Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, 'Echinoderma' to 'Edward, prince of Wales' / Volume 8, Slice 10 - Various

Rousseauism, however, was not merely a transitory revolt against a conventionality of life that had become unbearable; it was emphatically the voicing of a view of life and of education which has profoundly influenced Europe Rousseauism. ever since. In that Rousseau (1712-1778) attempted to look at life as a whole he was on truer ground than were the intellectualists of the “Enlightenment”; but in that he found the essence of life in the gratification of the desires and impulses of the moment, he enunciated a doctrine which banished high principle and strenuous effort from life and consequently from education. In the Émile is presented a purely fantastic scheme of education based on a psychology of development so crude as to be absolutely false, and producing a young man utterly unable to guide his own life or to control his emotions and impulses. Rousseauism is, indeed, in its essence the application to education of the doctrines of naturalism—the philosophy which regards human life as a mere continuation of physical process, and consequently as determined wholly by environment. So Rousseau would abolish all moral training and leave the child to the reactions of the physical world upon his actions.

Against this position the educational teaching of Kant (1724-1804), influenced though he was by the Émile, is essentially a protest. The most necessary element in education, Kant. according to Kant, is constraint, which by the formation of habit prepares the young to receive as principles of conduct the laws at first imposed upon them from without. And the supreme guide of life is the law of duty which is always more or less opposed to the promptings of inclination. Kant exaggerates the dualism: Rousseau would abolish it by ignoring the more important of the two antitheses.

The French Revolution—the natural outcome of the teachings of Voltaire and of Rousseau—was the second stage in the movement of which the Reformation was the first. It was essentially the assertion of the natural rights of Educational outcome of the Revolution. man, and, as a logical sequence, of the right of every child to be properly trained for life. The reaction due to the excesses of the revolutionists no doubt delayed the acknowledgment for a time, but its gradual recognition is emphatically the characteristic mark of the educational history of the 19th century.

Preached and practised by Pestalozzi (1746-1827) in Switzerland, the general education of the poor was first made a reality by Prussia after the crushing defeat of Jena. In France and England it remained for nearly three-quarters State education. of the century the work of the Church and other voluntary agencies, though aided by the state. Finally a state system of schools has been more or less fully set up in every state of western Europe and in America, and subjected to more or less state regulation and control. Equally marked has been the growing care for the scholastic education of girls as well as boys, though only in America are the two regarded as practically identical in form and content.

Thus the 19th century saw the final working out of the idea that the state should be substituted for the Church as the official agent of education, an idea which had its roots in the Renaissance conception of the right of man to direct his life apart from theological determinations. The more direct outcome of the same idea is apparent in the absolute liberty with which the presuppositions of knowledge are questioned, and the maxim of Descartes—to prove everything by the reason and to accept nothing which fails to stand the test—is acted upon. No greater contrast is possible than that between the medieval student and the modern searcher after truth.

The influence of the same spirit has wrought an equally momentous change in the methods of instruction. The impetus given by the exaggerated doctrine of Rousseau to the view that the nature of the child should determine Methods of instruction. the means of education, led to more thorough-going attempts than had hitherto been made to base educational method on a knowledge of child psychology. Pestalozzi and Froebel (1782-1852), by their insistence on the need of educating a child through his own activity, and by their widespread influence, made the new view of method an actuality. The influence of Rousseau has, thus, passed into modern educational practice in a form that, in its essence, is true, though in practice it has shown itself apt to run into the same excess of emphasis on impulse and feeling which vitiated the teaching of Rousseau himself. The influence of Herbart (1776-1841) has tended to counteract this. The essence of Herbartianism is that mental life consists of presentations, or reactions of the mind on the environment, and that will springs from the circle of thought thus developed. The emphasis is therefore placed on intellect and instruction while in Froebelianism it is placed on spontaneous activity and on the arrangement of the environment. Each exaggerates the function of the one factor in concrete experience which it makes the centre of interest, and each is tinged with the individualistic conception of life which characterized the 18th and early 19th century.

The most marked change in the outward aspect of education has been the modification of the curriculum of school and university by the introduction of various branches of natural science. Conjointly with this has been much increase Curriculum of instruction. of specialization, and that not only in the university but in the school. There is no longer a universally recognized circle of knowledge constituting a liberal education preparatory to specialist studies, as there was in the middle ages. Nor is there general agreement as to what such educational institutions as schools and universities should attempt to do, or even as to the end that should be sought by education as a whole. Nor can agreement on such points be expected while men differ widely as to the meaning and purpose of life. The work of the organization of the material means of education has largely been accomplished by the civilized world: that of determining the true theory and practice of the educative process itself is still incomplete. To that, both discussion of the philosophy of life and of the relative values in life, of various kinds of experience and experiment in the light of the conclusions reached, are needed. The problem will never be absolutely solved, for that would imply an absolutely best education irrespective of conditions, but its practical solution will be reached when a true adjustment is made between the process of education and the life for which that education is intended to be a preparation.

(J. Wn.)