Emile: On Education

Rousseau laments that man takes the good things of God’s earth and mutilates them: “he loves all that is deformed and monstrous; he will have nothing as nature made it” (2). People thus need to be taught how to live with others, yet social conditioning takes the good nature out of people, like a sapling crushed on a highway: Mothers, then, must “remove this young tree from the highway and shield it from the crushing force of social conventions” via education (2). Of the parents, mothers are the better educators, for “the right ordering of the family depends more upon her, and she is usually fonder of her children” (2), while fathers tend to be too harsh and ambitious.

Rousseau identifies a conflict between natural learning and social instruction. Education “comes to us from nature, from men, or from things” (2); of the three, parents have only limited control over the teachings of men. When it comes to nature, humans first act in their own self-interest and learn instinctively to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Later, they learn by socialized habits which interfere with the earlier natural lessons.

Good educational institutions, however, can resolve the conflict and transform a man into an avid participant in society, who sees himself “as a part of the whole, and is only conscious of the common life” (3). The ancients thought little of themselves and instead identified with their nation and its welfare; a modern person, on the other hand, is caught between private desires and public duties. The best path, then, is to teach a boy to be a man: “Before his parents chose a calling for him nature called him to be a man. Life is the trade I would teach him” (4).

A man must be prepared to weather the unpredictable conditions of life: Train him “to bear the buffets of fortune, to brave wealth and poverty, to live at need among the snows of Iceland or on the scorching rocks of Malta” (5). Instructing a child primarily to be safe may cause him not to thrive but merely exist, and over-emphasis on tradition and custom hogties the young. Parents literally tie down their infants in swaddling, and the child cannot learn to move: “In our fear lest the body should become deformed by free movement, we hasten to deform it by putting it in a press” (5). Instead of tall, healthy people, swaddling produces weak, misshapen children.

Rousseau also addresses the common practice of hiring a nurse to suckle a newborn—a custom he condemns. When the nurse’s job is done and she is sent away, “[t]he mother expects to take her place” in the child’s affections, but “she is making an ungrateful foster-child, not an affectionate son” (6). If, on the other hand, mothers return to nursing their offspring, “then will be a reform in morals; natural feeling will revive in every heart; there will be no lack of citizens for the state; this first step by itself will restore mutual affection” (6). Mother, child, and father will bond more closely, and family life will once again be happy.

Some mothers overprotect their children, which leaves them ignorant of the travails of adulthood. Worse, are parents who first serve their children—obediently heeding infant cries—and then force older children to simply obey: “Thus [the child’s] earliest ideas are those of the tyrant or the slave” (8). After several years, the child has learned many wrong things, a “victim of his own caprices or theirs” (8). Then he is sent to a tutor, who “teaches him everything except self-knowledge and self-control, the arts of life and happiness” (8). A father also has a duty to educate his children, and he neglects it when he turns those duties over to a tutor. Later in this section, Rousseau adds the warning that “[t]he child’s first tears are prayers, beware lest they become commands; he begins by asking for aid, he ends by demanding service” (17). If a child learns that it can get what it wants by commanding it, the child learns to be not a good person but a capricious tyrant.

Rousseau next imagines a wise young tutor who educates an ordinary child, Emile. Emile’s tutor should be hired when the child is born and be prepared to tutor him until he is an adult. Emile is an orphan, so his tutor assumes the duties of a parent as well. The pair must not be separated “except by mutual consent” (10) and should expect to remain friends into adulthood. Since Rousseau disdains medicine as “worse than useless” (11), and offers little hope for those born with congenital ailments, he delights that Emile is “strong, well-made, healthy” (10).

Returning to his general discussion of infancy, Rousseau prescribes the proper wet nurse: She should be of good character and have recently become mother herself; she should eat plenty of vegetables and not so much meat to produce more and better milk (12); she and the child should get plenty of fresh country air, avoiding disease-ridden urban centers (13). The infant should be bathed, and the habit inculcated for life, to promote cleanliness and keep muscles supple. Older children should be trained to bathe in waters from cold to hot, strengthening them to “bear all the variations of temperature in water” (14). Instead of restrictive swaddling, babies should be dressed comfortably. Thereafter, infants should be allowed to crawl about the room to explore.

Children begin to learn from the moment they are born, affirms Rousseau: “Experience precedes instruction” (15). More specifically, a child must be free to explore his surroundings to learn how things feel and work. As such, Rousseau eschews habits , which can become limitations: “The only habit the child should be allowed to contract is that of having no habits […] let him not want to eat, sleep, or do anything at fixed hours” (15). So that the child becomes capable and fearless, it should be accustomed “to see fresh things, ugly, repulsive, and strange beasts, but little by little, and far off till he is used to them, and till having seen others handle them he handles them himself” (15).

To teach language, Rousseau advises keeping one’s words simple and not rushing the child. Instead of talking randomly to an infant, “I would have the first words he hears few in number, distinctly and often repeated, while the words themselves should be related to things which can first be shown to the child” (19). Moreover, as children learn to speak, it’s wise not to over-correct them because they’ll learn in time. Outdoors at play, youngsters learn quickly to speak clearly, while the coddled indoor child becomes understandable only to its nurse.