Emile: On Education

Where most French tutors of Rousseau’s time treat children as miniature adults with grown-up minds that simply need scholarly information poured into them, Rousseau treats a child as an individual with an evolving mind whose need for knowledge changes as it grows. More than anything, children need to learn from nature. Rousseau suggests that educators not curtail this natural learning: “do not check these movements which teach him invaluable lessons” (16). What children require, then, declares Rousseau, is not the tedium of arcane books but the adventure of the great outdoors.

Young children have no idea what adults are talking about when they try to inculcate moral reasoning into them. They barely understand death, much less its significance in the life of Jesus; teaching them church philosophy will bewilder them. Early on, Rousseau suggests educators “Teach him to live rather than to avoid death” (7). Kids learn much more about good, moral behavior from interacting with their peers on the playground than worrying about religious morality.

Science, too, should be taught in stages and in concert with features of the outside world. At the right moment in the pupil’s development, the tutor will pose questions about, for instance, the position of the sun in the sky and how to use this information to calculate the correct hour as well as one’s location on the ground.