The Consent of the Governed
Subtitle: The Lockean Legacy in Early American Culture
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: January 15, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 245
ISBN-13: 9780674002982
Subjects: American history: c 1500 to c 1800; Children's literature studies: general; Cultural studies; United States; Political; Government - U.S. Government; Politics / Current Events; History: American; USA; Political History; History / United States / Colonial Period (1600-1775); Consensus (Social sciences); United States - General; American - General; 18th century; History; Political culture; Political socialization
Description: "The foundations for the United States' independence were laid long before a shot was fired at a redcoat in Lexington, Massachusetts in 1775. The Revolution began quietly in homes and schoolrooms across the colonies in the reading lessons women gave to children. Just as the Protestant revolt originated in a practice of individual reading of the Bible, so the theories of reading developed by John Locke were the means by which a revolutionary attitude toward authority was disseminated throughout the British colonies in North America - an attitude that would shape the formation of the United States. Gillian Brown takes us back to the basics to teach us why Americans value the right to individual self-determination above all other values. It all begins with children."

"Crucially, Locke linked consent with childhood, and it is his formulation of the child's natural right to consent that was instilled in eighteenth-century Americans as they learned to read through Lockean-style pedagogies and textbooks. Tracing the Lockean legacy through the New England Primer and popular readers, fables, and fairy tales, Brown demonstrates how Locke's emphasis on the liberty - and difficulty - of individual judgment became a received notion in the American colonies."--Jacket.