A student's history of education

by Frank Pierrepont Graves

Naturalistic Basis of the Emile.—In the Emile Rousseau aims to replace the conventional and formal education of the day with a training that should be natural and spontaneous. Under the existing régime it was customary for boys and girls to be dressed like men and women of fashion ([Fig. 25]), and for education to be largely one of deportment and the dancing master. On the intellectual side, education was largely traditional and The substitution of a natural education for the conventional type in vogue. consisted chiefly of a training in Latin grammar, words, and memoriter work. Rousseau scathingly criticises these practices, and applies his naturalistic principles to an imaginary pupil named Emile “from the moment of his birth up to the time when, having become a mature man, he will no longer need any other guide than himself.” He begins the work with a restatement of his basal principle that “everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of Nature; but everything degenerates in the hands of man.” After elaborating this, he shows that we are educated by “three kinds of teachers—nature, man, and things, and since the coöperation of the three educations is necessary for their perfection, it is to the one over which we have no control (i e., nature) that we must direct the other two.” Education must, therefore, conform to nature.

The Five Books of the Emile.—Now the natural objects, through which Emile is to be educated, remain the Emile’s impulses examined and trained at different periods: same, but Emile himself changes from time to time. In so far, therefore, as he is to be the guide of how he is to be educated in a natural environment, his impulses must be examined at different times in his life. Hence the work is divided into five parts, four of which deal with Emile’s education in the stages of infancy, childhood, boyhood, and youth respectively, and the fifth with the training of the girl who is to become his wife. The characteristics of the different periods in the life of Emile are marked by the different kinds of things he desires.

In infancy, physical activities.

In the first book, which takes him from birth to five years of age, his main desire is for physical activities, and he should, therefore, be placed under simple, free, and healthful conditions, which will enable him to make the most of these. He must be removed to the country, where he will be close to nature, and farthest from the contaminating influence of civilization. His growth and training must be as spontaneous as possible. He must have nothing to do with either medicine or doctors, “unless his life is in evident danger; for then they can do nothing worse than kill him.” His natural movements must not be restrained by caps, bands, or swaddling clothes, and he should be nursed by his own mother. He should likewise be used to baths of all sorts of temperature. In fact, the child should not be forced into any fixed ways whatsoever, since with Rousseau, habit is necessarily something contrary to impulse and so unnatural. “The only habit,” says he, “which the child should be allowed to form is to contract no habit whatsoever.” His playthings should be such simple products of nature as “branches with their fruits and flowers, or a poppy-head in which the seeds are heard to rattle.” Language that is simple, plain, and hence natural, should be used with him, and he should not be hurried beyond nature in learning to talk. He should be restricted to a few words that express real thoughts for him.

The education of Emile during infancy is thus to be ‘negative’ and purely physical. The aim is simply to keep his instincts and impulses, which Rousseau holds to be good by nature, free from vice, and to afford him the natural activity he craves. Next, in the period of In childhood, limb and sense development, childhood, between the years of five and twelve, which is treated in the second book, Emile desires most to exercise his legs and arms, and to touch, to see, and in other ways to sense things. This, therefore, is the time for training his limbs and senses. “As all that enters the human understanding comes there through the senses, the first reason of man is a sensuous reason. Our first teachers of philosophy are our feet, our hands, and our eyes.... In order to learn to think, we must then exercise our limbs, our senses, and our organs, which are the instruments of our intelligence.” To obtain this training, Emile is to wear short, loose, and scanty clothing, go bareheaded, and have the body inured to cold and heat, and be generally subjected to a ‘hardening process’ similar to that recommended by Locke (see p. 181). He is to learn to swim, and practice long and high jumps, leaping walls, and scaling rocks. But, what is more important, his eyes and ears are also to be exercised through natural problems in weighing, measuring, and estimating masses, heights, and distances. Drawing and constructive geometry are to be taught him, to render him more capable of observing accurately. His ear is to be rendered sensitive to harmony by learning to sing.

This body and sense training should be the nearest approach to an intellectual training at this period. Rousseau condemns the usual unnatural practice of requiring pupils to learn so much before they have reached the proper years. In keeping with his ‘negative’ education, he asks rhetorically: “Shall I venture to state at this point the most important, the most useful, rule of all education? It is not to gain time, but to lose no geography, history, or reading, it.” During his childhood Emile is not to study geography, history, or languages, upon which pedagogues ordinarily depend to exhibit the attainments of their pupils, although these understand nothing of what they have memorized. “At the age of twelve, Emile will hardly know what a book is. But I shall be told it is very necessary that he know how to read. This I grant. It is necessary that he know how to read when reading is useful to him. Until then, it serves only to annoy him.”

Incidentally, however, in order to make Emile tolerable in society, for he cannot entirely escape it, he must though moral training through ‘natural consequences.’ be given the idea of property and some ideas about conduct. But this is simply because of practical necessity, and no moral education is to be given as such, for, “until he reaches the age of reason, he can form no idea of moral beings or social relations.” He is to learn through ‘natural consequences’ until he arrives at the age for understanding moral precepts. If he breaks the furniture or the windows, let him suffer the consequences that arise from his act. Do not preach to him or punish him for lying, but afterward affect not to believe him even when he has spoken the truth. If he carelessly digs up the sprouting melons of the gardener, in order to plant beans for himself, let the gardener in turn uproot the beans, and thus cause him to learn the sacredness of property. As far as this moral training is given, then, it is to be indirect and incidental.

In boyhood, intellectual training through curiosity concerning natural phenomena.

However, between twelve and fifteen, after the demands of the boy’s physical activities and of his senses have somewhat abated, there comes “an interval when his faculties and powers are greater than his desires,” when he displays an insistent curiosity concerning natural phenomena and a constant appetite for rational knowledge. This period, which is dealt with in his third book, Rousseau declares to be intended by nature itself as the time for instruction. But as not much can be learned within three years, the boy is to study only those subjects which are useful and not incomprehensible and misleading, and so is limited to the natural sciences. Later in this third book, in order that Emile may informally learn the interdependence of men and may himself become economically independent, Rousseau adds industrial experience and the acquisition of cabinet-making to his training. The most effective method of instruction, Rousseau holds, comes through appealing to the curiosity and interest in investigation, which are so prominent in the boy at this time. He contrasts the current methods of teaching astronomy and geography by means of globes, maps, and other misleading representations, with the more natural plan of stimulating inquiry through observing the sun when rising and setting during the different seasons, and through problems concerning the topography of the neighborhood. Emile is taught to appreciate the value of these subjects by being lost in the forest, and endeavoring to find a way out. He learns the elements of electricity through meeting with a juggler, who attracts an artificial duck by means of a concealed magnet. He similarly discovers through experience the effect of cold and heat upon solids and liquids, and so comes to understand the thermometer and other instruments. Hence Rousseau feels that all knowledge of real value may be acquired most clearly and naturally without the use of rivalry or textbooks. But he finds an exception to this irrational method in one book, Robinson Crusoe, “where all the natural needs of man are exhibited in a manner obvious to the mind of a child, and where the means of providing for these needs are successively developed with the same facility.”

The fourth book takes Emile from the age of fifteen In youth, sex interests, as basis of moral and social training. to twenty. At this period the sex interests appear and should be properly guided and trained, especially as they are the basis of social and moral relationships. Emile’s first passion calls him into relations with his species, and he must now learn to live with others. “We have formed his body, his senses, and his intelligence; it remains to give him a heart.” He is to become moral, affectionate, and religious. Here again Rousseau insists that the training is not to be accomplished by the formal method of precepts, but in a natural way by bringing the youth into contact with his fellowmen and appealing to his emotions. Emile is to visit infirmaries, hospitals, and prisons, and witness concrete examples of wretchedness in all stages, although not so frequently as to become hardened. That this training may not render him cynical or hypercritical, it should be corrected by the study of history, where one sees men simply as a spectator without feeling or passion. Further, in order to deliver Emile from vanity, so common during adolescence, he is to be exposed to flatterers, spendthrifts, and sharpers, and allowed to suffer the consequences. He may at this time also be guided in his conduct by the use of fables, for “by censuring the wrongdoer under an unknown mask, we instruct without offending him.”