even paradoxical form

of statement given by

Rousseau

idleness; far from it. It does not give virtue, it protects from Critical and vice; it does not inculcate truth, it protects from error. It disposes the child to take the path that will lead him to truth, when he has reached the age to understand it; and to goodness, when he has acquired the faculty of recognizing and loving it." It is owing to this negative and critical form in which his ideas are stated, that Rousseau is so difficult to interpret, and that his educational ideas are held to be of little importance and influence. He can be understood only in the light of the times in which he wrote.

strictions of

education

Education from One to Five. The substance of his teach- Avoid cusings concerning this first period is a condemnation of the tomary recustomary restrictions of swaddling clothes, of restraints on childhood freedom, and of indoor life; of the thwarting of natural inclinations and desires, and of punishment for acts before the child can have any conception of wrong or of why punishment is given. It includes extravagant praise of life in the country, of freedom, of sports and games, and of exercise. "The weaker Commends the body, the more it commands; the stronger it is, the better it physical obeys. All the sensual passions find lodgment in effeminate bodies." "All wickedness comes from weakness. A child is bad only because he is weak; make him strong and he will be as basis of good. He who can do everything does nothing bad." Little moral and attention is to be paid to his intellectual and moral development. development Effort should be made, even, to restrict his vocabulary. "It is a great disadvantage for him to have more words than ideas, and to know how to say more things than he can think.” Education from Five to Twelve. This, critical period of human life," is to be controlled by the ing through two principles that education should be negative and that consemoral training should be by natural consequences. stead of attempting, as is ordinarily done, to give the child all sorts of ideas, nothing at all should be done toward molding or forcing his mind. Childhood is for its own sake. "Nature desires that children should be children before they

"the

intellectual

most Moral train.

"natural

In- quences"

Intellectual

training through natural

interests

Adolescence, the period of

intellectual education:

ers now

demands

are men." The child need not be taught to read, though probably he will pick this up on his own accord. He will hardly know what a book is. "Exercise the body, the organs, the senses and powers, but keep the soul lying fallow as long as you can," is his advice. While the child knows nothing of books and of that which passes for knowledge, " on the other hand he judges, foresees, reasons on everything which is directly related to him;" for this education is to be largely a training of the senses, such as can be gained by intimate contact with the forces and phenomena of nature. He measures, weighs, counts, compares, draws conclusions, tests inferences, discovers principles.

Education from Twelve to Fifteen. This is the one period in life in which the strength of the individual is greater than his needs. As intellectual training has for its general renatural pow- sult the multiplication of wants without any corresponding greater than development of power adequate to meet those needs, this is the one period in life in which greatest stress can be laid upon the acquisition of knowledge. But, after all, there are comparatively few things to be known that are of value. Curiosity Curiosity that ardor for knowledge which comes from natural desires and not from the desire to be considered wiseis the sole motive and the sole guide. The test of all is its practical use. "Let us then reject from our primary studies those branches of knowledge for which man has not a natural taste, and let us limit ourselves to those which instinct leads us to pursue," is Rousseau's statement of a principle far more widely accepted in this day than in his own. There Book knowl- is little of "book knowledge" even in this period. Robinson

Curiosity or

"interest" the sole guide

edge not important

Crusoe, a study of "life according to nature," is the chief book recommended. Knowledge is to be clearly distinguished from truth and the useful from both.

Among other things, Emile has learned a trade, “less for the sake of knowing the trade than for overcoming the prejudices which despise it." In his long discussions of the

technical

cation

importance of the manual and industrial activities in educa- Manual and tion, Rousseau emphasizes many of the social advantages, training, a without comprehending at all the psychological advantages part of eduthat are so emphasized at present. At the end of this period "Emile is industrious, temperate, patient, firm, and full of courage. He has little knowledge, but what he has is really his own; he knows nothing by halves. . . . Do you think that a child who has thus reached his fifteenth year has lost the years preceding?"

moral edu

cation

Education from Fifteen to Twenty. - Hitherto Émile's Period of body, senses and brain have been formed; it is now time that his heart should be shaped. Hitherto the child has been educated solely for himself and by himself; self-love has been the controlling motive; self-perfection, self-development, the ultimate end. Now the youth is to be educated for life with others and is to be educated in social relationships. Love for others becomes the controlling motive; emotional development and moral perfection, the goal.

of the ado

Rousseau first called attention to the transcendent impor- Educational importance tance of the period of adolescence in education. "At this stage the ordinary course of education ends; but strictly speak- lescent perio ing here one's should begin." Up to this time Emile has not been brought, save indirectly, into contact with others; he has not had to adapt himself to the conduct and interests of others; he has known no motives save those of self-interest and curiosity. He has probably never even heard the name of God. Now his education is to be strictly moral and religious. Previous attachments for persons have been merely the result of habitual association; now they are based on unity in sympathy and upon emotional experience. The whole character of his education changes. "The study proper for man is that of his relations. While he knows only his physical existence, he should solely study his relations to things; this is the employment of his childhood. When he begins to feel his moral existence, he ought then to inquire after his relations

U

Basis of moral and religious education to

be found in

the emo

to mankind; for this is the proper occupation of his whole life, beginning from the period which we have now reached." Self-love, in which are latent both good and evil, is now to be turned irrevocably toward the good. The basis of all this is the emotional life. "From the first movements of the heart, arise the first utterances of the conscience; and, from tional nature the first feelings of love and hate, spring the first notions of good and evil." This training was to be secured in the earlier period by the preservation of his native modesty through the negative training. So now, not through precept, but through contact with men, through the example of his tutor, through the study of history, is this development to be secured. "I do not grow weary of repeating that all the lessons of young men should be given in action rather than in words. Let them learn nothing in books that can be taught them by experience." And yet Rousseau was far from preaching the dangerous doctrine that one should learn to avoid evil through No necessity, experience of its consequences. "There is no ethical knowlof experi

Learning through loing

encing the

of its conse

juences

edge which cannot be acquired through the experience of vil, to know others or through one's own. In case the experience is dangerous, instead of making it ourselves, we draw the lesson from history. When the trial is without consequences, it is well for the young man to remain exposed to it." Thus, Émile is taught not only to shun evil, but to do good. Especially the poor and the oppressed call for his sympathy and his assistance. While he is firm in the assertion of his own rights, and is quick to the defense and protection of others, he is an exponent of the virtues of peace. "The spirit of peace is the effect of his education."

Religious

ducation

Religious orms held

> be worth

"At

In a similar way Emile receives his religious education. the age of fifteen, he did not know that he had a soul, and perhaps at eighteen it is not yet time for him to be informed of it; for if he learns it too soon, he runs the risk of never knowing it." This last clause contains the underlying principle of his teaching concerning religious education. Otherwise, the

religious ideas which the child gets are mere forms, verbal imitations, worthless so far as real experience is concerned.

of Rous

seau's edu

SOME PERMANENT RESULTS OF ROUSSEAU'S IN- The essence FLUENCE. The Education of Natural Interests vs. the Education of Artificial Effort. The fundamental theories of Rous- cational doctrines seau can be given briefly. Education is a natural, not an artificial, process. It is a development from within, not an accretion from without. It comes through the workings of natural instincts and interests, and not through response to external force.. It is an expansion of natural powers, not an acquisition of information. It is life itself, not a preparation for a future state remote in interests and characteristics from the life of childhood.

between the

dominant

sive educa

tion

The old conception of education aimed to remake the nature Contrast of the child by forcing upon him the traditional or customary "natural" way of thinking, of doing, and even of emotional reaction. It education substituted for the instinctive or "natural" reaction of the child and the those artificial reactions developed through many generations "formal" of religious, intellectual and social formalism. Human affec- and repres tions were evil, and hence the heart was to be separated from the objects of natural desire. Human senses were untrustworthy, and hence could not be made the basis of knowledge or of instruction. Human inclinations and instincts, springing from a nature depraved in its essence, were toward the evil and were to be eradicated. Natural interests, as expressions of the nature which both education and religion sought to repress and make over, were to be shunned in all educational processes. To the extent that an activity or task was difficult to perform Religious and intellectually and was distasteful emotionally, to this extent it philosophical possessed educational value. The first step in the moral education was to "break the will of the child," which in its perverseness but represented the evil of human nature. This traditional was to be followed in his social and moral education by the constant effort to mold the child into the artificial forms of conduct satisfactory to the judgment of the adult, even though such forms might conceal motives contradictory to the external expression.

estimate ot

child nature

coincided

with the

educational view

1