emile or on education by jean jacques rousseau

Nature plays a central role in Rousseau’s utopia. Rousseau found models for his educational agenda in Greek mythology: the centaur Chiron teaches the young Achilles. Although they were born free, they had all sorts of unnatural constraints imposed on them by society until they were no longer in touch with themselves. They cared too much about what others thought of them and bent over backwards to meet certain expectations. He wrote: ‘Everything is good when it leaves the hands of the Creator everything degenerates in the hands of man.’ People were jealous and vain. Society, on the other hand, he considered to be problematic. He believed that humans, in their natural state, were free and good from birth. Rousseau was convinced that this method of educating children didn’t raise them to be truly useful people. There were lots of rules and regulations and if they broke one, they were punished. They had to sit still for hours at a time while their private tutor taught them how to read, write and do sums. They wore pretty clothes and learned the rules of etiquette, as well as how to curtsey politely, play piano and speak foreign languages. There, children were treated like little adults. He lived in Geneva first and then later in Paris for a long time. Jean-Jacques Rousseau grew up in a middle-class family, in 18th-century Europe. Artikeltext: Children Treated Like Little Adults Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck, Girl in a Blue Dress, 1641. Children treated like little adults: this is exactly what Rousseau didn’t want.

Emile or on education by jean jacques rousseau