Man the corruptor. The three educations. opinion was right in calling Rousseau "the most un-English stranger who ever landed on our shores" (Times, 29 Aug., 1873); and the torch of his eloquence will never cause a conflagration, still less an explosion, here. His disregard for "appearances "--or rather his evident purpose of making an impression by defying "appearances" and saying just the opposite of what is expected, is simply distressing to us. But there is no denying Rousseau's genius. His was one of the original voices that go on sounding and awakening echoes in all lands. Willingly or unwillingly, at first hand or from imperfect echoes, everyone who studies education must study Rousseau. § 15. As specimens of Rousseau's teaching I will give a few characteristic passages from the Émile. "Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Creator: everything degenerates in the hands of man."* These are the first words of the "Émile," and the key-note of Rousseau's philosophy. § 16. "We are born weak, we have need of strength; we are born destitute of everything, we have need of assistance; we are born stupid, we have need of understanding. All that we have not at our birth, and which we require when grown up, is bestowed on us by education. This education we receive from nature, from men, or from things. The internal development of our organs and faculties is the education of nature: the use we are taught to make of that development is the education given us by men; and in the acquisitions made by our own experience on the objects that surround us, consists our education * "Tout est bien, sortant des mains de l'Auteur des choses; tout dégénère entre les mains de l'homme." The aim, living thoroughly. from things." "* "Since the concurrence of these three kinds of education is necessary to their perfection, it is by that one which is entirely independent of us, we must regulate the two others."† § 17. Now "to live is not merely to breathe; it is to act, it is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, and of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of our existence. The man who has lived most, is not he who has counted the greatest number of years, but he who has most thoroughly felt life.”‡ 18. The aim of education, then, must be complete living. But ordinary education, instead of seeking to develop the life of the child, sacrifices childhood to the acquirement of knowledge, or rather the semblance of knowledge, which it is thought will prove useful to the youth or the man. "Nous naissons faibles, nous avons besoin de forces; nous naissons dépourvus de tout, nous avons besoin d'assistance; nous naissons stupides, nous avons besoin de jugement. Tout ce que nous n'avons pas à notre naissance, et dont nous avons besoin étant grands, nous est donné par l'éducation. Cette éducation nous vient ou de la nature, ou des hommes, ou des choses. Le développement interne de nos facultés et de nos organes est l'éducation de la nature; l'usage qu'on nous apprend à faire de ce développement est l'éducation des hommes ; et l'acquis de notre propre expérience sur les objets qui nous affectent est l'éducation des choses." Ém. j., 6. + "Puisque le concours des trois éducations est nécessaire à leur per. fection, c'est sur celle à laquelle nous ne pouvous rien qu'il faut diriger les deux autres." Ém. j., 7. "Vivre ce n'est pas respirer, c'est agir; c'est faire usage de nos organes, de nos sens, de nos facultés, de toutes les parties de nous-mêmes qui nous donnent le sentiment de notre existence. L'homme qui a le plus vécu n'est pas celui qui a compté le plus d'années, mais celui qui a le plus senti la vie.” Em. j., 13. Children not small men. Rousseau's great merit lies in his having exposed this fundamental error. He says, very truly, "We do not under. stand childhood, and pursuing false ideas of it our every tep takes us further astray. The wisest among us fix upon what it concerns men to know without ever considering what children are capable of learning. They always expect to find the man in the child without thinking of what the child is before it is a man. And this is the study to which I have especially devoted myself, in order that should my entire method be false and visionary, my observations might always turn to account. I may not have seen aright what ought to be done: but I believe I have seen aright the subject on which we have to act. Begin then by studying your pupils better, for most certainly you do not understand them."* "Nature wills that children should be children before they are men. If we seek to pervert this order we shall produce forward fruits without ripeness or flavour, and tho' not ripe, soon rotten: we shall have young savans and old children. Childhood has ways of seeing, thinking, feeling peculiar to itself; nothing is more absurd. than to wish to substitute ours in their place."+ * "We "On ne connaît point l'enfance : sur les fausses idées qu'on en a, plus on va, plus on s'égare. Les plus sages s'attachent à ce qu'il importe aux hommes de savoir, sans considérer ce que les enfants sont en état d'apprendre. Ils cherchent toujours l'homme dans l'enfant, sans penser à ca qu'il est avant que d'être homme. Voilà l'étude à laquelle je me suis le plus appliqué, afin que, quand toute ma méthode serait chimérique et fausse, on pût toujours profiter de mes observations. Je puis avoir très-mal vu ce qu'il faut faire; mais je crois avoir bien vu le sujet sur lequel on doit opérer. Commencez donc par mieux étudier vos élèves ; car très-assurément vous ne les connaissez point." "La nature veut que les enfants soient enfants avant que d'être hommes. Si nous voulons pervertir cet ordre, nous produirons des fruits Schoolmasters' contempt for childhood. never know how to put ourselves in the place of children; we do not enter into their ideas, we attribute to them our own; and following always our own train of thought, even with syllogisms we manage to fill their heads with nothing "I wish some discreet but extravagance and error."* person would give us a treatise on the art of observing children—an art which would be of immense value to us, but of which fathers and schoolmasters have not as yet learnt the very first rudiments."+ $ 19. In these passages, Rousseau strikes the key-note of true education. The first thing necessary for us is to see aright the subject on which we have to act. Unfortunately, however, this subject has often been the subject most neglected in the schoolrooin. Children have been treated as if they were made for their school books, not their school books for them. As education has been thought of as learning, childhood has been treated as unimportant, a necessary stage in existence no doubt, but far more troublesome and hardly more interesting than the state of the précoces qui n'auront ni maturité ni saveur, et ne tarderont pas à se corrompre nous aurons de jeunes docteurs et de vieux enfants. L'enfance a des manières de voir, de penser, de sentir, qui lui sont propres ; rien n'est moins sensé que d'y vouloir substituer les nôtres." Em. ij., 75; also in N. H., p. 478. * "Nous ne savons jamais nous mettre à la place des enfants; nous n'entrons pas dans leurs idées, nous leur prêtons les nôtres; et, suivant toujours nos propres raisonnements, avec des chaînes de vérités nous n'entassons qu'extravagances et qu'erreurs dans leur tête." Em iij., 185. "Je voudrais qu'un homme judicieux nous donnât un traité de l'art d'observer les enfants. Cet art serait très-important à connaître : les pères et les maîtres n'en ont pas encore les éléments." Em. iij., 224. Schoolroom rubbish. chrysalis. If some forms of words, tables, declensions, county towns, and the like can be drummed into children, this is, say educators of the old school, a clear gain. For the rest nothing can be done with them except teaching them to read, write, and say the multiplication table. But since the publication of the Émile, there has been in the world a very different view of education. According to this view, the importance of childhood is not to be measured by the amount of our knowledge, or even the number of our words, we can force it to remember. According to this view, in dealing with children we must not think of our knowledge or of our notions at all. We must think not of our own minds, but of the minds of the little ones. * § 20. The absurd results in which the opposite course has ended, Rousseau exposes with great severity. "All the studies demanded from the poor unfortunates lead to such things as are entirely beyond the range of their ideas, so you may judge what amount of attention they can give to them. Schoolmasters who make a great display of the instruction they give their pupils are paid to differ from me; but we see from what they do that they are entirely of my opinion. For what do they really teach? Words, words, for ever words. Among the various knowledges which they boast of giving, they are careful not to include such as would be of use; because these would involve a knowledge of things, and there they would be sure to fail; but they choose subjects that seem to be known when the terms are known * Rousseau says: "Full of what is going on in your own head, you do not see the effect you produce in their head: Pleins de ce qui se passe dans votre tête vous ne voyez pas l'effet que vous prorluisez dans la leur." (Em. lib. ij., 83.) |