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Philosophy of Education: WORKSHOP XIV - Rousseau's Emile (Bks. I-IlI) By Don Finkel

Divide up into groups of 5. Select a scribe to record the conclusions your group comes to. The final segment will consist of a class discussion of selected parts of the workshop, and the scribes viii need to draw on their notes in order to contribute. The scribes should also keep track of the time, especially in the first section about maxims, where you viii find it easy to lose time, rather than save it.

1. (15 minutes)

(a) Rousseau is the master of ‘the maxim.’ To get into the proper Rousseauian spirit, each of you individually and quickly compose 3 maxims which express in your own words what you presently feel are the fundamental ideas behind Rousseau’s educational philosophy. Just write them down. Spend no more than 5 minutes on this. (Keep your books closed.)

(b) Now, still working individually, and quickly (in 5 minutes), open your book and by perusing your underlinings, locate the 3 of Rousseau’s maxims, or sentence. that you feel best express his philosophy (best that you can find in five minutes). Write them down.

(c) (5 minutes) Each person one at a time road the maxims to your group that you composed for part (a). No discussion or comment. Now go around and read the maxims you located for part (b).

 

2. (1 hour)

Below are six pairs of quotes taken from Books I and II of Emile. Spend 10 minutes on each pair. For each, discuss as a group:

(a) what Rousseau is getting at (unpack the quotes), and

(b) some practical implications of the quotes.

i) The truly free man wants only what he can do and does what he pleases.’ (p. 84)

‘Our unhappiness consists, therefore, in the disproportion between our desires and our faculties. A being endowed with senses whose faculties equaled his desires would be an absolutely happy being.’ (p. 80)

 

ii) ‘To suffer is the first thing he ought to learn and the thing he will most need to know.’ (p. 78)

‘What, then, must be thought of that barbarous education which sacrifices the present to an uncertain future, which burdens a child with chains of every sort and begins by making him miserable from afar for I know not what pretended happiness.... Men, be humane. This is your first duty. ...Love childhood; promote its games, its pleasures, its amiable instinct. ...arrange it so that at whatever hour God summons them they do not die without having tasted life.’ (p. 79)

 

iii)’Keep the child in dependence only on things.’ (p. 85)

‘Let him see this necessity in things, never in the caprice of men. Let the bridle that restrains him be force and not authority.’ (p. 91)

 

iv) ‘The masterpiece of a good education is to make a reasonable man, and they claim they raise a child by reason! This is to begin with the end, to want to make the product the instrument.’ (p. 89)

‘With each lesson that one wants to put into their heads before its proper time, a vice is planted in the depth of their hearts.’ (p. 92)

 

v) ‘Do not give your pupil any kind of verbal lessons; he ought to receive them only from experience.’ (p. 92)

‘All the instruments have been tried save one, the only one precisely that can succeed:

well–regulated freedom.’ (p. 92)

 

vi)’Dare I expose the greatest, the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to gain time but to lose it.’ (p. 93)

‘If one ought to demand nothing of children through obedience, it follows that they can learn nothing of which they do not feel the real and present advantage in either pleasure or utility.

... Present interest–that is the great mover, the only one which leads surely and far.’

(pp. 116–117)

BREAK - 15 minutes

3. (40 minutes)

(a) On pp. 98–99, Rousseau provides a concrete teaching example in which he teaches Emile the meaning of the concept ‘property.’ Take 5 minutes to refamiliarize yourself with this example by looking over the text.

(b) (10 minutes) As a group, decide on what the general principles are which lie behind this teaching example.

(c) (10 minutes) Rousseau provides ‘another example’ on p. 100, in which he teaches Emile not to break windows. Test this example against the general principles you formulated in (b). Decide whether or not the two examples really are examples of the same set of educationa1 principles (perhaps revising your list of principles as you proceed)

(d) (15 minutes) What would be the likely critical responses (positive and/or negative) to the lesson on ‘property’ from the following psychological thinkers: (1) Piaget, (2) Erikson, (3) Rich?

4. (20 minutes)

The whole group will reconvene to discuss and share conclusions from selected parts of the workshop.