ES2212w3

Week 4: Rousseau (1712-1778)

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Last updated 17.10.11.

Brief Biography

Born Geneva 28 June 1712. Mother died in childbirth, father was inconsolable at her death.

‘My father believed that he saw his wife again in me, without being able to forget that it was I who had robbed him of her’ (Rousseau, cited in Dobinson, 1969; p. 4)

First 7 years of his life Jean-Jacques had a very intense relationship with his father and his paternal aunt: never allowed to play out in the street with other children.

Precocious reader by age of six, reading all the romantic novels his mother had written.

When Jean-Jacques was aged 8 his father was sentenced to imprisonment for allegedly drawing his sword on a French army officer. He left the city to escape imprisonment: left Jean-Jacques in the care of an uncle who had a son the same age. Both boys were sent away to be educated at the home of a village pastor and his unmarried sister.

This life a major contrast to the house-bound city life experienced previously, and also contrasts within aspects of the new life.

Children allowed to run free in the ‘great outdoors’, but Pastor and his wife very strict with them in the home.

Rousseau was apprenticed to a watchmaker at 12 years, but ran away at age of 15. After living in Italy for a year, lives with Madame de Warens in France for 10 years.

He then started training for priesthood, but didn’t finish the training.

He was then a tutor of young children for a short while before developing a musical career.

He had begun his systematic self-education in his mid-twenties, and was a prolific and many-faceted writer.

He met Therese Levasseur at age 33, and set up home with her and had five children, all of whom he reported were sent to orphanages.

Aged 38 he published Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750); his first major political writing. On the Origin of Social Inequality was published 1754, and his novel Heloise was published 1761.

Émile and The Social Contract both published in 1762. Both condemned due to their antagonism towards contemporary society

Rousseau had to flee to Switzerland to avoid arrest.

Lived in exile in various European countries (including England) for many years and died in 1778.

Émile

Part philosophical treatise, part novel - indicating how education can solve many of the problems of society identified in Discourses.

‘Education’ intended to apply to every aspect of the raising of children.

Rousseau asserted that it was primarily a work of moral philosophy, based on his belief that man was naturally good. It can be argued that it was a) consistent with a widely recognised French literary tradition of valuing non-urban and 'uncivilised' forms of social education (Montaigne, (1580), Des Cannibales; Lahontan, (1703) Dialogues de M. le baron de Lahontan et d'un Sauvage dans l'Amerique; Diderot, (1773) Supplément au Voyage de Bougainville - and Rousseau's book also closely resembled aspects of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719.

Life story of Émile, an orphan under the supervision of a tutor whose energies are totally devoted to his education and upbringing.

Guiding Principle: what is to be learned by a child should be determined by an understanding of the child’s nature at each stage of his development. Contrast to contemporary practice, where babies were swaddled to ‘protect’ them from dangers, looked after wet-nurses who often neglected them, and children embarked upon formal instruction at age 5.

Harsh discipline in school, and as soon as they were able to read children expected to devote long hours of study to subjects such as scripture, ancient history, Latin etc.

Émile not the only contemporary work suggesting educational reform: other Comenius and Locke criticised the treatment of young children and proposed changes to their physical care and education. However these theorists tended to concern themselves with children’s intellectual education only, or focus on minor details of the curriculum.

Émile unique because it considers education within an overall conception of humanity: proposes a rigorously structured, wide-ranging education according to clear principles

Child’s needs should determine the education he receives, and not socially determined ‘norms’ of what it is believed every child should know or do.

Common Themes in Rousseau’s work

‘Social’ man in an artificial and destructive state

The movement from the ‘natural’ state of man to the ‘social’ man in civic society involves a redirection and restructuring of all faculties and desires

‘Needs’ are imagined, desired and asserted – leading to frustration, competition, resentment

Humans become ‘enchained to ever-multiplying passions that cannot be satisfied’ (Rorty, 1998: p. 243)

Émile Book II

Childhood (the ages from birth to twelve) is ‘the age of harmless mirth’ but his contemporaries’ interpretation of child-rearing and education, means that it is spent in a destructive environment of ‘tears, punishments, threats and slavery.’ (Rousseau, 1995; p. 50).

Their misunderstanding of the nature of childhood leading to methods of child-rearing and education that do more harm than good.

Émile embodies Rousseau’s protest against the contemporary neglect of the child’s genuine needs

Implicit in his proposed solution an idealised version more ‘natural’ form of life, which he believed had preceded, but had been lost by, the process of civilisation.

Émile asserts inherent value of childhood

At the outset of life we all possess the ‘natural’ qualities that Rousseau endorses,

Émile serves as a warning about the dangers of imposing adult perceptions upon childhood: this destroys children’s nature and robs them of their future as ‘natural’ adults.

Age 0-12 is not merely a part of life that needs to be passed through or overcome, but a highly significant phase of a person’s life because it is the basis on which all subsequent mental and emotional development is built.

‘The most dangerous period of human life lies between birth and the age of twelve.’

Failure to recognise the significance of this stage, and to identify appropriate ways to support children in their development, means that his contemporaries ‘educational’ activities are counter-productive.

‘With our foolish and pedantic methods we are always preventing children from learning what they could learn much better by themselves, while we neglect what we alone can teach them.’ (Rousseau, 1993; p. 49)

Nature

Natural man is both good and free; he lacks the desires produced by society and has only desires that he can satisfy for himself: he is self-reliant and authentic, and able to withstand the influences of a corrupt society.

Émile indicates how adults can support children in their development towards becoming the independent and self-regulating adults that characterise natural man

Rebuttal of the prevailing contemporary notion of original sin. Rousseau asserts that children are naturally good: that is, their ‘nature’ at birth is good.

‘there is no original sin in the human heart’ (Rousseau, 1993; p. 66)

Contradictory interpretations of ‘nature’ throughout Emile make it difficult to be sure what Rousseau means.

· Sometimes appears to be referring to the child’s innate qualities (i.e. those which he possessed at birth)

· Sometimes using ‘nature’ more generally to refer to those behaviours and inclinations of a person of any age that he believes to be good.

Both interpretations presenting an uncritical and optimistic view of nature, which provides the foundation for his assertion that children should not be ‘controlled’ by adult-imposed education: education should be follow the child’s nature.

‘Nature provides for the child’s growth in her own fashion, and this should never be thwarted.’ (Rousseau, 1993; p. 58)

Education should be perceived as the development of the person’s natural tendencies (rather than the imposition of external requirements)

Good education consists in the protection of natural good from the corrupting influence of society: when protected by this ‘negative education’ the child’s natural self will be free to develop of its own accord.

‘Therefore the education of the earliest years should be merely negative […] beware of giving anything they need to day if it can be deferred without danger till tomorrow.’ (Rousseau, 1993; p. 68)

Child should be kept in near isolation from society and his tutor must have absolute control over his environment.

Rousseau distinguishes between two kinds of dependence: dependence on things, which is the work of nature; and dependence on men, which is the work of society.

· First form of dependence is appropriate

· Second form of dependence is dangerous because it makes the child vulnerable to the corrupting influence of society.

Freedom from human imposition and constraint in the early years will provide a sound foundation for the future

Enables Émile to develop skills of self-reliance in action and independence of thought.

‘I secure his present good by leaving him his freedom, and his future good by arming him against the evils he will have to bear.’ (Rousseau, 1993; p. 60)

Children have different ways of thinking to adults

Humans have a fundamental impulse to activity; manifested first in physical mobility but then gradually replaced by mental activity. Presuming to know what children need in order to develop into socially acceptable adults, and then devising pedagogical strategies to inculcate this knowledge is ill-judged and doomed to be unsuccessful because:

‘Childhood has its own ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling; nothing is more foolish than to try and substitute our ways.’ (Rousseau, 1993; p. 64)

Inculcation of knowledge is unnecessary and destructive because it interferes with the child’s natural development

Nature has planted in the child certain instincts for the purpose of promoting development

Process of ‘unfolding’ or ‘blossoming’ that has a natural course which should not be manipulated or accelerated.

‘Exercise his body, his limbs, his senses, his opinions, but keep his mind idle as long as you can.’ (Rousseau, 1993; p. 68)

Young child has a limited capacity for reason, but this should not be a cause for concern or a call to action on the part of the educator.

Not a deficiency that requires remediation, but merely a stage in his development that will pass, once the child recognises for himself the value of reason.

Anything outside the young child’s experience is inevitably meaningless to him, and to introduce ideas and issues before the child has demonstrated his ‘readiness’ will cause more harm than good.

Act reasonably towards children but do not reason with them

This simply develops a negative association with reason that undermines their development.

Young child’s education should be confined to those things in which he has a natural interest and are within his experience,

Child’s developing nature should determine the progress of his education. Child will learn faster and more authentically if he learns through his own discoveries

Educator’s responsibility is not to teach in the conventional sense, but to contrive situations that enable this first-hand learning to occur. This involves careful observation:

‘Leave him to himself and watch his actions without speaking; consider what he is doing and how he sets about it..’ (Rousseau, 1993; p. 149)

Word of caution

Rousseau’s notion of the child’s freedom is ambiguous.

Although Émile is not subjected to obvious restrictions in his early education, he is indirectly controlled by his tutor whose duty it is to manipulate the environment so that it encourages his pupil’s development. This form of subtle and indirect manipulation may be a more serious encroachment on the child’s freedom that the more traditional restraints that Rousseau protests about. However, Émile remains unaware of the restrictions on his liberty, and it is probably this feeling of freedom with which Rousseau is concerned.