Emile, or, On education
Alan Bloom's new translation of Emile, Rousseau's masterpiece on the education and training of the young, is the first in more than seventy years. In it, Bloom, whose magnificent translation of Plato's Republichas been universally hailed as a virtual rediscovery of that timeless text, again brings together the translator's gift for journeying between two languages and cultures and the philosopher's perception of the true meaning and significance of the issues being examined in the work. The result is a clear, readable, and highly engrossing text that at the same time offers a wholly new sense of the importance and relevance of Rousseau's thought to us.In addition to his translation, Bloom provides a brilliant introduction that relates the structure and themes of the book to the vital preoccupation's of our own age, particularly in the field of education, but also more generally to the current concerns about the limits and possibilities of human nature. Thus in this translation Emile,long a classic in the history of Western thought and educational theory, becomes something more: a prescription, fresh and dazzling, for the bringing up of autonomous, responsible--that is, truly democratic--human beings.
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What Hacker News says
- Destroying a child's social life in the name of bringing them up to a standard of state defined literacy is worse than the illiteracy. Consider Rousseau's, "Emile; or On Education." I was called a, "failing student" in school because I was sneaking off to the library to read Kant and Hegel as a teenager. I once got suspended for asking my math teacher about Godel's Completeness Theorems because it was, "smart alec'y"
Please apply the golden rule to your assertions and think of unintended consequences.
- In training academic Pedagogist here: It may be worthwhile to take a two or day three reading of Rousseau's classic, "Emile; or On Education." It gives tremendous insight into how it is that adults can have positive relationships with the children that they might be governing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile%2C_or_On_Education
Rousseau recommends: Night games, obstacle courses, Natural Method (Parkour), but in short the idea is to let the child be self-directing in their activities. In Rousseau's words, "to gain time by losing it." ie. don't try to direct their activities. Do what is necessary and dutiful in your own regard and teach through example and necessity; never through imposition unless absolutely necessary.
- Not the OP, and it's a rather old book, relatively speaking, but you might also give Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile, or On Education a chance.
It's got nothing pedagogically scientific in it, at least compared to today's standards, but were I to have a kid I'd base my trying to teach him about things in life on what this book has taught me (it also talks about lots of other interesting things, not only pedagogy). Reading it I realized that my dad was at certain points following this book almost by the letter (I've never asked him if he had read it, though), and on the book's wikipedia page there's mention of the Montessori method being some sort of follow-up to what Rousseau was thinking in terms of educating children.
- It is an over simplification but Rousseau does paint this picture of humanity's natural goodness corrupted by society, or what the author calls circumstance. This idea is a cornerstone of the Discourse on Inequality and Émile.
Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men (1755) - “Nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive state… he is restrained by natural pity from doing harm to others.”
Émile, or On Education (1762) - “Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.”
Confessions (1782–89) - “I have displayed myself as I was, vile and despicable when I was so, good, generous, sublime when I was so; I have unveiled my interior being.”
For Rousseau, humans possess innate moral sentiment, society corrupts through things like comparison, and the good life is maintained by being true to one's natural self.
I also think the focus of this little essay is about contrasting two modern identities, the expressive self and the performative and productive self, and isn't steeped in moral psychology. Bringing Aristotle into this is wholly anachronistic and misses the point.
- There's a Romantic (Rousseau was a major perpetrator) view of education that seems to be based mostly on just whistful thinking and novels.
But I think there is a grain of truth to it.
Emile, or On Education (by Rousseau) proposes an idealistic goal in which a boy is educated by a tutor (a class size of) without being 'denatured' (losing the innocence and good moral quantities that the romantics think small children naturally possess). I'm not sure how realistic this is - Rousseau had five children but he dumped them all in orphanages as soon as they were born, but I think it rings partly true as something that works if you have sufficient inputs. If you have one really good tutor / parent you can raise a child to really understand things without cold but efficient methods like drills.
Imagine you want to teach times tables without using times tables. You can keep track of what the child knows, and work out fun activities that lets them figure these out themselves, and guide them when they have a misunderstanding. But it's going to be labor intensive (for both the child and the tutor) and can't scale. Maybe computer teaching systems will turn drill work into a more fun system for teaching these fundamentals, since it can personalise at scale, but I suspect the opponents of drill will the complain about how soulless machines are pumping lifeless low-level skills into the heads of children who should instead be learning more high-level things in a more humane way. After all they didn't need a computer to teach them how to read, they just picked it up after their parents read with them every night for half a decade.
- Some of the points about children learning naturally by themselves remind me somewhat of Rousseau's "Emile, or On Education" However, I don't know if anyone had been able to actually pull this off in real life. I think one downside could be for things that you have to learn to function well in society but have no natural interest in. If you are left alone to learn for yourself, then you'll learn about things you want to learn.
