1 Rough Equality, Rougher Inequalities, and the 'Jostlings of ...

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see and treat each other as embodied human equals. Differences in body or sex did nottranslate into differences in moral status or rules. The only rule specified for theircoeducational outdoor play ought to be "national" in scope: the general prohibition ofbrutality toward animals. Unlike Kant's rule against animal cruelty, this prohibition wasfor the moral and physical benefit of humans and animals, not solely for the moralrectitude of humans. By learning to treat animals benevolently in their games, childrenwould discern the Rousseauian idea that all embodied, sentient creatures (includinghumans) had natural rights to respect of their bodily integrity. Finally, holism demandedday schools because children needed their families for a complete moral education.Dutiful individualism was not about inculcating a sense of social isolation butrather a sense of moral responsibility to oneself and others. Integrating boys and girls ofdifferent class backgrounds was the key to the deeper psychological transformation oftheir images of themselves and each other. As she wrote in the Rights of Woman, "theyshould be sent to school to mix with a number of equals, for only by the jostlings ofequality can be formed a just opinion of ourselves."Optimism, or a belief in one's capability for positive development, would beinculcated through a standard yet stimulating curriculum. Girls and boys would be taughtbotany, mechanics, astronomy, reading, writing, arithmetic, natural history, and simpleexperiments in natural science, but such intellectual training would "never encroach ongymnastic plays in the open air." In Socratic conversation with their teachers, they wouldlearn elements of religion, history, anthropology, and politics. In this way, optimisticteaching methods and goals reinforced the holistic dimension of universal primaryeducation.10
Nearly two centuries later, the 1989 United Nations Convention the Rights of theChild similarly recognized free primary education, including physical education, as auniversal human right of children. Remarkably, Wollstonecraft's plan for "nationaleducation" overlaps with the contemporary definition of universal primary educationused by the United Nations: enabling all children, boys and girls, to complete educationfrom grades one through five. In 2012, the United Nations has reported significantprogress in realizing gender equity in primary education in developing countries, yet "tenmillion more girls than boys" remain out of primary school and "nearly two-thirds of theworld's 780 million people who cannot read are women." Alongside Kant's 1795argument for a peaceful world federation of rights-based republics, Wollstonecraft's 1792demand for a universal human right to primary education remains farsighted in boththeory and practice. Her arguments for the egalitarian transformation of the family,friendship, and primary education, combined with her philosophy of universal humanrights, make her the most consistent defender of the ideal of political equality during theEnlightenment.11
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Page 3 and 4: oys and men. This Amazonian outcome
Page 6 and 7: for they all struggled in some terr
Page 8 and 9: in a holistic way that captures the

1 Rough Equality, Rougher Inequalities, and the 'Jostlings of ...

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