Of Education
By John Milton
Long heard the phrase ‘Knowledge is Power’ shares a common interest in the essay ‘Of
Education’ by John Milton. As a social reformist, Milton’s views concerning educational
reforms are complete and generous, as he claims ‘Education must embrace not only the
current state of knowledge but also possess the attitude of venturing new ideas’. Milton’s
intrusive ‘Of Education’ first appeared as eight-page pamphlet penned down in the form of a
letter more than an essay was published in 1644 and was later reprinted in 1673 with a
collection of his early poems. ‘Of Education’ Milton’s treatise for aristocratic education was
written in response to a request from a puritan educational reform Samuel Hartlib. Milton’s
tractate proposes a means of advancing knowledge for public good but it does so within
specific socio-economically privileged elite individuals, a better way to say it as royalist
education.
Milton’s tractate represents clearest views concerning the best and noblest ways of education.
For Milton education serves both social and spiritual purposes, a dual objective containing a
public upfront “fit a man to perform justly, skilfully, magnanimously all the offices both
public and private peace and war” and on the other hand education also serves as the purpose
for “repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God alright and out of the
knowledge to love him and to be like him as we may the nearest by possessing our soul of
true virtue.” In this essay, Milton is not gender-neutral and pay not much heed to girls
education as they are not ‘brave men or worthy patriots’. Some scholars have noted a parallel
similarity between Milton’s theory of education and the education of Adam received from the
angels of Raphael and Michael, a change of dynamics in the hierarchy of God. Even Samuel
Hartlib and his trusted advisors including John Comenius believed in the equal opportunities
for the education of girls.
In the middle of seventeenth century, when the intellectual world was blooming and teeming
with the new disquieting pedagogical theories, there was not a taint of radicalism could be
detected in the opening paragraphs of the essay. Many of Milton’s ideas are aligned with the
humanistic theory of education, which developed from the revival of learning that spread
across Western Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries.
By John Milton
Long heard the phrase ‘Knowledge is Power’ shares a common interest in the essay ‘Of
Education’ by John Milton. As a social reformist, Milton’s views concerning educational
reforms are complete and generous, as he claims ‘Education must embrace not only the
current state of knowledge but also possess the attitude of venturing new ideas’. Milton’s
intrusive ‘Of Education’ first appeared as eight-page pamphlet penned down in the form of a
letter more than an essay was published in 1644 and was later reprinted in 1673 with a
collection of his early poems. ‘Of Education’ Milton’s treatise for aristocratic education was
written in response to a request from a puritan educational reform Samuel Hartlib. Milton’s
tractate proposes a means of advancing knowledge for public good but it does so within
specific socio-economically privileged elite individuals, a better way to say it as royalist
education.
Milton’s tractate represents clearest views concerning the best and noblest ways of education.
For Milton education serves both social and spiritual purposes, a dual objective containing a
public upfront “fit a man to perform justly, skilfully, magnanimously all the offices both
public and private peace and war” and on the other hand education also serves as the purpose
for “repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God alright and out of the
knowledge to love him and to be like him as we may the nearest by possessing our soul of
true virtue.” In this essay, Milton is not gender-neutral and pay not much heed to girls
education as they are not ‘brave men or worthy patriots’. Some scholars have noted a parallel
similarity between Milton’s theory of education and the education of Adam received from the
angels of Raphael and Michael, a change of dynamics in the hierarchy of God. Even Samuel
Hartlib and his trusted advisors including John Comenius believed in the equal opportunities
for the education of girls.
In the middle of seventeenth century, when the intellectual world was blooming and teeming
with the new disquieting pedagogical theories, there was not a taint of radicalism could be
detected in the opening paragraphs of the essay. Many of Milton’s ideas are aligned with the
humanistic theory of education, which developed from the revival of learning that spread
across Western Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries.
