Dr. V.K.Maheshwari, M.A(Socio, Phil) B.Sc. M. Ed, Ph.D
Former Principal, K.L.D.A.V.(P.G) College, Roorkee, India
We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.
~Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau (French: [ʒɑ̃ʒak ʁuso]; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Gene van philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th century, was born of upper class parentage in the simple Protestant city of Geneva. His father, a watchmaker, was descendent from a Parisian family. The mother of Rousseau, too, although the daughter of a clergy man . Nine days after his birth, his mother Suzanne Bernard Rousseau, died of birth complications.Rousseau was brought up by an indulgent aunt, who never bothered to correct him when he faltered.
“When he was ten, Jean Rousseau, together with his cousin, was sent to school in a village of Bossey. Here his love of nature, which had already been cultivated by the beauties of the Genevian environment, was greatly heightened.
During his trade apprenticeships,as a notary and then an engraver he was further corrupted by low companions, and gave free reign to his impulses to loaf, lie and steal. He ran away from the city and spent many years in vagrancy and menial service.
Rousseau left Geneva at age 16 on March 14, 1728. He then met a French Catholic baroness named Françoise-Louise de Warens. She was thirteen years older and later became his lover. The Baroness provided Rousseau the education of a nobleman by sending him to Catholic school.
“With her assistance he put forth many efforts to find a congenial vocation. He served as a lackey, studied for the priesthood, practiced music and became in turn a government clerk, a teacher of music, and a secretary.”
In course of time, he and Madame de Warrens grew tired of each other, and in a fit of jealousy, he broke up with her, and moved to Paris. He earned a meagre livelihood by coping music.
He was secretary to the French ambassador in Venice from 1743 to 1744, whose republican government Rousseau often referred to in his later political work. After eleven months in this position, he was dismissed and fled to Paris to avoid prosecution by the Venetian SenateHe met Therese Levasseur, a vulgar and very stupid girl, who lived as his mistress for 23 years, before they got married.. Five children were born, and without delay they were sent to the fondling hospital. None of them were ever traced. This was one of the most unaccountable of the performances of this paradoxical genius.
But in spite of the fame he received later on, his last years were no happier than the first. He died in exile, in poverty and in solitude, in the year 1778, at the age of 66.Rousseau suffered a hemorrhage and died .
The work that made Rousseau famous and which would be great for us would be his novel Émile, It is in this book that one will find all his concerns of the child, and his aims of education. The focus of Émile is upon the individual tuition of a boy/young man in line with the principles of ‘natural education’.
The book is divided into five parts, four of which deal with Emile’s education in the stages of infancy, childhood, boyhood and youth respectively. The fifth part deals with the training of the girl who is to become his wife. Thus, through an imaginary student, Emile, Rousseau projects how a child should be
ROUSSEAU METAPHYSICAL POSITION
Concept of God
Naturalist God is within Nature .He is not all nature nor more than nature .He is that particular structure in nature which is sufficiently limited to be described as making possible the realization of value and as the foundation of all values
The Concept of Self
The self seems to be an organization of experience in each individual which is constantly developing and changing.. The human self is seen by Rousseau as an offshoot of Nature, and not as springing from beyond Nature.
Rousseau has not much interested in the concept of soul of man. According to them ,man is the child of nature; in the evolutionary processes that have been at work in the universe so far, he is on the very crest of the wave.
ROUSSEAU EPISTEMOLOGICAL POSITION
In terms of theory of knowledge, Rousseau highlight the value of scientific knowledge, through specific observation, accumulation and generalization . It also lays emphasis on the empirical and experimental knowledge. Rousseau lay stress on sensory training as senses are the gateways to learning
THE LOGIC
Simple induction is the logic of Rousseau . Simple induction involve careful observation of Nature, accurate description of what is observed, and caution in formulating generalizations
ROUSSEAU AXIOLOGICAL POSITION
Rousseau believes that. Nature is versatile. Instincts. drives and impulses need to be expressed rather than repressed. According to them, there is no absolute good or evil in the world. Values of life are created by the human needs.
Ethical Value-Ethics of Rousseau is hedonistic, as long as this characterization is accompanied by the caution that in the conscious the highest good is the most highly refined and abiding pleasure.
Aesthetic Value-The principles enunciated above regarding the ethical values of Rousseau hold also for aesthetic values. They, too, are rooted in nature and do not depend on any source outside nature for their validation. Nature itself provides the criterion for beauty.
Religious value-The prime imperative of a Rousseau religion is that its adherents ally themselves with the value-realizing force in Nature and help to bring into existence values which are not actual in the present.
Social Value-Rousseau’s rooted man in Nature rather than society. So much did he regard man as a child of Nature, as over against society, that he proposed in hisEmile to keep Emile away from society until adolescences.. Individual man, he contended, is not a man unless he is free; if he is in bondage, he is less than a man educated and trained.
CONCEPT OF EDUCATION
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who preferred to take the risk of presenting himself as a ‘man of paradoxes’ rather than remaining a ‘man of prejudices’, confronts the historian of educational thought with a considerable paradox.
In his preface to Émile, for example, he observes: ‘I write not about others’ ideas, but about my own. I do not see as other men see; it is a thing I have long been reproached with.’ Rousseau’s stroke of genius, which established the radical originality of his approach, was to have perceived education as the new form of a world that had embarked upon a historical process of dislocation.
“Correct education 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.
Education had been conceived as a process by which the child must acquire certain habits, skills, attitudes, and a body of knowledge which civilization had handed down. It was the task of the school to transfer these unchanged to each new generation. On the one hand, the stability of society depended on the success of the transfer; on the other, the success of the individual depended on acquiring them.
Education was to be the Ark in which humanity, as a social entity, might be saved from the flood. He advances the idea of “negative education”, which is a form of “child-centered” education. His essential idea is that education should be carried out, so far as possible, in harmony with the development of the child’s natural capacities by a process of apparently autonomous discovery.
Education must conform to the natural processes of growth and mental development. This root principle, already touched upon, stems from a concern to understand the nature of the child.
Education should be pleasurable; for children have a good time when they are doing things which the present development of their physical and mental equipment makes them ready to do. This readiness for specific kinds of activity is evidenced by their interest. Education should engage the spontaneous self-activity of the child. As already noted, the child educates himself in great measure, most of his knowledge is base on what he discovers in his own active relations with things and people.
Plants are fashioned by cultivation, man by education. If a man were born tall and strong, his size and strength would be of no good to him till he had learned to use them; they would even harm him by preventing others from coming to his aid; left to himself he would die of want before he knew his needs. We lament the helplessness of infancy; we fail to perceive that the race would have perished had not man begun by being a child. We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish we need reason. All that we lack at birth; all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.
Rousseau’s philosophy of education, therefore, is not geared simply at particular techniques that best ensure that the pupil will absorb information and concepts. It is better understood as a way of ensuring that the pupil’s character be developed in such a way as to have a healthy sense of self-worth and morality. This will allow the pupil to be virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he lives.
“‘The noblest work in education is to make a reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him reason! This beginning at the end; this is making an instrument of a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated.” –Rousseau, Emile.
The central concern of Rousseau was threefold:
1) The first was to implant a taste for knowledge. He believed that knowledge had to be given, but the person should also be taught how to acquire it when necessary. This will enable the student to estimate its worth, and to love it above everything else.
2) The second was to think clearly. Thus for Rousseau the important thing was that only those ideas which were accurate and clear should enter the mind.
3) The third was to furnish the right method. It was not only important to teach the student the sciences, but to also give him a taste for it. This for him was the fundamental principle of all good education. (Eby 356)
Thus Rousseau placed Emile in situations that obliged him to depend upon his own strength, to get his own bread, to think his own thoughts, to reach his own conclusions. By this Rousseau was basically trying to say that Emile had to depend on his own brains and not on the opinions of others. Rousseau firmly believed that we learn things much better if we learn them by ourselves. Thus his great principle was that nothing should be learnt on the authority of others.
Rousseau had in view the education of the upper classes. The lower classes do not need education, as the circumstances of life produce in them the sense of equality, simplicity, spontaneity, and all the other virtues of which they stand in need. But it is the children of the rich, who are brought up in luxury and artificiality, who require natural education.
ON THE DEVELOPEMENT OF THE PERSON
The first stage of the Educational program starts in infancy, where Rousseau’s crucial concern is to avoid conveying the idea that human relations are essentially ones of domination and subordination, an idea that can too easily by fostered in the infant by the conjunction of its own dependence on parental care and its power to get attention by crying. Though the young child must be protected from physical harm, Rousseau is keen that it gets used to the exercise of its bodily powers and he therefore advises that the child be left as free as possible rather than being confined or constrained.
From the age of about twelve or so, the program moves on to the acquisition of abstract skills and concepts. This is not done with the use of books or formal lessons, but rather through practical experience.
Up to adolescence, the educational program comprises a sequence of manipulations of the environment by the tutor. The child is not told what to do or think but is led to draw its own conclusions as a result of its own explorations, the context for which has been carefully arranged.
The third phase of education coincides with puberty and early adulthood. The period of isolation comes to an end and the child starts to take an interest in others (particularly the opposite sex), and in how he or she is regarded. At this stage the great danger is that excessive amour propre will extend to exacting recognition from others, disregarding their worth, and demanding subordination.
The education of children of children is determined by the various periods of development. In Émile, Rousseau divides development into five stages. According to him, the various stages are sharply marked off from one another by their special characteristics or functionsAs the periods are sharply marked in their rise, they are independent of each other in their development.
The stages below are those associated with males.
Stage 1: Infancy (birth to two years). The first stage is infancy, from birth to about two years. (Book I). Education begins at birth or before, and the first period of five years is concerned primarily with the growth of the body, motor activities, sense perception, and feelings.
According to Rousseau children’s first sensations are wholly in the realm of feeling. They are only aware of pleasure and pain. we are born with a capacity for learning, but know nothing and distinguish nothing. Even the movements, the cries of the new born child are purely mechanical, quite devoid of understanding and will.
The individuality of each child had to be respected. The doctrine of individual differences is fundamental to Rousseau. He wrote “One nature needs wings, another shackles: one has to be flattered, another to be intimidated. One man is made to carry human knowledge to the farthest point; another may find the possibility to read a dangerous power.” (Eby 346)
For Rousseau education does not arise from without; it springs from within. It is the internal development of our faculties and organs that constitutes the true education of nature .Even in infancy, the facing of hardships is nature’s method. “A child born ,lives and dies in a state of slavery. At the time of birth he is stitched in swaddling clothes and at the time of death he is nailed in a coffin, and as long as he preserves the human form he is fettered by our institutions”. In this regard he claims, “Observe nature and follow the route which she traces for you. She is ever exciting children to activity; she hardens the constitution by trials of every sort; she teaches at an early hour what suffering and pain are.” (Eby 346)
The first education is the free and unhampered expression of the natural activities of the child in relation to the physical environment. The only habit the child should be allowed to acquire is to contract none…Nothing must be done for the child that he can do for himself. This was the principle that governed infancy. “Life is a struggle for existence; this is the most fundamental biological law – a law to which the child must conform. Prepare in good time form the reign of freedom and the exercise of his powers, by allowing his body its natural habits and accustoming him always to be his own master and follow the dictates of his will as soon as he has a will of his own. Rousseau detested medicine and considered hygiene less a science than a virtue or habit of right living.
The important thing is that the child is allowed to obey the inner impulse to action, and that he experiences directly the results of his behaviour. Moral and social life are absolutely alien to the infants mind. The reason being that at this time errors and vices begin to germinate. All vices are implanted by unwise coddling or pampering of infants.
Stage 2: ‘The age of Nature’ ( from two to ten or twelve ), is ‘the age of Nature’. This is the most important and most critical period of human life. It has to be controlled by two principles, namely, education should be negative, and that moral training should be by natural consequences.
The first education, then, should be purely negative. It consists, not in teaching the principles of virtue and truth, but in guarding the heart against vice and the mind against error. By this negative education, Rousseau did not maintain that there should be no education at all, but that there should be one of a different kind, from the normally accepted educational practices.
Rousseau was a severe critic of the methods then in fashion in the schools. For most children, childhood was a sorrowful period, as instruction was heartlessly severe. Teachers had not yet imagined that children could find any pleasure in learning, or that they should have eyes for anything but reading, writing, and memorizing. The only form of learning that teachers knew was learning by rote. Rousseau considered this a grave error; for he believed that the child had no real memory, and that purely verbal lessons meant nothing to him.
Rousseau saw in such a method only a means of slaving mankind. This was the education that depended on books and upon the authority of others. Of his bitter aversion to books Rousseau expressed himself vigorously. “I hate books; they merely teach us to talk of what we do not know.” (Eby 348) The only book Émile is allowed is Robinson Crusoe – an expression of the solitary, self-sufficient man that Rousseau seeks to form (Boyd 1956: 69).
He was deeply shocked at the bad methods of motivation and discipline involved. He disapproved of rebukes, corrections, threats, and punishments. Worst of all, he hated prizes, rewards and promises. These for him, only induced them to do or learn something that was alien to their active interests.
Stage 3: Pre-adolescence (12-15). Émile in Stage 3 is like the ‘noble savage’ Rousseau describes in The Social Contract. ‘About twelve or thirteen the child’s strength increases far more rapidly than his needs’
The period from twelve to fifteen, Rousseau called the ‘Age of Reason,’ Self preservation is the fundamental urge of life, the spontaneous expression of inner, biological animalist. This is the period in life in which the strength of the individual is greater than his needs. The sex passions, the most violent and terrible of all, have not yet awakened. His growing body heat takes the place of clothing. Appetite is his sauce, and everything nourishing tastes good. When he is tired, he stretches himself out on the ground, and goes to sleep. He is not troubled by imaginary wants. What people think does not trouble him.
Only when the child has reached the aged of twelve, does reason begin to stir, and the time for its uninterrupted development is exceedingly brief.
At the age of twelve, the strength of the child is developed much more rapidly than his needs. Owing to his pre pubertal increment in muscular power, the youth is much stronger than is necessary to satisfy his needs, which have as yet remained few and simple.“He whose strength exceeds his desires has some power to spare; he is certainly a very strong being.” (Eby 353)It is this preponderance of strength beyond the satisfaction of his needs that causes reason to emerge.
Reason is an accessory faculty, “Our needs or desires are the original cause of our activities; in turn, our activities produce intelligence, in order to guide and govern our strength and passions, for reason is the check to strength.” (Eby 353) Inasmuch as intelligence evolved in relation to activities, it is necessary that these be developed to a high degree before reason appears. “Childhood is the sleep of reason. Furthermore, Rousseau declared: ‘Of all the faculties of man, reason is that which is developed with the most difficulty and the latest.” (Eby 353)
The common mistake of parents is to suppose that their children are capable of reasoning as soon as they are born, and to talk to them as though they are already grown up persons.
Educators have made numerous blunders they have not understood the nature of reason and the time when it arises. The first blunder was to educate the child through reason. This for Rousseau was to begin at the end. Thus all efforts to reason with children before reason emerges, is not only foolish but injurious.
The second blunder has been to substitute authority for the child’s own mental efforts .The design of nature is obviously to strengthen the body before the mind. When allowed to awaken at the proper time, reason projects the future of the child.
The third blunder of traditional instructional methodology was attributing to reason a power that it did not posses. This was the mistake of the rationalists. As reason appears later than the passions, and as it emerges out of them, it is subordinate to them. It is not the reliable guide for conduct. “Rousseau startled philosophy by declaring that a ‘the divine voice of a man’s heart and his inner conscience alone are the infallible guides and capable of bringing him happiness.” (Eby 355)
The fourth blunder is allowing rivalry in schools. Rivalry had always been one of the chief motivations in school. Rousseau regarded it as the arch evil of social life and utterly prohibited its unemployment. “Let there be no comparisons with other children; as soon as he begins to reason let him have no rivals, no competitors, even in running. I would a hundred times rather he would not learn what he can learn only through jealousy and vanity.” (Eby 355) This clearly shows the detest Rousseau had for rivalry or emulation.
Stage 4: Puberty (15-20). Rousseau believes that by the time Émile is fifteen, his reason will be well developed, and he will then be able to deal with he sees as the dangerous emotions of adolescence, and with moral issues and religion. The second paragraph of the book contains the famous lines: ‘We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man’ . He is still wanting to hold back societal pressures and influences so that the ‘natural inclinations’ of the person may emerge without undue corruption. There is to be a gradual entry into community life .
The soft slight down on his cheeks grows darker and firmer. His voice breaks, or rather, gets lost. He is neither child nor man, and he speaks like neither. His eyes, organs of the soul, which have hitherto has nothing, find language and experience as they light up with a new fire.
Up to this stage, life was more an animal existence, but now human sentiments begin to emerge. Now he has to be educated for a life with others and is to be educated in social relationships. Love for others, now becomes the controlling motive. Emotional development and moral perfection becomes the goal.
The most crucial event in the history of the human being is the emergence of sex. All the highest experiences and sentiments arise due to the emergence of the sex life. As soon as a man has the need of a companion, he is no longer an isolated being. All his relations with his species and all the affections of the soul are born with her. The sex life arouses many other sentiments which are secondary to it. Among these senses are those such as appreciation of beauty and the sublime, the perception of human relations, the sense of moral and social life and the religious emotions.
He is, accordingly, incapable of social and religious experience. It is because of this reason that he cannot comprehend and appreciate the meaning of life. The world of the spirit, morality, art, and philosophy is as yet sealed to him. Once the child becomes conscious of his dependence, he becomes obliged to begin a study of his own nature and his relation to others. Discussing education during the period of adolescence, Rousseau wrote, ‘It is at this age that the skillful teacher begins his real function as an observer and philosopher who knows the art of exploring the heart while attempting to mould it.’
First of all is the need of warding off evil passions. Second, Rousseau would now arouse the higher emotions such as friendship, sympathy, gratitude, love justice, goodness and philanthropy. These emotions are to be awakened by the study of the mental, social and moral nature of man. These subjects are not only to be studied indirectly through books, but to be experienced in life.
The awakening of inner feelings must precede the attributing of these feelings to outer causes. It is with this inner development and integration, that the world of spirit, morality, duty, art, religion, and philosophy dawns. Rousseau believed that it is this inner unfolding and enrichment of experience which has raised civilization above the level of a savage.
Stage 5: Adulthood (20-25). In Book V, the adult Émile is introduced to his ideal partner, Sophie. He learns about love, and is ready to return to society, proof, Rousseau hopes, after such a lengthy preparation, against its corrupting influences. The final task of the tutor is to ‘instruct the young couple in their marital rights and duties’ .
CONCEPT OF NEGATIVE EDUCATION
Rousseau advocates negative education – which is typical of naturalistic philosophy – the subordination of the child to natural order and his freedom from the social order. He defines negative education as one that tends to perfect the organs that are the instruments of knowledge before giving them this knowledge directly. The child should be left free to develop his body and senses. He attaches great importance to sense training as he believes senses are the gate ways of knowledge.
Rousseau proposed this idea with the following principle: ‘The first education, then, should be purely negative. It consists, not in teaching the principles of virtue and truth, but in guarding the heart aginst vice and the mind against error.’ With him the entire education of the child was to come from the free development of his own nature, his own powers, and his own natural inclinations. His will was not to be thwarted.
Negative education according to him, was that education which perfected the organs that are the instruments of knowledge, before giving the knowledge directly. It further prepares the way for reason by the proper exercise of the senses. Negative education does not imply a time of idleness. It does not give virtues, but protects the person from vice. It does not inculcate truth, but protects one from error. It helps the child to take the path that will lead him to truth, when he has reached the age to understand it. It will also help him to take the path of goodness, when he has acquired the faculty of recognizing and loving it.
By this negative education, Rousseau did not maintain that there should be no education at all, but that there should be one of a different kind, from the normally accepted educational practices. Rousseau claimed that positive education was that type of education which formed the mind prematurely, and which instructed the child in duties that belonged to man.
By this negative education, Rousseau did not maintain that there should be no education at all, but that there should be one of a different kind, from the normally accepted educational practices. Rousseau claimed that positive education was that type of education which formed the mind prematurely, and which instructed the child in duties that belonged to man.
Rousseau adopted this method for several reasons. The first reason being, that it followed logically from the principle that human nature is good and that it unfolds by virtue of inner compulsion. Any interference with this natural unfolding would be corrupting. The evils of man are directly due to the bad education that he has received. He was incensed at the bad methods of motivation and discipline involved. He disapproved of rebukes, corrections, threats, and punishments. Worst of all, he hated prizes, rewards and promises. These for him, only induced them to do or learn something that was alien to their active interests.
Negative education does not imply a time of idleness. It does not give virtues, but protects the person from vice. It does not inculcate truth, but protects one from error. It helps the child to take the path that will lead him to truth, when he has reached the age to understand it. It will also help him to take the path of goodness, when he has acquired the faculty of recognizing and loving it.
ON WOMEN EDUCATION
His philosophy was not gender neutral. Rousseau believed females were to be educated to be governed by their husbands. They were to be weak and passive, brought up in ignorance and meant to do housework. Males were to be educated to be self-governed, and the philosophies in Emile essentially only pertained to males in society.
He introduces the character of Sophie, and explains how her education differs from Emile’s.. Rousseau’s view on the nature of the relationship between men and women is rooted in the notion that men are stronger and therefore more independent. Sophie is educated in such a way that she will fill what Rousseau takes to be her natural role as a wife. She is to be submissive to Emile. Hers is not as focused on theoretical matters, as men’s minds are more suited to that type of thinking. Women have particular talents that men do not; Rousseau says that women are cleverer than men, and that they excel more in matters of practical reason.
According to Rousseau, a woman should be the centre of the family, a housewife, and a mother. She should strive to please her husband, concern herself more than he with having a good reputation, and be satisfied with a simple religion of the emotions. Because her intellectual education is not of the essence, “her studies must all be on the practical side.”
‘woman is made specially to please man’, she must be educated in accordance with the duties of her sex, must refrain from seeking truths of an abstract or speculative nature and confine herself to household management and domestic duties .The whole education of women ought to be relative to men. To please them, to be useful to them, to make themselves honoured and loved by them, to educate them when young, to care for them when grown, to console them, to make life agreeable and sweet to them – these are the duties of women at all times, and what should taught them from infancy. . Sophie’s training for womanhood upto the age of ten involves physical training for grace; the dressing of dolls leading to drawing, writing, counting and reading; and the prevention of idleness and indocility. After the age of ten there is a concern with adornment and the arts of pleasing; religion; and the training of reason. ‘She has been trained careful rather than strictly, and her taste has been followed rather than thwarted’ .
Like men, women should be given adequate bodily training, but rather for the sake of physical charms and of producing vigorous offspring than for their own development. Their instinctive love of pleasing through dress should be made of service by teaching them sewing, embroidery, lace-work, and designing. Further, girls ought to be obedient and industrious, and they ought to be brought up through constraint. They have to learn to suffer injustices, and to endure the wrongs of their husbands without complaint. Girls had to be taught singing, dancing, and other accomplishments that will make them attractive, without interfering with their submissiveness. They should be instructed dogmatically in religion, at a really very early age. For him, every daughter should have the religion of her mother, and every wife that of her husband. In ethical matters, they should be largely guided by public opinion. A woman should learn to study men. She must learn to penetrate their feelings thought their conversation, their actions, their looks, and their gestures.
Rousseau subscribes to a view that sex differences go deep (and are complementary) – and that education must take account of this. ‘The man should be strong and active; the woman should be weak and passive; he one must have both the power and the will; it is enough that the other should offer little resistance’ From this difference comes a contrasting education. They are not to be brought up in ignorance and kept to housework. Nature means them to think, to will, to love to cultivate their minds as well as their persons; she puts these weapons in their hands to make up for their lack of strength and to enable them to direct the strength of men.
This strange denial of independent personality to women can only be explained on the ground that Rousseau had no contact with women of character and his conception of human personality was not broad enough to include the female virtues. This is why he ends with an anticlimax.
AIMS OF EDUCATION
Preservation of the natural goodness Aim-It can to some extent be emphasized, that the ultimate aim of Rousseau was thepreservation of the natural goodness, and virtues of the heart, and of society which was in harmony with them. In the physical world he observed order, harmony, and beauty; but in the world of man he observed infinite conflict, ugliness, selfishness, which finally resulted in plenty of misery.
Development of Body and Mind Aim- Education is for the body as well as the mind; and this should not be forgotten. Even if it were possible, there is no point in making a man mentally fit for life and neglecting his physical fitness. For the child is at bottom a little animal, whatever else he may be. He has a body, or, to be more accurate, he is a body one of his first requirements therefore is that he be healthy, a vigorous animal, able to stand the wear and tear of living
Mind and body must both be cared for and the whole being of the student unfolded as a unit. . A child is bad because he is weak, make him strong and he will be good.”
Rousseau’s aim is to show how a natural education, enables Émile to become social, moral, and rational while remaining true to his original nature. For it he is educated to be a man, not a priest, a soldier, or an attorney, he will be able to do what is needed in any situation.
Whereas traditional education had placed major emphasis upon intellectual function, the naturalist proposes that the child be given opportunity to grow physically, mentally , socially, emotionally, aesthetically, vocationally, under the auspices of the school.
Securing the necessities of life Aim- It is especially in the realm of developing economic efficiency that education helps in preserving life. Money is not life, but it is a necessity in maintaining life. Education should train directly for success in this important function.
Enjoyment of leisure Aim- Life is not all serious struggles, keeping physically strong, earning a living, being a responsible parent and an earnest citizen. Complete living also includes freedom from struggle some of the time for “gratification of the tastes and feelings.”
Individual Aim -Rousseau was not really opposed to social life. On the contrary, he aimed to enable the individual to enter whole-heartedly into all the basic relationships of humanity.But a person was to enter a society which was adjusted to his or her natural virtues and capacities, and not one in which he or she would be but a packhorse to serve others.
Social Aim-For Rousseau, education was the important business of the state, and natural education was the privilege of free men. Children should be educated together and it isby means of common plays, patriotic training and songs, that a society builds a sense of solidarity..”
General Aim-In the beginning, education aimed to produce the gentleman-scholar to serve the church and the state. This involved the specialization of the powers of the individual and his subjection to others. Rousseau saw in this a direct threat against the fundamental integrity of the person. In making a citizen or a laborer, education made him or her less a person. It was a choice between the natural individual and the distortion of his or her original nature. Thus in opposition to the educational aims of the past, Rousseau was trying to establish a generous and liberal cultivation of the native endowments of the child. The child ought to be developed as a whole, before the cramping moulds of specialization distort its being. Education according to him was meant to fit a person for a changing environment and a changing fortune. Therefore the child should not be trained for a definite vocation or a definite social position.
—Rousseau dismissed all techniques and broke all moulds by proclaiming that the child did not have to become anything other than what he was destined to be: ‘Living is the business that I wish to teach him. When he leaves my care he will, I grant, be neither magistrate, nor soldier, nor priest: he will be, primarily, a man
THE CONCEPT OF TEACHER
The teacher’s role is to remain in background. The natural development of child should be stimulated. Since, Nature is considered to be best educator,
According to naturalists the teacher is the observer and facilitator of the child’s development rather than a giver of information, ideas, ideals and will power or a molder of character. “teacher is only a setter of the stage, a supplier of materials and opportunities, a provider of an ideal environment, a creator of conditions under which natural development takes place. Teacher is only a non-interfering observer”.
For Rousseau, the teacher, first of all, is a person who is completely in tune with nature .He has a profound faith in the original goodness of human nature. He believes that human beings have their own time-table for learning. “Emile organized education according to Emile’s (a boy) stages of development. Appreciating the educative role of the natural environment as an educative force the teacher does not interfere with nature, but rather cooperates with the ebb and flow of natural. forces. The teacher should not force child to learn but rather encourages learning, by insulating him to explore and to grow by his interactions with the environment.
Rousseau opines that teacher should not be in a hurry to make the child learn. Instead he should be patient, permissive and non-intrusive. Demonstrating great patience the teacher can not allow himself to tell the student what the truth is but rather must stand back and encourage the learner’s own self discovery. According to him the teacher is an invisible guide to learning. While ever-present, he is never a taskmaster. Rousseau view that teacher should not be one who stresses books, recitations and massing information in literary form, “rather he should give emphasis on activity, exploration ,learning by doing”.
Great emphasis was placed upon the study which teachers should make of the environmental background of each student, since unacceptable behavior was rooted there rather than in the pupil’s ill will. Teachers were advised to learn of the racial, national, and religious backgrounds of their students if a pupil caused trouble or lacked initiative in school, the home conditions should be studied to see whether a home broken by divorce, death, or marital conflict is responsible for the child’s difficulties. If a teacher were unable to manage a class , he was held responsible because he lacked insight into child nature.
THE CONCEPT OF CURRICULUM
Rousseau, does not favor in imposing any boundary on the children. So advocates of this theory have not framed any curriculum of education. They think that each and every child has the power to and demand of his own to frame curriculum. A child will gather experience from nature according to his own demand. He is not to be forced to practice any fixed curriculum.
The curriculum of Rousseau was based on three fundamental principles:
1) The first was to implant a taste for knowledge. He believed that knowledge had to be given, but the person should also be taught how to acquire it when necessary. This will enable the student to estimate its worth, and to love it above everything else.
2) The second was to think clearly. Thus for Rousseau the important thing was that only those ideas which were accurate and clear should enter the mind.
3) The third was to furnish the right method. It was not only important to teach the student the sciences, but to also give him a taste for it. This for him was the fundamental principle of all good education.
Curriculum for Early Childhood
The child born with a capacity for learning, but know nothing and distinguish nothing. The mind is cramped by imperfect half-formed organs and has not even the consciousness of its own existence.
Rousseau do not wish to have Emile, before twelve, learn anything of the conventional character, not even reading. He did, however, expect a boy to pick up reading incidentally. He opposed fairy tales and fancy for the pre-school age, because they are not real. He even objected to fables for the age of boyhood. The reason being, that the boy was not a moral being yet, and also because these fables were misleading.”
Moreover, the reaction against the extreme application to ancient languages reached its climax in Rousseau. He did not believe that a boy could learn more than one language, and that had to be his mother tongue.
History was another study to which objection was raised for this stage, and on several grounds. Children do not have true memory, and therefore, they are unable to form ideas of human conduct and to judge historic situations. Furthermore, history was confined to too much wars, kings, dates, and political facts of secondary importance. It did not treat the significant events of human value. Again, history deals with society, and the child is incapable of understanding social phenomena. History, according to him, therefore, had to be excluded from this stage of development. Geography, also, was too advanced for the children.
Thus, Rousseau rules out not only the older subjects which had formed the curriculum for centuries but also the new materials of the new era. In no respect did Rousseau violate universal tradition so much as in the rejection of religious instruction. The child had not to hear of God until he reached the age of reason. This idea had far circling consequences on education.
The co curricular activities
The activities which spring naturally from the needs of life form the curriculum at each stage. The needs of boyhood are simple, merely pertaining to existence. First come play and sports, which improve the body, bringing health, strength and growth. Then, too, the child engages in securing a livelihood. “Agriculture is the first employment of man; it is the most useful, the most honourable, and consequently the most noble that he can practice.”
The child learns to handle the spade and the hoe, hammer, plane, and file – in fact, the tools of all the trades. These activities lead him to count, measure, weigh. And compare the objects with which he deals. He judges distances, learns to observe and to draw accurately the things he observes. Speech, singing, arithmetic, and geometry, are not learned as formal schoolroom subjects, but as activities that are related to life situations.
Before the age of twelve, the child cannot reason. His needs are simple and few, and can easily be satisfied. His power to secure satisfaction is not yet commensurate with even these simple needs, and accordingly a feeling of weakness and dependence is experienced. He is still in a pre-social, pre-moral stage of being, and is only capable of responding to things and to necessity. The general policy for his education is:
“Exercise his body, his organs, and his powers, but keep his soul lying fallow for as long as you possibly can. Be on your guard against all feelings which precede the judgment that can estimate their value!”
At this stage the child does not know the will of another, and should not be subjected to either commands or punishments. His activities are caused by necessity, and he can have no real sense of responsibility or of duty.
For intellectual instruction no definite course of study should be projected. Those subjects which make a genuine contribution to the self preservation of the individual should given greater attention. Geography and astronomy are the first subjects of interest, and these ought to be learnt directly from nature. This is then followed by the physical sciences. This further leads to agriculture and arts and crafts. When the student has a good acquaintance with these, he is trained in cabinet making. Such ought to be the curriculum from 12 to 15.
Curriculum during the period of adolescence:
Once the student becomes conscious of his dependence, he becomes obliged to begin a study of his own nature and his relation to others. Discussing education during the period of adolescence, Rousseau wrote, ‘It is at this age that the skillful teacher begins his real function as an observer and philosopher who knows the art of exploring the heart while attempting to mould it.’
First of all is the need of warding off evil passions. Second, Rousseau would now arouse the higher emotions such as friendship, sympathy, gratitude, love justice, goodness and philanthropy. These emotions are to be awakened by the study of the mental, social and moral nature of man. These subjects are not only to be studied indirectly through books, but to be experienced in life.
The true work of education is the inner emergence, growth, exercise and the integration of the feelings, sentiments and the passions. It is not so much the outer discovery, or observation of reality, as the evolution of inner feelings which invest outer phenomena with meaning, use and value.
The awakening of inner feelings must precede the attributing of these feelings to outer causes. It is with this inner development and integration, that the world of spirit, morality, duty, art, religion, and philosophy dawns. Rousseau believed that it is this inner unfolding and enrichment of experience which has raised civilization above the level of a savage.
The curriculum at this stage will include knowledge of human nature and the social order, which today would classify as psychology, sociology and ethics. Rousseau did not have in mind primarily the study of these subjects in books; but in concrete life situations, the warm experiences of the actual relations of living men. With regard to literature. Rousseau favoured the ancient literature. He prescribed fables to help in the moral training. Religion too, had an important part to play. By religion, he was referring to the natural religion of the human heart, and not of the dogmas and creeds of the church.
Drawing have considered drawing as the main technique of self-expression. They have included drawing as compulsory in the curriculum. He was against spiritual training as according to them children should pick their own religion from experiences they acquire. They also said that ethical training should not be imposed on children. They will build their own ethical sense in natural order by receiving rewards and punishments
METHODOLOGY OF INSTRUCTION
Methods of instruction should be inductive. This follows from Nature’s advice that teaching make fullest use of the self-activity of the pupil, telling him as little as possible and encouraging him to discover as much as possible for himself. To tell a child this and to show him that only make him a recipient of another’s observations. If the learning intellect is to be guided to its appropriate food, children must master the art of independent observation and direct acquaintance.
The educational implications of the Rousseau theory holds that good education is pleasurable, thus, methods of teaching should be based upon the belief that the child is not averse to learning, but enjoys it. Teaching methods and materials will appeals to student’s natural inclination to learn. Difficult tasks are not to be excluded, however, for even they can be made pleasant.
The natural mode of self expression is Play and learning should be done through cheerful spontaneous and creativity of play. The process of discovery is given importance. The activities like excursions, field trips and practical experiments are recommended to enhance learning.
Rousseau maintains that all teaching methods should be based on experience. Since they relies on the inductive method, they insists that the first criterion for judging the value of a teaching method should be based on self-activity of the pupil finding the answers for himself. The pupil himself must observe nature in order to find facts and discover answer to his problems. To tell the pupil all the facts, to show him the procedures, to give this the answers, merely makes him a recipient of reports of others’ experiences. The child has not learned but merely memorized or “absorbed” what he has been told. Thus all teaching methods should be characterized by pupil activity involving direct or at least vicarious experience; the pupil must educate himself.
A characteristic of naturalistic teaching learning methods is found in their conformity to the natural development of the pupils. It means readiness of the organism for any given learning. Negatively stated, this principle means that it is not the teacher or society that determines what the child should learn, but his own developmental level. Positively stated, it means that when the organism is ready for a certain type of learning activity it will seek in naturally, that is, without being forced by the teacher or by adult society. Thus the pupil will learn about his physical environment when his interests and instincts lead him to such learning; boy-girl relationships will be developed when children reach the age for such relationships; pupils will learn to read when they are ready.
Rousseau became the advocate of a soft and easy-going Pedagogy Children’s first sensations are wholly in the realm of feeling. They are only aware of pleasure and pain.
Education begins at birth or before, and the first period of five years is concerned primarily with the growth of the body, motor activities, sense perception, and feelings. The method of nature had to be followed in everything. Thus Rousseau, with impassionate pleading, recalled mothers to their natural duties, and even made it fashionable to breast feed their offspring.
Rousseau condemned the prevailing styles of dressing infants in swaddling clothes, which hindered the free movements of the body and the limbs. On the other hand, he liberated helpless babies from the bondage of dress; on the other hand, he accepted the hardening process for the body. “A child born lives and dies in a state of slavery .At the time of his berth he is stitched in swaddling clothes and at the time of his death he is nailed in a coffin , and as long as he preserves his human body he is fettered by our institutions”
Keep the child in sole dependence on things and you will follow the natural order in the course of his education. Put only physical obstacles in the way of indiscreet wishes and let his punishments spring from his own actions. Without forbidding wrong doing, be content to prevent it. Experience or impotence apart from anything else should take the place of law for him. Satisfy his desires, not because of his demands but because of his own needs.
Rousseau was a severe critic of the methods then in fashion in the schools. For most children, childhood was a sorrowful period, as instruction was heartlessly severe. Grammar was beaten into their memory. Teachers had not yet imagined that children could find any pleasure in learning, or that they should have eyes for anything but reading, writing, and memorizing. The only form of learning that teachers knew was learning by rote. Rousseau considered this a grave error; for he believed that the child had no real memory, and that purely verbal lessons meant nothing to him.
Rousseau saw in such a method only a means of slaving mankind. This was the education that depended on books and upon the authority of others. Of his bitter aversion to books Rousseau expressed himself vigorously. “I hate books; they merely teach us to talk of what we do not know.” (Eby 348) The only book Émile is allowed is Robinson Crusoe – an expression of the solitary, self-sufficient man that Rousseau seeks to form (Boyd 1956: 69).
The period from twelve to fifteen, Rousseau called the ‘Age of Reason,’ for the emergence of reason is its most important characteristic The child’s powers develop much more rapidly than his needs. The sex passions, the most violent and terrible of all, have not yet awakened
This is the age when real education by the human agency begins. Up to this time, the unfolding of
the child has been determined by natural laws; and with the action of these laws the educator must never interfere.
Another principle which Rousseau stressed was that the student should male his own apparatus. After observing geographic facts, he is to make charts, maps, and globes. Finally, Rousseau pictures the ideal boy at the end of this stage to be industrious, temperate, patient, firm, and full of courage and endurance. Rivalry had always been one of the chief motivations in school. Rousseau regarded it as the arch evil of social life and utterly prohibited its unemployment. “Let there be no comparisons with other children; as soon as he begins to reason let him have no rivals, no competitors, even in running. I would a hundred times rather he would not learn what he can learn only through jealousy and vanity.” This clearly shows the detest Rousseau had for rivalry or emulation.
CONCEPT OF DISCIPLINE
Punishment should be constituted by natural consequences of wrong deeds; should be certain, but tempered with sympathy. As we should teaches in accordance with the rhythms of Nature, so we should also punish as Nature punishes.
Naturalism emerged at a time when education was confined within the rigid rules of discipline by the influence of Idealism. Rousseau aims at making education free from the bondage of rigid discipline under which children were tortured.” Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles.”- Jean-Jacques Rousseau Naturalism, as a philosophy of education advocates maximum freedom for the child and further stresses in freeing the child from the tyranny of rigidity, interference and strict discipline. The freedom of child disciplines him and he is naturally controlled by his own learning and experiences. There is stress given to discipline by natural consequences.
Since classroom discipline usually is associated with methodology the naturalist asserts a fourth characteristic of sound teaching, namely that all discipline should derive from the natural elements of the situation. The situation will provide a form of innate discipline that should replace that of the teacher. To illustrate, a child learns to avoid hot objects because he has experienced the discomfort and pain which follow his touching them the pupil learn to cooperate with other pupil when he finds himself ostracized by his class mates. .for example- Every time a child puts his finger into the candle flames he gets a burn. Always it happens; always it is a burn. Their are no harsh words, no snapping and snarling, just a burn proportionate to the size of the flame and the extent and duration of the contact. But always there is that much. By this means Nature quickly teachers the normal child the dangers of fire, and exemplifies for parents and teachers what is desirable in corrective relations with children.
If a child is slow in dressing, for a walk, leave him at home. If he breaks a window, let him sit in the cold. If he over -eats, let him be sick. In fact, let him suffer the consequences for which he is responsible himself for going against nature. When a child begins to expect such consequences as certain to follow if he does not measure up to what is expected of him, he will act so as to enjoy the benefits which follow from appropriate conduct. Furthermore, when punishment of this sort is used, ruffled feelings do not get mixed up with discipline. It is easier for parent or teacher to hold a firm position with the child and yet not lose rapport with him completely. Even the disobedient child should feel that he has not lost all the sympathy of his guardians. But in the common snapping and snarling of parents, the emotional break between parent and child is too sharp and may do more damage than the punishment does good
