Emile: On Education

Rousseau continues his argument that a child should be given as much free range as possible so he can learn quickly. He maintains that children will cry less as they begin talking because they’ll know how to better communicate their feelings. If the caregiver reacts calmly to cries, without overreacting, this teaches the child that the daily bumps and bruises of life are not important, and “by bearing slight ills without fear we gradually learn to bear greater” (22). Though people become unhappy when their desires greatly exceed their ability to achieve them, the happiest are those who have the freedom to provide for their needs and are satisfied by this. Parents who grasp for too much will often make their children work for things a child doesn’t need.

People also depend on natural resources and on society. Attaining resources “does no injury to liberty,” while acquiring benefits from society “gives rise to every kind of vice” (26) and the rule over men by individuals. The cure is supplanting the law with the individual’s “law,” which would free people to focus once again on fulfilling natural needs. Therefore, instead of forcing a child to behave, and thus accustoming him to tyranny, let him learn the lessons of the natural world. “Supply the strength he lacks just so far as is required for freedom, not for power” (26), so that he learns to value his own ability to get what he needs.

Rousseau also suggests a distinction between natural and artificial needs. Overindulgence, which teaches the child to be haughty, must be avoided, for a spoiled child “thinks himself the master of the universe; he considers all men as his slaves” (27).

Though some try reasoning with children before they are old enough to have achieved “the age of reason” (28), preaching ethics to a five-year-old must be avoided “lest the child at an early age should attach wrong ideas to them, ideas which you cannot or will not destroy when he is older” (28). Teaching children how to reason is to “begin at the wrong end, you make the end the means” (28). By forcing children to submit to duties they do not understand, they’re taught vices like deceit, falsehood, and lying, all of which are then used to “gain rewards or escape punishment” (29). Instead, if the child must not do certain things, simply forbid them without explanation. Reasoned discussion will come in later years; meanwhile, because the child is entirely “unmoral in his actions, he can do nothing morally wrong, and he deserves neither punishment nor reproof” (29) on that account. Rather than trying to shape the child’s mind, let it grow into its own shape. The caregiver can thus discover the course best suited to the child’s later training.

Rousseau notes that following his prescription is easier to do in a small village than in a large, corrupt town. The tutor’s “reputation, his words, his example, will have a weight they would never have in the town” (31), making it easier for him to acquire the support from others that he needs to help teach the pupil. Eventually, the child will witness bad behavior in others. If someone flies into a rage, explain calmly that “This poor man is ill, he is in a fever” (32), so that the child comes to see misbehavior as illness.

Children can and should also learn about ownership. When a child first learns to garden, his tutor points to the beans that sprout and says, “Those belong to you” (33) because of his efforts. If a planting is in the wrong place and a neighbor digs it back up, a deal can be struck as to which plots can be used by the child. The child thus learns how property is allotted and how disagreements are resolved.

Parents should not rush their children’s moral and mental growth. The only moral lesson a young child can understand is “Never hurt anybody” (36), Rousseau declares. So if a child tends to break things, let him suffer from their lack; if he breaks his room’s windows, let the wind blow in for a time. Children will make promises to avoid punishment or receive a reward. A child isn’t being malicious: “he does not know what he is doing when he makes his promise” (35). A lie shouldn’t be punished, but it should have consequences, as with the broken window that lets in the cold air.

It’s foolish to try to teach young children foreign languages, geography, or history: They can parrot the words, but they don’t understand the meanings. Even the simplest of the popular fables of La Fontaine contain words with multiple meanings that children won’t understand. For instance: The crow holds some cheese in its beak, and the fox flatters the crow, asking it to sing; the crow obliges, opening its beak to sing, and the cheese falls out, which the fox steals. Children learn not the moral of this story but how to be the fox. Instead, let the child discover an interest or need for knowledge; then “you will not be able to keep him from it” (43).

Rousseau likens the scholarly child of his time to a peasant: Each “acts only at the word of command” (44). Like the peasant, the typical student depends on the master and therefore has no need to think for himself or learn. “Why should he learn the signs of rain? He knows you watch the clouds for him” (44).

Rousseau’s student, on the other hand, “has been trained from the outset to be as self-reliant as possible […] he reasons about everything that concerns himself” (45). His teacher is nature “and he learns all the quicker because he is not aware that he has any lesson to learn. So mind and body work together” (45). A child thus raised by nature will not behave badly, for “[c]hildren’s caprices are never the work of nature, but of bad discipline” (46). He also learns much from other children: “The lessons the scholars learn from one another in the playground are worth a hundredfold more than what they learn in the class-room” (48). Why, asks Rousseau, have the child busy himself with simple things? The essentials of knowledge—that is, the tools for acquiring knowledge—should come first. (48).

Practice with his senses will also teach the child how much he can carry of different materials, how far away are things that appear the same size to the eye, and how to use all his senses in the dark of night, topics that help Rousseau debunk his contemporary’s philosophical view of the dark. People often fear the dark, but exposure to it, through nighttime games and contests, will acclimate the pupil, and his fears will subside.

Some high-born children think they’re too good to exercise. In one such case, a tutor takes the child for walks, bringing small cakes which are offered as prizes in footraces. Watching the other kids win cakes, the child decides to train and soon wins cakes for himself. “It is only by long experience that we learn to make the best of ourselves, and this experience is the real object of study” (60). Though young children are unable to benefit from scholarly lessons, they do well in drawing, music and games and shouldn’t be discouraged” (61).

Children’s food should be simple—bread, milk, fruits, vegetables—as fancy foods will make them fussy as adults. Too much meat will make them cruel. In these simple ways, the child will become independent and practical. “His ideas are few but precise, he knows nothing by rote but much by experience” (66). When he speaks, he takes “neither the crawling, servile submission of the slave, nor the imperious tone of the master, it is a modest confidence in mankind” (67).