Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. . .we are born weak,
we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born
stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which
we need when we are grown is given us by education.1
Natural Education for Natural Man
Rousseau's system of education was based on the goal of moving societies
back into the idealized natural state. Education of children involved their
removal from the corrupting influences of society as it had become.
In this state of separation children would,in his view, revert to the state of perfect freedom.
Child-rearing and education would exclude rules that fostered a do or don't orientation.
Children would learn the lessons of life through both the good and negative consequences of their actions. Children, he believed would learn
in accordance with what came naturally by them.
Books had no place in Rousseau's system of education since he believed that
"books only teach us to talk about what we do not and can not know."
In his educational program, education would be based on stages of a child's development.
At each stage, the child would be guided by a tutor rather than by using
a traditional reading and writing approach. Rousseau emphasized the fact that
boys in particular were to be taught to be observant of the world around them,
and to learn the consequences of freedom and choices.
In early adolescence the emphasis would be on self-reliance. Here Rousseau permits the introduction of a literary text in the form of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.
During the adolescent years Rousseau thought it important to emphasize
friendship and self-sacrifice in the interest of others. Rousseau believed that it was
only when individuals sublimation their personal needs that communities were built and remained
strong. It is only in the period of adolescence that Rousseau recommends readings of literature and philosophy.
At the end of his program Rousseau believed that young adults would be able to ascertain the differences between
corruption and human societies in their ideal state.
For all his emphasis on equality,however, Rousseau was, nevertheless entrenched in the
gender imbalance of his age. His program of education was markedly different for males and females.
For girls, Rousseau recommended an education that would enable women in
effect to be a supportive companions for their husbands. A woman's education he stated
was meant to help her learn how to think, make judgments, develop her mind as well as to
keep her appearance and run a household. He was very much against the recommendation that Plato had made centuries ago that women be permitted
to engage in exercise and athletics. In Roussea's ideal, natural and egalitarian society (as in the case of "corrupt" societies) the differentiated education of women had yet to
be seen as a contradiction of Rousseau's own polemic on human equality.
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1Rousseau, Emile (38).
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