(Excerpts from paper submitted for EDFD 201: Psycho-Philosophical Foundations of Education)
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Rousseau’s Theory of Education
Rousseau's system of education was based on the goal of moving societies back into the idealized natural state. Education of children demanded their removal from the corrupting orders 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 exclude rules that fostered a do or don't orientation as children would have to learn the lessons of life through both the good and negative consequences of their own actions. Likewise, he believed that children would learn in accordance with what came naturally by them.
Rousseau’s educational theory does not concern itself with particular techniques of channeling information and concepts, but rather focused on developing the pupil’s character and moral sense so that he may exercise self-mastery and remain morally excellent even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he will live in. 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 cannot know." He stressed 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.
The hypothetical boy,
Émile from his famous book on education Émile, or On Concerning Education, is to be raised in the countryside, which, he believes, is a more natural and healthy environment than the city, under the tutelage of a tutor who will be his guide through the various learning experiences arranged by the tutor. Protected from the stilted and subtle influences of contemporary society, Émile would not develop unrealistic ambitions and feelings of jealousy or superiority with regard to other men (
amour propre). The tutor is to make sure that no harm comes to Émile through his learning experiences. In such a way, the tutor would encourage the child's physical development, shield him from social and religious institutions, prevent the formation of bad habits and prejudices, and preserve his natural inclination of self-interest (
amour de soi).
Rousseau was one of the first to propose a developmentally appropriate education. He divides childhood into three stages: (1) to the age of about 12, when children are guided by their emotions and impulses; (2) from 12 to about 16, when reason starts to develop; and (3) from the age of 16 onwards, when the child develops into an adult. He commends that at the young age, the child has to learn a manual skill such as carpentry, one which requires creativity and thought, to keep him out of trouble, and to supply as a fallback means of living in the event of a change of circumstances. Educated free from the manipulations and desires of others up to this point, Rousseau wanted Émile to remain ignorant of social duty and only to understand what was possible or impossible in the physical world. In such a way, his student would learn to obey the immutable laws of nature. For instance, if Émile were to break the window to his room, he would face the consequences of sleeping with a cold draft. If Émile were to ignore his astronomy lesson, he would endure the panic of losing his way in the woods at night. Through this kind of trial and error, the child would gradually develop reason, adapt to different situations, and become an autonomous man.
In early adolescence the emphasis would be on self-reliance. And to assist Émile's self-reliance, Rousseau exposed his student to a variety of artisan trades. Thus, the child would not crave things he could not get, nor would he engage in a vain desire to control other people. An independent and rational young man, Émile learned to accept what was available to him. It is important to note, however, that although the tutor was always behind the scenes, he constantly manipulated conditions to give Émile the illusion of freedom.
Also on the early adolescent stage, Rousseau permits the introduction of a literary text in the form of Defoe's
Robinson Crusoe as it depicted the independent activities of a man isolated in a natural setting. And during the adolescent years Rousseau sought the importance of friendship and self-sacrifice in the interest of others. Rousseau believed that it was only when individuals shift their personal needs that communities were built and remained strong. It is only in this point of adolescence that Rousseau encourages readings of literature and philosophy.
Having the power to reason by the age of fifteen, the child is then necessitated to develop his morality by recognizing society and God. Through the secure and detached means of historical study, Rousseau wanted his pupil to construct his understanding of human character. Detailed historical reports of men's spoken words and actions would consent Émile to recognize the universality of natural human passion. As a rational adolescent with confidence, he would neither envy nor disdain those in the past, but would feel compassion towards them. This was also the time to foster the growth of Émile's religious faith. Rousseau did not want him to be an anthropomorphic atheist. Nor did he want his pupil to come under the authority of a particular religious group, with its formal rituals and doctrines. Instead, Émile was to distinguish the restrictions of his senses and to have faith that God–the supreme intelligent will that made the universe and put it into motion–must in fact exist.
In the final stage of education, his pupil needed to travel throughout the capitals of Europe to learn directly how different societies functioned. Émile also needed to find an appropriate mate, Sophie, who would support him emotionally and raise his children. Rousseau relegated Sophie to the role of wife and mother. In direct contrast to Émile's isolated upbringing for developing his reason and preparing him as a citizen, Sophie's education immersed her in social and religious circles from the outset, thereby ensuring that she would not become a citizen. Despite this inequality, Rousseau believed that Émile and Sophie would comprise a harmonious and moral unit in the ideal state and produce future generations who would uphold it.
Although his ideas heralded that of modern ones in many ways, in one way they do not: his program of education was distinguished differently for males and females. Rousseau believes in the moral superiority of the patriarchal family on the antique Roman model. Sophie, the woman Émile is supposed to marry, as the representative of an ideal womanhood, is educated to be governed by her husband while Émile, as representative of the ideal man, is educated to be self-governing. For girls, Rousseau advocated an education that would enable women in effect to be a submissive companion to their husbands. A woman's education 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 opposed to the recommendation that Plato had made centuries ago that women be allowed to take on exercise and athletics. This is unlikely an accidental feature of Rousseau's educational and political philosophy; it is in fact essential to his account of the distinction between private, personal relations and the public world of political relations. The private sphere as Rousseau conceives of is dependent on the subordination of women, in order for both it and the public political sphere to function as he imagines it could and should. Rousseau expected the modern notion of the bourgeois nuclear family, with the mother at home taking responsibility for the household and for childcare and early education. In Rousseau'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.
Rousseau's critiques have blamed him for everything they do not like in what they call modern "child-centered" education. John Darling's 1994 book
Child-Centered Education and its Critics for example, argues that the history of modern educational theory is a series of footnotes to Rousseau, a development which he regards as bad. Good or bad, theorists and educators such as Rousseau's near contemporaries Pestalozzi, Mme de Genlis, and later, Maria Montessori, and John Dewey, which have directly influenced modern educational practices do have significant points in common with those of Rousseau.
Contributions/ Influences to Education
Rousseau, though he paid his respects to
Plato's philosophy, rejected it as impractical due to the decayed state of society. Rousseau also had a different theory of human development; where Plato held that people are born with skills appropriate to different castes (though he did not regard these skills as being inherited), Rousseau held that there was one developmental process common to all humans. This was an intrinsic, natural course of action, of which the chief behavioral manifestation was curiosity. This differed from
Locke's
'tabula rasa' in that it was an active process deriving from the child's nature, which drove the child to learn and adapt to its surroundings.
Rousseau stipulated in his book Emile that all children are perfect and faultless organisms, ready to learn from their surroundings so as to grow into virtuous adults, but due to the malign influence of corrupt society, they often fail to do so. Rousseau urged an educational technique which contained of removing the child from the society – for example, to a country home – and alternately qualifying him through changes to environment and determining traps and puzzles for him to solve or overcome.
Rousseau was unusual in that he recognized and addressed the potential of a problem of legalization for teaching. He advocated that adults always be truthful with children, and in particular that they never hide the fact that the basis for their authority in teaching was purely one of physical coercion: the fact that the tutor is bigger than his pupil. Once children reached the age of reason, at about 12, they would be engaged as free individuals in the ongoing process of their own.
He once said that a child ought to grow up without adult intervention and that the child must be taught to suffer from the experience of the natural outcomes of his own acts or behavior. When he experiences the consequences of his own deeds, he is supposed to advise himself. And instead of an educated man being maneuvered by societal norms, Rousseau hopes for the child to have no other guide than his own reason by the time he is educated.
He mentions that children should not acquire habits due to the constraints these practices could cause. Instead, natural education cherishes inclination, which Rousseau describes as being “conscious of our sensations we are inclined to seek or to avoid the objects which produce them.” They are simply to be our nature to which everything else must adapt. Education for Rousseau must conform to nature, and not as a means of preparing for citizenship in any particular government, much less for an occupation, but for the development of manhood per se and fitting for the duties of human life.
Rousseau's philosophy of education can be seen today in some aspects of the homeschooling movement which takes the child out of mainstream education and what the states says they need to learn and gives them more independence, freedom and space to learn at their own speed and to focus on the topics that they want to study. Rousseau presents a challenge that is still relevant to today's system of education and argues that schools are a bit like sausage making machines. They aim to take different unique children and put them through the factory of education, producing identical sausages. The Montessori method, likewise, is one of the most significant and popular approach to education whose roots may well be traced back to Rousseau.
Montessori Method: Modern Rousseau Curriculum?
The method aims to bring about, sustain and support the children’s true natural way of being by creating an environment and instituting materials designed for their self-directed learning activity. Enforcing this method involves the teacher regarding the child as having an inner natural guide for his/her own optimal self-directed development. The teacher's function of observation sometimes includes experimental interactions with children, commonly referred to as "lessons," to resolve misbehavior or to show how to use the various self-teaching materials that are provided in the environment for the children's free use.
The
Montessori Method includes a curriculum of learning that derives from the child's own natural inner guidance and conveys itself in outward behavior as the child's various distinct interests are at work. Affirming this internal plan of nature, the method allows for a range of materials to induce the child's interest through self-directed activity. In the initial plane of development (0–6), these materials are generally devised into five basic categories: practical life, sensorial, math, language, and culture. Other categories may also include geography, history, and science.
The "prepared environment" is
Maria Montessori's notion that the surrounding conditions can be designed to facilitate maximum independent learning and exploration by the child. In the quiet, coherent space of the Montessori prepared environment, children form activities of their own choice at their own pace. They experience a harmony of freedom and self-discipline in a place especially contrived to meet their developmental needs.
In the Montessori classroom, learning materials are placed invitingly on low, open shelves. Children may choose whatever materials they would like to use and may work for as long as the material holds their interest. When they are finished with each material, they return it to the shelf from which it came. As the child's search continues, the materials interrelate and shape upon each other. Later, in the elementary years, new aspects of some of the materials unfold.
In the Montessori curriculum, the term "normalization" has a specified and important meaning. "Normal" does not denote to what is believed to be "typical" or "average" or even "usual." "Normalization" does not pertain to a process of being constrained to conform. Instead, Maria Montessori applied the terms "normal" and "normalization" to depict a unique process she discovered in child development. Montessori learned from observation that when children are permitted freedom in an environment meant to their needs, they blossom. After a period of extremely sharp concentration, developing materials that fully engage their interest, children seem to be refreshed and satisfied. Through an extended and centralized work of their own choice, children grow in inner discipline and peace. She ascribed this process "normalization" and referred it as "the most important single result of our whole work."
