Thoughts on Emile

I read part of Jean Jacques Rousseau's 'Emile' this week. If you haven't heard of it, the peice is his statement on education, which, you might imagine, involve quite a bit of freedom on the part of the child. Today teachers are required to teach in certain ways that comply with state mandates and learning objectives. Methods are approved by the What Works Clearinghouse as “proven educational methods” that comply with No Child Left Behind’s standards. Teachers in failing schools get very little leeway in how they can teach and use classroom time. The ideas Rousseau shares with us throughout Emile would certainly not be tolerated by Rod Paige and the four pillars of NCLB. Here are some quotes and my thoughts.

“The child is the real master of his education.” How true this could be, but isn’t. A child is naturally curious and inquisitive, and learns so much in his or her first few years in the home. While at school, however, talking heads are put in place who recite information and require recitations. Feeding ‘knowledge’ and demanding regurgitation, all in hopes of producing lasting images in the child’s mind through repetition.

“If your head guides his hands, his own mind will be useless.” To Rousseau teaching is more than just instructing. It’s more than demonstrating an equation on the board and taking a quiz. The child must be the master of his own education. If each individual is indeed an individual, then the ways of learning and understanding will be different for each person. Mimicry is a cheap trick, and imitation stunts individualism. Children must learn how to do things themselves.

“Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself.” The reason we have teachers is to guide, direct, and instruct. Teachers can enhance a child’s ability to critically think without causing the child to forsake reason. The teacher, therefore, must prompt inquisition, and ask questions that will make the child engage his mind to action

“To substitute books for (feet, hands and eyes) does not teach us to reason, it teaches us to use the reason of others rather than our own; it teaches us to believe much and know little.” This, I find, is generally true. It surprised me. At first thought, this sounded blasphemous. I read over two hundred pages of textbooks every week for courses I’m taking this semester, and it helps me understand the lectures more, but what helps me really learn about the subjects? Writing assignments that require my mind to expand on topics and analyze issues. If I did not research what I read about I would not really be learning; I would be filling dark spaces of the mind with a few things that I read and underline. Now, for those of you who may be fuming like Bradbury over there, Rousseau did suggest that he would have Emile read one book. Which? Robinson Crusoe. A book such as this would expand a child's mind, and I argue that there are many today which do this, that Rousseau would simply delight in sharing with Emile. The works teaching philosophy and the sciences, I believe are his main worries.

“The child who reads ceases to think.” Reading cannot be the crutch of our learning experience. All things read in books must have a supplementary activity to lead to learning. In my quantitative political methodology course last semester, each of our weekly assignments included a case study problem that we were not told how to solve. We read about the tools, Professor Goodliffe showed us examples of how the tools work, then we were supposed to critically think through the problem at hand. It took a long time to work through these problems, but the activity helped me develop critical analytical skills. Sure, he could have taught those in class, and shown us the exact procedure, but doing it myself provided a lasting experience. Of course, I many times failed, and did not go back to correct what I did because the next assignment consumed me as soon as I would complete the previous, so I did not learn successful practices as much as I would have liked, but that’s another story. This story is about the coming to pass of this idea of Rousseau: “The child must work like a peasant and think like a philosopher, if he is not to be as idle as a savage.”

“A child can read the master’s thoughts before the master reads the child’s feelings.” I conclude on this quote, which refers back to the beginning of my thoughts. Teachers go in there with an agenda to teach a skill--whether it be writing, mathematical or scientific--and present the information in such a way that the child can easily follow the teacher’s logic. The teachers try to shield the difficulty as much as possible, and the children catch on and learn and logically connect the dots to where the teacher is going and what the teacher wants. On the other hand, children are a little more difficult to follow. My wife and I teach a class of five year olds at church, and you never know what’s going to happen. We could be singing a song with thirty other kids and the boy sitting next to me will suddenly start a conversation about his dinner last night and how much he likes beans. Or maybe we’re about to say the opening prayer and a little girl pulls her legs up and says, “I have a hole in my tights right here,” pointing to her crotch. Or maybe another girl will announce that she would like to be called ‘Ladybug Princess Annabelle’ today. We had no idea that was coming! How could we have known? Children have their own warped visions of life that we may never know about (I know, I kept a journal in middle school).

I do not know much about elementary education theory or practice, but I think Rousseau was on to something, here. Unfortunately, the state of our education policy does not allow for immeasurable practices that lack appropriate structure to permitted into public schools. Perhaps one day the godless liberals will succeed in destroying the Protestant Work Ethic and the Lancaster method of competition and standardization in schools; then we may see radical educational reform (not that I really want to see the radical godless liberals take power). Maybe I should post my thoughts on Lancaster, grading, and the GPA...