8. That the study of theological subtleties is unsuited to child needs
or child capacity.
9. That the natural interests, curiosity, and activities of children
should be utilized in their education.
10. That the normal activities of children call for expression, and
that the best means of utilizing these activities are conversation,
writing, drawing, music, and play.
11. That education should no longer be exclusively literary and
linguistic, but should be based on sense perception, expression,
and reasoning.
12. That such education calls for instruction in the book of nature,
with home geography and the investigation of elementary problems in
science occupying a prominent place.
13. That the child be taught rather than the subject-matter; life here
rather than hereafter; and the development of reason rather than
the loading of the memory, were the proper objects of education.
14. That a many-sided education is necessary to reveal child
possibilities; to correct the narrowing effect of specialized class
education; and to prepare one for possible changes in fortune.
A new educational ideal presented. Rousseau's Émile presented a new ideal in education. According to his conception it was debasing that man should be educated to behave correctly in an artificial society, to follow blindly the doctrines of a faith, or to be an obedient subject of a king. Instead he conceived the function of education to be to evolve the natural powers, cultivate the human side, unfold the inborn capacities of every human being, and to develop a reasoning individual, capable of intelligently directing his life under diverse conditions and in any form of society. A book setting forth such ideas naturally was revolutionary [1] in matters of education. It deeply influenced thinkers along these lines during the remaining years of the eighteenth century, and became the inspiring source of nineteenth-century reforms. As Rousseau's Social Contract became the political handbook of the French Revolutionists, so his Émile became the inspiration of a new theory as to the education of children.
Coming, as it did, at a time when political and ecclesiastical despotisms were fast breaking down in France, when new forces were striving for expression throughout Europe, and when new theories as to the functions of government were being set forth in the American Colonies and in France, it gave the needed inspiration for the evolution of a new theory of non- religious, universal, and democratic education which would prepare citizens for intelligent participation in the functions of a democratic State, and for a reorganization of the subject-matter of education itself. A new theory as to the educational purpose was soon to arise, and the whole nature of the educational process, in the hands of others, was soon to be transformed as a result of the fortunate conjunction of the iconoclastic and impractical discussion of education by Rousseau and the more practical work of English, French, and American political theorists and statesmen. Out of the fusing of these, modern educational theory arose.