CHAPTER XXXVI
MODERN EDUCATORS
Literature.—Davidson, Rousseau; Graham, Rousseau; Morley, Life of Rousseau; Rousseau, Émile; Munroe, Educational Ideal; Vogel, Geschichte der Pädagogik; Quick, Educational Reformers; Weir, The Key to Rousseau's Émile (article in Educational Review, Vol. XVI, p. 61); Compayré, History of Pedagogy.
ROUSSEAU (1712-1778)
Jean Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva, Switzerland. His father was a watchmaker, and upon him devolved the education of the boy, as the mother died in childbirth. Rousseau's father was a man of dissipated habits, careless of responsibility, and of very violent temper. He interested himself in his son far enough to teach him to read, and supplied him with the worthless novels which he himself was fond of reading. This unwise course doubtless had much to do in shaping the character of the boy. Probably it was the evil effects of this early literature that led Rousseau later in life to oppose teaching young children to read. Quick says, "Rousseau professed a hatred of books, which he said kept the student so long engaged upon the thoughts of other people as to have no time to make a store of his own."
Abandoned by his father at the age of ten, he was taken into the family of his uncle, who apprenticed him, first to a notary, and afterward to an engraver. At the age of sixteen he ran away, and began a life of vagabondage. While yet a young man, he became involved in intrigues, which, according to his own account in his "Confessions," were no credit to him. Madame de Warens, a young widow with whom he lived for some years, sent him to school at St. Lazare, where he studied the classics and music; but he soon lapsed again into vagabondage. He picked up a little music, and attempted to give lessons in it, but with small success. He also took a position as private tutor, but he had no talent for teaching. Later in life he married Thérèse le Vasseur, a woman from the common ranks of life. She bore him five children, all of whom he committed to foundling hospitals without means of identification. He did this because he was not willing that his own comfort or plans should be disturbed by the presence of children. Rousseau had reason to regret this heartless and unnatural course when, in later years, he sought in vain to find some trace of his children. Compayré says, "If he loved to observe children, he observed, alas, only the children of others. There is nothing sadder than that page of the 'Confessions,' in which he relates how he often placed himself at the window to observe the dismission of a school, in order to listen to the conversations of children as a furtive and unseen observer!"[122]
In 1749 Rousseau successfully competed for a prize offered by the Academy of Dijon on the subject, "Has the restoration of the sciences contributed to purify or to corrupt manners?" Rousseau entered this contest quite accidentally. He saw the notice of the contest in a newspaper, and decided at once to compete. Of this event he says, "If ever anything resembled a sudden inspiration, it was the movement which began in me as I read this. All at once I felt myself dazzled by a thousand sparkling lights; crowds of vivid ideas thronged into my mind with a force and confusion which threw me into unspeakable agitation; I felt my head whirling in a giddiness like that of intoxication. A violent palpitation oppressed me; unable to walk for difficulty of breathing, I sank under one of the trees of the avenue, and passed half an hour there in such a condition of excitement that when I rose I saw that the front of my waistcoat was all wet with tears, though I was wholly unconscious of shedding them. Ah, if I could have written the quarter of what I saw and felt under that tree, with what clearness should I have brought out all the contradictions of our social system; with what simplicity should I have demonstrated that man is good naturally, and that by institution only is he made bad."