Question

What Wollstonecraft sees as the rationale guiding the education of women in her society. What harm does she think results from this view of education?

Answer 1

Answer:

For Wollstonecraft, the justification that guides the education of women in their society is the desire of great educational and political theorists to leave women inferior and intellectually infantilized in relation to men. She believed that the biggest problem with this view was that it undermined the moral foundations of society and did not give equal rights and freedoms to all citizens.

Explanation:

Wollstonecraft grew up in a society where women were unmotivated and often forbidden to receive quality education. The politicians and great intellectuals of the time claimed the most diverse absurdities to justify the reason why women could not receive the same type of education as men. For Wollstonecraft, however, these justifications were used only to make women inferior to men and infantilized, unable to achieve full intellectual knowledge and reasoning and to make them dependent on men in all aspects of their lives.

Wollstonecraft believed that this was highly harmful to society, because in addition to wasting brilliant women who could cause improvements in all scientific, economic and social fields, it hurt the moral principles of society, did not provide equality and freedom to any and all citizens, on the contrary, it allowed a group of society, women, to become captive and totally dependent and inferior.