Hi All,
I took Vives' concept of moral education and ran with:
“[L]et her begin by learning things that contribute to the cultivation of the mind and the care and management of the home” (58).
Women’s education is vital the well being of the state, since Vives views education more narrowly as “moral education” in two different senses. First, education can be used as a direct moralizing force, teaching women what is right and how to act properly: “The learning that I should wish to be made available to the whole human race is sober and chaste; it forms our character and renders us better” (64.
Second, education can confer skills that contribute to an overall good, mostly in domestic management. The moral health of the state is reflected in the moral health of the household. An example of this is Vives’ stern espousal that women learn to cook well:
“cooking, for it is an art of great necessity” (61)…”And I have come to the conclusion that the principal reason why men here in Belgium spend so much time in inns and taverns is the negligence and laziness of their women in cooking meals, which forces me to avoid their own homes and seek elsewhere what they do not find there” (62).
What we see is that cooking, while itself a skill and not a form of moral instruction, has a moral result of creating a sustainable household by keeping men out of inns and taverns. A “steadfast and chaste” (70) woman must, according to Vives, both be instructed in moral behavior and skilled in tasks with positive moral results.
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I appreciate the quotes on moral education as well as the critical remarks made. Based on these and on Fantazzi’s claims that Prof. Graban proposes us to think about, I would like to go one step further and unpack the rationale behind the moral education of women. It is true that Vives argues for the education of Christian women through learning of skills and moral behavior; however, this education is grafted onto the assumption that all humans are born in sin and evil:
ReplyDelete“From its very origins, the nature of the human body is inclined toward evil and is borne along on the path by its own impulse, as we are told by the sacred oracles. […] We are doomed by our natural inclination[…] ” (63)
A Christian individual, whether man or woman, needs to adjust those primordial inclinations towards good, thus making the teaching of the good a universal imperative. In this sense, knowledge becomes a function of the good and not so much of an effort to elevate women through proper training. Their elevation can be read only as the betterment of the Christian servant of God, rather than the elevation of women over men (as Fantazzi speculates).
Although there are a few moments when Vives would allow for women’s intelligence to be the springboard of their education (e.g., “The woman who has learned to make these and similar reflections either through instinctive virtue, innate intelligence, or though her reading […]” (65), Vives seems to fall back onto the idea that what suits women is virtue and not eloquence: “A woman has no need of that; she needs rectitude and wisdom.”(71) – and in this case we do not refer to men’s wisdom, but to humility and chastity.
I much appreciate Lavinia's comment here - I didn't quite get there in my own post, but I think the consideration of "eloquence" again gets us thinking about women's language-use or rhetorical possibilities (that is, possibilities of 'rhetoricalness'). I wonder at the extent to which de la Cruz supports this notion of virtue over eloquence - while she certainly discusses virtue, she writes exceedingly elegantly, and one would be hard pressed to call her "un"eloquent.
ReplyDeleteWe should note an important distinction in Vives’ program for early education: he favors ignorance over knowledge of evil. The weaned child is to be sequestered with those of her own age and sex and merely directed toward goodness and virtue. “Pernicious is the view,” Vives writes, “of those who wish their children not to be ignorant of both good and evil… How much more proper and useful is it not only not to do evil but not even to know it!” (55). He compares childhood knowledge with that which induces mankind’s fall from Eden. Later, in her early training, the child learns physical (working of wool and cooking) and intellectual (reading) toil, lest she be “drawn into evil by nature, then she plunges into it headlong” (58). Her work is a distraction that channels hers thoughts rather than evolve them: “A woman’s thoughts are swift and generally unsettled, roving without direction, and I know not where her instability will leader” (59). This seems to contradict the argument that ignorance (not knowledge) fosters evil.
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