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780199286553.book.1/actrade-9780199286553-book-1
• volume 1, 1987. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198248019.book.1/actrade-9780198248019-book-1
• volume 2, 1987. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198248064.book.1/actrade-9780198248064-book-1
• Volume 1, 1991. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245469.book.1/actrade-9780198245469-book-1
• Volume 2, 1991,. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198248378.book.1/actrade-9780198248378-book-1
• Vol. 1: Introduction; Letters Nos. 1–461 , 2010. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780199573615.book.1/actrade-9780199573615-book-1
• Vol. 2: Letters Nos. 462–848 , 1976. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245599.book.1/actrade-9780198245599-book-1
• Vol. 3: Letters Nos. 849–1241 , 1978. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245605.book.1/actrade-9780198245605-book-1
• Vol. 4: Letters Nos. 1242–1701 , 1978. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245612.book.1/actrade-9780198245612-book-1.
• Vol. 5: Letters Nos. 1702–2198 , 1979. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245629.book.1/actrade-9780198245629-book-1
• Vol. 6: Letters Nos. 2199–2664 , 1980. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245636.book.1/actrade-9780198245636-book-1
• Vol. 7: Letters Nos. 2665–3286 , 1981. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245643.book.1/actrade-9780198245643-book-1
• Vol. 8: Letters Nos. 3287–3648 , 1989. doi:10.1093/actrade/9780198245650.book.1/actrade-9780198245650-book-1

In addition to the Oxford Press edition, there are a few editions of some of Locke’s works which are worth noting.

• An Early Draft of Locke’s Essay, Together with Excerpts from his Journal , Richard I. Aaron and Jocelyn Gibb (eds.), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936.
• John Locke, Two Tracts of Government , Phillip Abrams (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967.
• Locke’s The Two Treatises of Civil Government , Richard Ashcraft (ed.), London: Routledge, 1987.
• [Axtell 1968], The Educational Writings of John Locke: A Critical Edition , James L. Axtell (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• [Gay 1964], John Locke on Education , Peter Gay (ed.), New York: Bureau of Publications, Columbia Teachers College, 1964.
• Epistola de Tolerantia: A Letter on Toleration , Latin text edited with a preface by Raymond Klibansky; English translation with an introduction and notes by J. W. Gough, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968.
• [G&T 1996] “Some Thoughts Concerning Education” and “The Conduct of the Understanding” , Ruth W. Grant and Nathan Tarcov (eds), Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1996.
• [Laslett 1960] Locke’s Two Treatises of Government , Peter Laslett (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960.
• [Woozley 1964], An Essay Concerning Human Understanding , abridged, A.D. Woozley (ed.), London: Fontana Library, 1964.

Other Primary Sources

• Boyle, Robert, 1675 [1979], “Some Physico-Theological Considerations About the Possibility of the Resurrection”, in Selected Philosophical Papers of Robert Boyle , M.A. Stewart (ed.), New York: Manchester University Press.
• Mill, John Stuart, 1843, A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive , London: John W. Parker.

Biographies

• King, Lord Peter, 1991, The Life of John Locke: with extracts from his correspondence, journals, and common-place books , Bristol: Thoemmes.
• Fox Bourne, H.R., 1876, Life of John Locke , 2 volumes, New York: Harper & Brothers. Reprinted Scientia Aalen, 1969.
• Cranston, Maurice, 1957, John Locke, A Biography , reprinted Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
• Woolhouse, Roger, 2007, Locke: A Biography , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Books and Articles

• Aaron, Richard, 1937, John Locke , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Aarsleff, Hans, 1982, From Locke to Saussure: Essays on the Study of Language and Intellectual History , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• –––, 1994 “Locke’s Influence”, in Vere Chappell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Locke , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 252–289. doi:10.1017/CCOL0521383714.011
• Alexander, Peter, 1985, Ideas Qualities and Corpuscles: Locke and Boyle on the External World , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Alston, William and Jonathan Bennett, 1988, “Locke on People and Substances”, The Philosophical Review , 97(1): 25–46. doi:10.2307/2185098
• Anstey, Peter R., 2011, John Locke and Natural Philosophy , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199589777.001.0001
• Armitage, David, 2004, “John Locke, Carolina and the Two Treatises of Government ”, Political Theory , 32(5): 602–27. doi:10.1177/0090591704267122
• Arneil, Barbara, 1996, John Locke and America , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Ashcraft, Richard, 1986, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Civil Government , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 1992, “Latitudinarianism and Toleration: Historical Myth versus Political History”, in Kroll, Ashcraft, and Zagorin 1992: 151–177. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511896231.008
• Ayers, Michael, 1991, Locke: Epistemology and Ontology , 2 volumes, London: Routledge.
• Barresi, John, and Raymond Martin, 2000, Naturalization of the Soul: Self and Personal Identity in the 18th Century , London: Routledge.
• Bennett, Jonathan, 1971, Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Bolton, Martha Brandt, 2004, “Locke on the Semantic and Epistemic Role of Simple Ideas of Sensation”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 85(3): 301–321. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0114.2004.00200.x
• Brandt, Reinhard (ed.), 1981, John Locke: Symposium Wolfenbuttel 1979 , Berlin: de Gruyter.
• Brewer, Holly, 2017, “Slavery, Sovereignty, and ‘Inheritable Blood’: Reconsidering John Locke and the Origins of American Slavery”, The American Historical Review , 122(4): 1038–1078. doi:10.1093/ahr/122.4.1038
• Chappell, Vere, 1992, Essays on Early Modern Philosophy, John Locke—Theory of Knowledge , London: Garland Publishing, Inc.
• –––, 1994, The Cambridge Companion to Locke , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2004a, “Symposium: Locke and the Veil of Perception: Preface”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 85(3): 243–244. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0114.2004.00196.x
• –––, 2004b, “Comments”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 85(3): 338–355. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0114.2004.00202.x
• Chomsky, Noam, 1966, Cartesian Linguistics: A Chapter in the History of Rationalist Thought , New York: Harper & Row.
• Dunn, John, 1969, The Political Thought of John Locke , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Farr, James, 2008, “Locke, Natural Law and New World Slavery”, Political Theory , 36(4): 495–522. doi:10.1177/0090591708317899
• Fox, Christopher, 1988, Locke and the Scriblerians , Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Garrett, Don, 2003, “Locke on Personal Identity, Consciousness and ‘Fatal Errors’”, Philosophical Topics , 31: 95–125. doi:10.5840/philtopics2003311/214
• Geach, Peter, 1967, “Identity”, The Review of Metaphysics , 21(1): 3–12.
• Gibson, James, 1968, Locke’s Theory of Knowledge and its Historical Relations , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Gordon-Roth, Jessica, 2015, “Locke’s Place-Time-Kind Principle”, Philosophy Compass , 10(4): 264–274. doi:10.1111/phc3.12217
• Grant, Ruth, 1987, John Locke’s Liberalism , Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Gaukroger, Stephen, 2010, The Collapse of Mechanism and the Rise of Sensibility: Science and the Shaping of Modernity 1680–1760 , Oxford, Clarendon Press.
• Kretzmann, Norman, 1968, “The Main Thesis of Locke’s Semantic Theory”, The Philosophical Review , 77(2): 175–196. Reprinted in Tipton 1977: 123–140. doi:10.2307/2183319
• Kroll, Peter, Richard Ashcraft, and Peter Zagorin (eds), 1992, Philosophy, Science and Religion in England 1640–1700 , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511896231
• Jolley, Nicholas, 1984, Leibniz and Locke , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 1999, Locke, His Philosophical Thought , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• –––, 2015, Locke’s Touchy Subjects: Materialism and Immortality , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198737094.001.0001
• Laslett, Peter, 1954 [1990], “John Locke as Founder of the Board of Trade”, The Listener , 52(1342): 856–857. Reprinted in J.S. Yolton 1990: 127–136.
• Lennon, Thomas M., 2004, “Through a Glass Darkly: More on Locke’s Logic of Ideas”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 85(3): 322–337. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0114.2004.00203.x
• LoLordo, Antonia, 2010, “Person, Substance, Mode and ‘the moral Man’ in Locke’s Philosophy”, Canadian Journal Of Philosophy , 40(4); 643–668. doi:10.1080/00455091.2010.10716738
• Lott, Tommy, 1998, Subjugation and Bondage: Critical Essays on Slavery and Social Philosophy , New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc.
• Lovejoy, Arthur O., 1936, The Great Chain of Being; a Study of the History of an Idea , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Lowe, E.J., 1995, Locke on Human Understanding , London: Routledge Publishing Co.
• Mackie, J. L. 1976, Problems from Locke , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Macpherson, C.B., 1962, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Mandelbaum, Maurice, 1966, Philosophy, Science and Sense Perception: Historical and Critical Studies , Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.
• Marshall, John, 2006, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture , Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press.
• Martin, C. B. and D. M. Armstrong (eds.), 1968, Locke and Berkeley: A Collection of Critical Essays , New York: Anchor Books.
• Mattern, Ruth, 1980, “Moral Science and the Concept of Persons in Locke”, The Philosophical Review , 89(1): 24–45. doi:10.2307/2184862
• McCann, Edwin, 1987, “Locke on Identity, Life, Matter and Consciousness” Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie , 69(1): 54–77. doi:10.1515/agph.1987.69.1.54
• McLachlan, Hugh, 1941, Religious Opinions of Milton, Locke and Newton , Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Mendus, Susan, 1991, Locke on Toleration in Focus , London: Routledge.
• Newman, Lex, 2004, “Locke on Sensitive Knowledge and the Veil of Perception—Four Misconceptions”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 85(3): 273–300. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0114.2004.00199.x
• Olsthoorn, Johan and Laurens van Apeldoorn, 2020, “‘This man is my property’: Slavery and political absolutism in Locke and the classical social contract tradition”, European Journal of Political Theory , 21(2): 253–275. doi:10.1177/1474885120911309
• Rogers, G.A. John, 2004, “Locke and the Objects of Perception”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 85(3): 245–254. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0114.2004.00197.x
• Roper, John, April 2004, Conceiving Carolina: Proprietors, Planters and Plots 1662–1729 , New York, Palgrave/Macmillan.
• Russell, Daniel, 2004, “Locke on Land and Labor”, Philosophical Studies , 117(1–2): 303–325. doi:10.1023/B:PHIL.0000014529.01097.20
• Schouls, Peter, 1992, Reasoned Freedom: John Locke and the Enlightenment , Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
• Simmons, A. John, 1992, The Lockean Theory of Rights , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Soles, David, 1999, “Is Locke an Imagist?” The Locke Newsletter , 30: 17–66.
• Strawson, Galen, 2011, Locke on Personal Identity , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Stuart, Matthew, 2013, Locke’s Metaphysics , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199645114.001.0001
• Thiel, Udo, 2011, The Early Modern Subject: Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume , Oxford: Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199542499.001.0001
• Tarcov, Nathan, 1984, Locke’s Education for Liberty , Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
• Tipton, I.C. (ed.), 1977, Locke on Human Understanding: Selected Essays , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Tully, James, 1980, A Discourse on Property , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1993, An Approach to Political Philosophy: Locke in Contexts , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Uzgalis, William L., 1988, “The Anti-Essential Locke and Natural Kinds”, The Philosophical Quarterly , 38(152): 330–339. doi:10.2307/2220132
• –––, 1990, “Relative Identity and Locke’s Principle of Individuation”, History of Philosophy Quarterly , 7(3): 283–297.
• –––, 2007, Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding—A Reader’s Guide , London: Continuum.
• –––, 2017, “John Locke, Racism, Slavery and Indian Lands”, in Naomi Zack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook to Philosophy and Race , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Walmsley, Jonathan and Waldman Felix, 2019 “John Locke and Toleration of Catholics: A New Manuscript”, Historical Journal , 62: 1093–1115. [Includes transcription of “Reasons for tolerating papists with others” St. Johns College, Annapolis, Maryland, Greenfield Library.]
• Wilson, Margaret Dauler, 1999, Ideas and Mechanism: Essays on Early Modern Philosophy , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Wilson, Thomas D., 2016, The Ashley Cooper Plan: The Founding of Carolina and the Origins of Southern Political Culture , Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
• Wood, Neal, 1983, The Politics of Locke’s Philosophy , Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Woolhouse, R.S., 1971, Locke’s Philosophy of Science and Knowledge , New York: Barnes and Noble.
• –––, 1983, Locke , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• –––, 1988, The Empiricists , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Yaffe, Gideon, 2000, Liberty Worth the Name: Locke on Free Agency , Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2004, “Locke on Ideas of Substance and the Veil of Perception”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly , 85(3): 252–272. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0114.2004.00198.x
• Yolton, Jean S., 1990, A Locke Miscellany , Bristol: Thoemmes Antiquarian Books.
• Yolton, John, 1956, John Locke and the Way of Ideas Oxford, Oxford University Press; reprinted, Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996.
• –––, 1969, John Locke: Problems and Perspectives: New Essays , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1970, John Locke and the Compass of Human Understanding , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 1983, Thinking Matter: Materialism in Eighteenth Century Britain , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• –––, 1984, Perceptual Acquaintance: From Descartes to Reid , Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Bibliographies

• Hall, Roland, and Roger Woolhouse, 1983, 80 Years of Locke Scholarship: A Bibliographical Guide , Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.
• Locke Studies (formerly The Locke Newsletter) , edited by Timothy Stanton, Heslington: University of York.

How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.

• “John Locke” , entry on Locke, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy .
• Images of Locke , National Portrait Gallery, Great Britain.

Berkeley, George | Hume, David | Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm | liberalism | Locke, John: moral philosophy | Locke, John: on freedom | Locke, John: on personal identity | Locke, John: philosophy of science | Locke, John: political philosophy | Masham, Lady Damaris | personal identity | substance | tropes

Acknowledgments

The editors would like to thank Sally Ferguson for carefully proofreading the text.

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The Difference Between Rote Learning and Meaningful Learning

While rote learning and meaningful learning are both ways of learning, they are very different. Does one type of learning benefit your child more in the long run?

To get to the bottom of this question, let’s examine both types of learning.

What Is Rote Learning?

Rote learning is the memorization of information based on repetition. Examples of rote learning include memorizing the alphabet, numbers, and multiplication tables. Some consider rote learning to be a necessary step in learning certain subjects.

Memorization isn’t the most effective way to learn, but it’s a method many students and teachers still use. A common rote learning technique is preparing quickly for a test, also known as cramming.

Advantages of Rote Learning

There are some benefits of Rote Learning, including:

• Ability to quickly recall basic facts
• Helps develop foundational knowledge

Disadvantages of Rote Learning

The drawbacks of learning by memorization include:

• Can be repetitive
• Easy to lose focus
• Doesn’t allow for a deeper understanding of a subject
• Doesn’t encourage the use of social skills
• No connection between new and previous knowledge
• May result in wrong impression or understanding a concept

While being able to quickly recall pieces of information is helpful, to understand information on a deeper level students must use a different method of learning: meaningful learning.

What is Meaningful Learning?

Meaningful learning involves understanding how all the pieces of an entire concept fit together. The knowledge gained through meaningful learning applies to new learning situations. This type of learning stays with students for life.

Meaningful learning is active , constructive , and long-lasting , but most importantly, it allows students to be fully engaged in the learning process.

Two important goals of all types of learning include retention and transfer. “Retention” is the ability to remember the material at a later time. “Transfer” is the ability to use prior knowledge to solve new problems. Students achieve meaningful learning when both of these goals are fulfilled.

Advantages of Meaningful Learning

Meaningful learning helps students achieve success in the classroom by:

• Encouraging understanding, not memorization
• Encouraging active learning techniques
• Focusing on the outcome of the learning process
• Relating new information to prior knowledge

Disadvantages of Meaningful Learning

The challenges associated with meaningful learning include:

• Takes longer to achieve
• Should be tailored for different types of learners

Some students may face challenges with meaningful learning, as it requires building off previous knowledge. This is where dedicated teachers and tutors can help ensure students understand concepts so that meaningful learning can continue to happen.

Rote Learning vs. Meaningful Learning

Experts emphasize the importance of deep understanding over the recalling of facts. Students who learn with meaningful learning are able to problem solve better than those who learn by rote.

Meaningful learning teaches students important cognitive skills they will use throughout their life. Cognitive skills are what students use to evaluate, analyze, remember and make comparisons. In the long run, meaningful learning is the most effective way for students to engage in learning.

Why Oxford Learning?

With our Cognitive Learning approach to teaching, Oxford Learning emphasizes the importance of meaningful learning. Our programs don’t focus on memorization or repetition—they teach students the fundamentals of lifelong learning. Your child will develop learning skills and strategies that will help him or her on the way to better grades in school.

Does your child need help mastering the art of meaningful learning? Oxford Learning teaches students the skills they need to be a more effective learner. Find out more about how Oxford Learning helps .

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Memorization vs. understanding: The ultimate study secret

Katie January 24, 2022 good habits , grades , memory , study skills

By Katie Azevedo. M.Ed.

When it comes to studying, there is a major difference between memorization and understanding. I’m going to explain the differences and when to use each method, but let’s start with this simple but important distinction:

• Memorization is temporary and limited to basic words and facts.
• Understanding is long-term and unlimited.

What’s the difference between memorization and understanding?

Memorization and understanding are related because they are both involved in knowledge acquisition, but they are different in their effectiveness, usefulness and shelf-life.

When to use memorization

In the learning process, understanding material should always come before memorizing it . Unfortunately, that’s not how many students approach studying.

There’s a time and place to rely on basic memorization. Memorization can be handy when we’ll be recalling the information within the next hour, and when we know we won’t ever need to know it again. Examples include playing a memory-based card game (ahhh where was the card with the teapot!?), learning someone’s name in a conversation (sorry, Susan – I won’t remember your name when we’re done here!).

Memorization strategies such as mnemonic devices, visualization, and association are best used after we fully understand something. For example, we might memorize the silly sentence King Phillip Came Over For Good Spaghetti as a way to remember the classifications for biology (kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species – woah, look at me go). But memorizing this sentence does not mean we understand the classification system.

A few lines back, I wrote that we should understand the material before we memorize it. In the case of the classification system example, we should fully learn about the topic first (what it is, why do we use it, how does it work, etc.), and then come up with a mnemonic device for remembering it.

When NOT to use memorization

In most cases, we should rely on actually learning the content instead of trying to memorize it. We should never rely on memorization in the following scenarios. When we:

• care about what we’re learning and actually want to learn it
• need to use the information to understand something else
• need to apply the information in real-life scenarios or on a test
• will need to recall the information in more than 24 hours
• the whole point is to learn it, not just to pass a test

Strategies for memorization vs. understanding

We use different study strategies for memorizing and understanding material. I’ve listed some below.

Memorization strategies

• Rote repetition
• Visualization 
• Mnemonic devices
• Association

Legitimate study strategies that lead to real understanding

• Active recall
• Interleaved practice
• Spaced repetition
• Studying the same material 3 different ways
• Study in both directions

The bottom line is that in most cases, taking the time to fully understand the material is the best option. Learn it forwards, backward, inside-out, and across contexts. And then after that, you can use one of the memorization strategies listed above as a trigger to help you recall the information when you need it.

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• The four main types of essay | Quick guide with examples

The Four Main Types of Essay | Quick Guide with Examples

Published on September 4, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

An essay is a focused piece of writing designed to inform or persuade. There are many different types of essay, but they are often defined in four categories: argumentative, expository, narrative, and descriptive essays.

Argumentative and expository essays are focused on conveying information and making clear points, while narrative and descriptive essays are about exercising creativity and writing in an interesting way. At university level, argumentative essays are the most common type. 

In high school and college, you will also often have to write textual analysis essays, which test your skills in close reading and interpretation.

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Table of contents

Argumentative essays, expository essays, narrative essays, descriptive essays, textual analysis essays, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about types of essays.

An argumentative essay presents an extended, evidence-based argument. It requires a strong thesis statement —a clearly defined stance on your topic. Your aim is to convince the reader of your thesis using evidence (such as quotations ) and analysis.

Argumentative essays test your ability to research and present your own position on a topic. This is the most common type of essay at college level—most papers you write will involve some kind of argumentation.

The essay is divided into an introduction, body, and conclusion:

• The introduction provides your topic and thesis statement
• The body presents your evidence and arguments
• The conclusion summarizes your argument and emphasizes its importance

The example below is a paragraph from the body of an argumentative essay about the effects of the internet on education. Mouse over it to learn more.

A common frustration for teachers is students’ use of Wikipedia as a source in their writing. Its prevalence among students is not exaggerated; a survey found that the vast majority of the students surveyed used Wikipedia (Head & Eisenberg, 2010). An article in The Guardian stresses a common objection to its use: “a reliance on Wikipedia can discourage students from engaging with genuine academic writing” (Coomer, 2013). Teachers are clearly not mistaken in viewing Wikipedia usage as ubiquitous among their students; but the claim that it discourages engagement with academic sources requires further investigation. This point is treated as self-evident by many teachers, but Wikipedia itself explicitly encourages students to look into other sources. Its articles often provide references to academic publications and include warning notes where citations are missing; the site’s own guidelines for research make clear that it should be used as a starting point, emphasizing that users should always “read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says” (“Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia,” 2020). Indeed, for many students, Wikipedia is their first encounter with the concepts of citation and referencing. The use of Wikipedia therefore has a positive side that merits deeper consideration than it often receives.

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An expository essay provides a clear, focused explanation of a topic. It doesn’t require an original argument, just a balanced and well-organized view of the topic.

Expository essays test your familiarity with a topic and your ability to organize and convey information. They are commonly assigned at high school or in exam questions at college level.

The introduction of an expository essay states your topic and provides some general background, the body presents the details, and the conclusion summarizes the information presented.

A typical body paragraph from an expository essay about the invention of the printing press is shown below. Mouse over it to learn more.

The invention of the printing press in 1440 changed this situation dramatically. Johannes Gutenberg, who had worked as a goldsmith, used his knowledge of metals in the design of the press. He made his type from an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony, whose durability allowed for the reliable production of high-quality books. This new technology allowed texts to be reproduced and disseminated on a much larger scale than was previously possible. The Gutenberg Bible appeared in the 1450s, and a large number of printing presses sprang up across the continent in the following decades. Gutenberg’s invention rapidly transformed cultural production in Europe; among other things, it would lead to the Protestant Reformation.

A narrative essay is one that tells a story. This is usually a story about a personal experience you had, but it may also be an imaginative exploration of something you have not experienced.

Narrative essays test your ability to build up a narrative in an engaging, well-structured way. They are much more personal and creative than other kinds of academic writing . Writing a personal statement for an application requires the same skills as a narrative essay.

A narrative essay isn’t strictly divided into introduction, body, and conclusion, but it should still begin by setting up the narrative and finish by expressing the point of the story—what you learned from your experience, or why it made an impression on you.

Mouse over the example below, a short narrative essay responding to the prompt “Write about an experience where you learned something about yourself,” to explore its structure.

Since elementary school, I have always favored subjects like science and math over the humanities. My instinct was always to think of these subjects as more solid and serious than classes like English. If there was no right answer, I thought, why bother? But recently I had an experience that taught me my academic interests are more flexible than I had thought: I took my first philosophy class.

Before I entered the classroom, I was skeptical. I waited outside with the other students and wondered what exactly philosophy would involve—I really had no idea. I imagined something pretty abstract: long, stilted conversations pondering the meaning of life. But what I got was something quite different.

A young man in jeans, Mr. Jones—“but you can call me Rob”—was far from the white-haired, buttoned-up old man I had half-expected. And rather than pulling us into pedantic arguments about obscure philosophical points, Rob engaged us on our level. To talk free will, we looked at our own choices. To talk ethics, we looked at dilemmas we had faced ourselves. By the end of class, I’d discovered that questions with no right answer can turn out to be the most interesting ones.

The experience has taught me to look at things a little more “philosophically”—and not just because it was a philosophy class! I learned that if I let go of my preconceptions, I can actually get a lot out of subjects I was previously dismissive of. The class taught me—in more ways than one—to look at things with an open mind.

A descriptive essay provides a detailed sensory description of something. Like narrative essays, they allow you to be more creative than most academic writing, but they are more tightly focused than narrative essays. You might describe a specific place or object, rather than telling a whole story.

Descriptive essays test your ability to use language creatively, making striking word choices to convey a memorable picture of what you’re describing.

A descriptive essay can be quite loosely structured, though it should usually begin by introducing the object of your description and end by drawing an overall picture of it. The important thing is to use careful word choices and figurative language to create an original description of your object.

Mouse over the example below, a response to the prompt “Describe a place you love to spend time in,” to learn more about descriptive essays.

On Sunday afternoons I like to spend my time in the garden behind my house. The garden is narrow but long, a corridor of green extending from the back of the house, and I sit on a lawn chair at the far end to read and relax. I am in my small peaceful paradise: the shade of the tree, the feel of the grass on my feet, the gentle activity of the fish in the pond beside me.

My cat crosses the garden nimbly and leaps onto the fence to survey it from above. From his perch he can watch over his little kingdom and keep an eye on the neighbours. He does this until the barking of next door’s dog scares him from his post and he bolts for the cat flap to govern from the safety of the kitchen.

With that, I am left alone with the fish, whose whole world is the pond by my feet. The fish explore the pond every day as if for the first time, prodding and inspecting every stone. I sometimes feel the same about sitting here in the garden; I know the place better than anyone, but whenever I return I still feel compelled to pay attention to all its details and novelties—a new bird perched in the tree, the growth of the grass, and the movement of the insects it shelters…

Sitting out in the garden, I feel serene. I feel at home. And yet I always feel there is more to discover. The bounds of my garden may be small, but there is a whole world contained within it, and it is one I will never get tired of inhabiting.

Though every essay type tests your writing skills, some essays also test your ability to read carefully and critically. In a textual analysis essay, you don’t just present information on a topic, but closely analyze a text to explain how it achieves certain effects.

Rhetorical analysis

A rhetorical analysis looks at a persuasive text (e.g. a speech, an essay, a political cartoon) in terms of the rhetorical devices it uses, and evaluates their effectiveness.

The goal is not to state whether you agree with the author’s argument but to look at how they have constructed it.

The introduction of a rhetorical analysis presents the text, some background information, and your thesis statement; the body comprises the analysis itself; and the conclusion wraps up your analysis of the text, emphasizing its relevance to broader concerns.

The example below is from a rhetorical analysis of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech . Mouse over it to learn more.

King’s speech is infused with prophetic language throughout. Even before the famous “dream” part of the speech, King’s language consistently strikes a prophetic tone. He refers to the Lincoln Memorial as a “hallowed spot” and speaks of rising “from the dark and desolate valley of segregation” to “make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” The assumption of this prophetic voice constitutes the text’s strongest ethical appeal; after linking himself with political figures like Lincoln and the Founding Fathers, King’s ethos adopts a distinctly religious tone, recalling Biblical prophets and preachers of change from across history. This adds significant force to his words; standing before an audience of hundreds of thousands, he states not just what the future should be, but what it will be: “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.” This warning is almost apocalyptic in tone, though it concludes with the positive image of the “bright day of justice.” The power of King’s rhetoric thus stems not only from the pathos of his vision of a brighter future, but from the ethos of the prophetic voice he adopts in expressing this vision.

Literary analysis

A literary analysis essay presents a close reading of a work of literature—e.g. a poem or novel—to explore the choices made by the author and how they help to convey the text’s theme. It is not simply a book report or a review, but an in-depth interpretation of the text.

Literary analysis looks at things like setting, characters, themes, and figurative language. The goal is to closely analyze what the author conveys and how.

The introduction of a literary analysis essay presents the text and background, and provides your thesis statement; the body consists of close readings of the text with quotations and analysis in support of your argument; and the conclusion emphasizes what your approach tells us about the text.

Mouse over the example below, the introduction to a literary analysis essay on Frankenstein , to learn more.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, protagonist Victor Frankenstein is a stable representation of the callous ambition of modern science throughout the novel. This essay, however, argues that far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to portray Frankenstein in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as. This essay begins by exploring the positive portrayal of Frankenstein in the first volume, then moves on to the creature’s perception of him, and finally discusses the third volume’s narrative shift toward viewing Frankenstein as the creature views him.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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• Appeal to authority fallacy
• False cause fallacy
• Sunk cost fallacy

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At high school and in composition classes at university, you’ll often be told to write a specific type of essay , but you might also just be given prompts.

Look for keywords in these prompts that suggest a certain approach: The word “explain” suggests you should write an expository essay , while the word “describe” implies a descriptive essay . An argumentative essay might be prompted with the word “assess” or “argue.”

The vast majority of essays written at university are some sort of argumentative essay . Almost all academic writing involves building up an argument, though other types of essay might be assigned in composition classes.

Essays can present arguments about all kinds of different topics. For example:

• In a literary analysis essay, you might make an argument for a specific interpretation of a text
• In a history essay, you might present an argument for the importance of a particular event
• In a politics essay, you might argue for the validity of a certain political theory

An argumentative essay tends to be a longer essay involving independent research, and aims to make an original argument about a topic. Its thesis statement makes a contentious claim that must be supported in an objective, evidence-based way.

An expository essay also aims to be objective, but it doesn’t have to make an original argument. Rather, it aims to explain something (e.g., a process or idea) in a clear, concise way. Expository essays are often shorter assignments and rely less on research.

The key difference is that a narrative essay is designed to tell a complete story, while a descriptive essay is meant to convey an intense description of a particular place, object, or concept.

Narrative and descriptive essays both allow you to write more personally and creatively than other kinds of essays , and similar writing skills can apply to both.

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