The Public/Private Debate

On February 28, 1712, in the Spectator, Budgell addressed ‘that famous Question’: ‘whether the Education at a publick School, or under a private Tutor, is to be preferr’d?’, and referred specifically to Locke's ‘celebrated Treatise of Education’ before outlining both sides of the debate for his readers’ consideration. This was not a new issue. It emerged from a body of educational literature which can be traced back to the Roman Quintilian, but it was Locke who placed it ‘at the centre of the debate’ on education. Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Education ‘reached a wide audience in eighteenth century Britain, and the book set the tone and marked the chief point of reference for most thinking about education at the time.’

Why the question about a public or private education could be asked at all is that in the absence of an overall educational authority, it was up to individual parents to decide where and how their children should be taught. Locke began his examination of the relative merits of public and private education for gentlemen's sons by conceding that ‘both sides have their Inconveniences’, but it is clear from the outset that for him the inconveniences of public education far outweighed its benefits. For Locke, education was above all about virtue ‘’Tis Vertue, then, direct Vertue, which is the hard and valuable part to be aimed at in Education.’ Domestic education he concluded, was ‘much the best and safest way to this great and main End of Education.’ From then on, most discussions of education written by moralists, educationists, men and women of letters, parents, private tutors or schoolmasters, included a section addressing the issue, and the debate thus represents a large body of contemporary opinion about education in eighteenth-century cultural life.