be divided into two classes, thinkers and doers. There would seem
no good reason why the thinker should not be great as a doer or the
doer as a thinker; and yet we hardly find any records of men who have
been successful both in investigating theory and directing practice.
History tells us of first-rate practical schoolmasters like Sturm and
the Jesuits; but they did not think out their own theory of their
task: they accepted the current theory of their time. On the other
hand, men who like Montaigne and Locke rejected the current theory and
sought to establish a better by an appeal to reason were not practical
schoolmasters. Whenever the thinker tries to turn his thought into action
he has cause to be disappointed with the result. We saw this in the
disastrous failure of Ratke; and even the books in which Comenius tried
to work out his principles, the _Vestibulum, Janua_ and the rest, with
the exception of the _Orbis Pictus_, were speedily forgotten. In the
world of education as elsewhere it takes time to find for great thoughts
the practice which gives effect to them. The course of great thoughts is
in some ways like the course of great rivers. Most romantic and beautiful
near their source, they are not most useful. They must leave the
mountains in which they first appeared, and must flow not in cataracts
but smoothly along the plain among the dwellings of common men before
they can be turned to account in the every-day business of life.
§ 2. The eighteenth century was soon distinguished by boundless activity
of thought; and this thought was directed mainly to a great work of
destruction. Europe had outgrown the ideas of the Middle Age, and the
framework of Society, which the Middle Age had bequeathed, had waxed old
and was ready to vanish as soon as any strong force could be found to
push it out of the way. As Matthew Arnold has described it—
“It’s frame yet stood without a breach
“When blood and warmth were fled;
“And still it spake it’s wonted speech—
“But every word was dead.”
Here then there was need of some destructive power that should remove and
burn up much that had become mere obstacle and incumbrance. This power
was found in the writings which appeared in France about the middle of
the century; and among the authors of them none spoke with more effect
than one who differed from all the rest, a vagabond without family
ties or social position of any kind, with no literary training, with
little knowledge and in conduct at least, with no morals. The writings
of Rousseau and the results produced by them are among the strangest
things in history; and especially in matters of education it is more
than doubtful if the wise man of the world Montaigne, the Christian
philanthropist Comenius, or that “slave of truth and reason” the
philosopher Locke, had half as much influence as this depraved serving
man.
§ 3. The work by which Rousseau became famous was a prize essay in which
he maintained that civilization, the arts and all human institutions were
from first to last pernicious in their effects, and that no happiness
was possible for the human race without giving them all up and returning
to what he called the state of Nature. He glorified the “noble savage.”
If man had brought himself to a state of misery bordering on despair by
following his own many inventions, take away all these inventions and you
will have man in his proper condition. The argument seems something of
this kind: Man was once happy: Man is now miserable: undo everything that
has been done and Man will be happy again.
§ 4. This principle of a so-called “natural” state existing before man’s
many inventions, Rousseau applied boldly to education, and he deduced
this general rule: “Do precisely the opposite to what is usually done,
and you will have hit on the right plan.” Not reform but revolution
was his advice. He took the ordinary school teaching and held it up to
ridicule, and certainly he did prove its absurdity. And a most valuable
service he thus rendered to teachers. Every employment while it makes us
see some things clearly, also provides us with blinkers, so to speak,
which prevent our seeing other things at all. The school teacher’s
blinkers often prevent his seeing much that is plain enough to other
people; and when a writer like Rousseau takes off our blinkers for us and
makes us look about us, he does us a great deal of good. But we need more
than this: if we have children entrusted to us we must do something with
them, and Rousseau’s rule of doing the opposite to what is usual will not
be found universally applicable. So we consult Rousseau again, and what
is his advice?
§ 5. Rousseau would bring everything back to the “natural” state, and
unfortunately he never pauses to settle whether he means by this a state
of ideal perfection, or of simply savagery. The savage, he says, gets his
education without any one’s troubling about it, and so he infers that all
the trouble taken by the civilized is worse than thrown away. (Girardin’s
_Rousseau_, ij., 85.) But he does not fall back on _laisser faire_. He
urges on parents the duty of _themselves_ attending to the bringing up of
their children. “Point de mère, point d’enfant—no mother, no child,” says
he; and he would have the father see to the training of the child whom
the mother has suckled.
§ 6. Rousseau’s picture of family life is given us where few Englishmen
are likely to find it, enveloped in the _Nouvelle Héloïse_. Here we read
how Julie always has her children with her, and while seeming to let
them do as they like, conceals with the air of apparent carelessness the
most vigilant observation. Possessed by the notion that there can be
no intellectual education before the age of reason, she proclaims: “La
fonction dont je suis chargée n’est pas d’élever mes fils, mais de les
préparer pour être élevés: My business is not to educate my sons, but to
prepare them for being educated.” (_N. Héloïse_, 5th P., Lett. 3.)[120]
§ 7. There is much that is very pleasing in this picture of ideal
family life; but when Rousseau comes formally to propound his ideas on
education, he gives up family life to attain greater simplicity. “Je m’en
tiens à ce qui est plus simple,” says he: “What I stick to is the more
_simple_.” He tries to state everything in its lowest terms, so to speak;
and this method is excellent so long as he puts on one side only what
is accidental, and retains all the essentials of the problem. But his
rage for simplicity sometimes carried him beyond this. There is an old
Cambridge story of a problem introducing an elephant “whose weight may
be neglected.” This is after the manner of Rousseau. In the bringing up
of the model child, he “neglects” parents, brothers and sisters, young
companions; and though he says that the needful qualities of a master
may be expected only in “un homme de génie,” he hands over Émile to a
governor to live an isolated life in the country.
§ 8. This governor is to devote himself, for some years, entirely to
imparting to his pupil these difficult arts—the art of being ignorant and
of losing time. Till he is twelve years old, Émile is to have no direct
instruction whatever. “At that age he shall not know what a book is,”
says Rousseau; though elsewhere we are told that he will learn to read of
his own accord by the time he is ten, if no attempt is made to teach him.
He is to be under no restraint, and is to do nothing but what he sees to
be useful.
§ 9. Freedom from restraint is, however, to be apparent, not real. As
in ordinary education the child employs all its faculties in duping
the master, so in education “according to Nature” the master is to
devote himself to duping the child. “Let him always be his own master
in appearance, and do you take care to be so in reality. There is no
subjection so complete as that which preserves the appearance of liberty;
it is by this means even the will is led captive.”
§ 10. “The most critical interval of human nature is that between the
hour of our birth and twelve years of age. This is the time wherein vice
and error take root without our being possessed of any instrument to
destroy them.” (_Ém._ ij., 79.) Throughout this season, the governor is
to be at work training the pupil in the art of being ignorant and losing
time. “The first education should be purely negative. It consists by no
means in teaching virtue or truth, but in securing the heart from vice
and the intellect from error. If you could do nothing and let nothing be
done, if you could bring on your pupil healthy and strong to the age of
12 without his being able to tell his right hand from his left, from your
very first lessons the eyes of his understanding would open to reason.
Being without prejudices and without habits he would have nothing in him
to thwart the effect of your care; and by beginning with doing nothing
you would have made an educational prodigy.”[121]
“Exercise his body, his organs, his senses, his powers; but keep his mind
passive as long as possible. Mistrust all his sentiments formed before
the judgment which determines their value. Restrain, avoid all foreign
impressions, and to prevent the birth of evil be in no hurry to cause
good; for good is good only in the light of reason. Look on all delays
as so many advantages: it is a great gain to advance towards the goal
without loss: let childhood ripen in children. In short, whatever lesson
they may need, be sure not to give it them to-day if you can safely put
it off till to-morrow.”[122]
“Do not, then, alarm yourself much about this apparent idleness. What
would you say of the man, who, in order to make the most of life, should
determine never to go to sleep? You would say, The man is mad: he is not
enjoying the time; he is depriving himself of it: to avoid sleep he is
hurrying towards death. Consider, then, that it is the same here, and
that childhood is the sleep of reason.”[123]
§ 11. We have now reached the climax (or shall we say the nadir?) in
negation. Rousseau has given the _coup de grâce_ to the ideal of the
Renascence. Comenius was the first to take a comprehensive view of the
educator’s task and to connect it with man’s nature and destiny; but he
could not get clear from an over-estimate of the importance of knowledge.
According to his ideal, man should know all things; so in practice he
thought too much of imparting knowledge. Then came Locke and treated the
imparting of knowledge as of trifling importance when compared with the
formation of character; but he too in practice hardly went so far as this
principle might have led him. He was much under the influence of social
distinctions, and could not help thinking of what it was necessary for a
gentleman to know. So that Rousseau was the very first to shake himself
entirely free from the notion which the Renascence had handed down that
man was mainly a _learning_ animal. Rousseau has the courage to deny this
in the most emphatic manner possible, and to say: “For the first 12 years
the educator must teach the child _nothing_.”
§ 12. In this reaction against the Renascence Rousseau puts the truth
in the form of such a violent paradox that we start back in terror. But
it was perhaps necessary thus to sweep away the ordinary schoolroom
rubbish before the true nature of the educator’s task could be fairly
considered. The rubbish having been cleared away what was to take its
place? No longer having his mind engrossed by the knowledge he wished
to communicate, the educator had now an eye for something else not less
worthy of his attention, viz., the child itself. Rousseau was the first
to base education entirely on a study of the child to be educated; and by
doing this he became, as I believe, one of the greatest of educational
Reformers.
§ 13. It was, however, purely as a thinker, or rather as a _voice_
giving expression to the general discontent that Rousseau became such a
tremendous force in Europe. He has indeed often been called the father
of the first French Revolution which he did not live to see. But, as
Macaulay has well said, a good deal besides eloquent writing is needed
to cause such a convulsion; and we can no more attribute the French
Revolution to the writings of Rousseau than we can attribute the shock
of an explosion of gunpowder to the lucifer match without which it might
never have happened (_v._ Macaulay’s _Barrère_). Rousseau did in the
world of ideas what the French Revolutionists afterwards did in the world
of politics; he made a clean sweep and endeavoured to start afresh.
§ 14. I have already said that as regards education I think his labours
in destruction were of very great value. But what shall we say of his
efforts at construction? There would not be the least difficulty in
showing that most of his proposals are impracticable. It is no more
“natural” to treat as a typical case a child brought up in solitude than
it would be to write a treatise on the rearing of a bee cut off from the
hive.[124] Rousseau requires impossibilities, _e.g._, he postulates that
the child is never to be brought into contact with anyone who might set
a bad example. Modern science has shown us that the young are liable to
take diseases from impurities in the air they breathe: but as yet no
one has proposed that all children should be kept at an elevation of
5,000 feet above the level of the sea. Yet the advice would be about
as practicable as the advice of Rousseau. A method which always starts
with paradox and not infrequently ends with platitude might seem to have
little in its favour; and Rousseau has had far less influence since (in
the words of Herman Merivale) “he was dethroned with the fall of his
extravagant child, the [First] Republic.” No doubt the great exponent
of English opinion was right in calling Rousseau “the most un-English
stranger who ever landed on our shores” (_Times_, 29 Aug., 1873); and the
torch of his eloquence will never cause a conflagration, still less an
explosion, here. His disregard for “appearances”—or rather his evident
purpose of making an impression by defying “appearances” and saying just
the opposite of what is expected, is simply distressing to us. But there
is no denying Rousseau’s genius. His was one of the original voices
that go on sounding and awakening echoes in all lands. Willingly or
unwillingly, at first hand or from imperfect echoes, everyone who studies
education must study Rousseau.
§ 15. As specimens of Rousseau’s teaching I will give a few
characteristic passages from the Émile.
“Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Creator: everything
degenerates in the hands of man.”[125] These are the first words of the
“Émile,” and the key-note of Rousseau’s philosophy.
§ 16. “We are born weak, we have need of strength; we are born destitute
of everything, we have need of assistance; we are born stupid, we have
need of understanding. All that we have not at our birth, and which we
require when grown up, is bestowed on us by education. This education we
receive from nature, from men, or from things. The internal development
of our organs and faculties is the education of nature: the use we are
taught to make of that development is the education given us by men;
and in the acquisitions made by our own experience on the objects that
surround us, consists our education from things.”[126] “Since the
concurrence of these three kinds of education is necessary to their
perfection, it is by that one which is entirely independent of us, we
must regulate the two others.”[127]
§ 17. Now “to live is not merely to breathe; it is to act, it is to make
use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, and of all those parts of
ourselves which give us the feeling of our existence. The man who has
lived most, is not he who has counted the greatest number of years, but
he who has most thoroughly felt life.”[128]
§ 18. The aim of education, then, must be complete living.
But ordinary education, instead of seeking to develop the life of the
child, sacrifices childhood to the acquirement of knowledge, or rather
the semblance of knowledge, which it is thought will prove useful to the
youth or the man. Rousseau’s great merit lies in his having exposed this
fundamental error. He says, very truly, “We do not understand childhood,
and pursuing false ideas of it our every step takes us further astray.
The wisest among us fix upon what it concerns men to know without ever
considering what children are capable of learning. They always expect to
find the man in the child without thinking of what the child is before
it is a man. And this is the study to which I have especially devoted
myself, in order that should my entire method be false and visionary, my
observations might always turn to account. I may not have seen aright
what ought to be done: but I believe I have seen aright the subject on
which we have to act. Begin then by studying your pupils better, for
most certainly you do not understand them.”[129] “Nature wills that
children should be _children_ before they are _men_. If we seek to
pervert this order we shall produce forward fruits without ripeness or
flavour, and tho’ not ripe, soon rotten: we shall have young _savans_ and
old children. Childhood has ways of seeing, thinking, feeling peculiar
to itself; nothing is more absurd than to wish to substitute ours in
their place.”[130] “We never know how to put ourselves in the place of
children; we do not enter into their ideas, we attribute to them our own;
and following always our own train of thought, even with syllogisms we
manage to fill their heads with nothing but extravagance and error.”[131]
“I wish some discreet person would give us a treatise on the art of
observing children—an art which would be of immense value to us, but of
which fathers and schoolmasters have not as yet learnt the very first
rudiments.”[132]
§ 19. In these passages, Rousseau strikes the key-note of true education.
The first thing necessary for us is to see aright the subject on which
we have to act. Unfortunately, however, this subject has often been the
subject most neglected in the schoolroom. Children have been treated as
if they were made for their school books, not their school books for
them. As education has been thought of as learning, childhood has been
treated as unimportant, a necessary stage in existence no doubt, but
far more troublesome and hardly more interesting than the state of the
chrysalis. If some forms of words, tables, declensions, county towns, and
the like can be drummed into children, this is, say educators of the old
school, a clear gain. For the rest nothing can be done with them except
teaching them to read, write, and say the multiplication table.
But since the publication of the Émile, there has been in the world a
very different view of education. According to this view, the importance
of childhood is not to be measured by the amount of _our_ knowledge, or
even the number of _our_ words, we can force it to remember. According to
this view, in dealing with children we must not think of our knowledge
or of our notions at all. We must think not of our own minds, but of the
minds of the little ones.[133]
§ 20. The absurd results in which the opposite course has ended, Rousseau
exposes with great severity. “All the studies demanded from the poor
unfortunates lead to such things as are entirely beyond the range of
their ideas, so you may judge what amount of attention they can give to
them. Schoolmasters who make a great display of the instruction they
give their pupils are paid to differ from me; but we see from what they
do that they are entirely of my opinion. For what do they really teach?
Words, words, for ever words. Among the various knowledges which they
boast of giving, they are careful not to include such as would be of use;
because these would involve a knowledge of things, and there they would
be sure to fail; but they choose subjects that seem to be known when the
terms are known such as heraldry, geography, chronology, languages and
the like; all of them studies so foreign to a man, and still more to a
child, that it is a great chance if anything of the whole lot ever proves
useful to him on a single occasion in his whole life.”[134] “Whatever
the study may be, without the idea of the things represented the signs
representing them go for nothing. And yet the child is always kept to
these signs without our being able to make him comprehend any of the
things they represent.”[135] What does a child understand by “the globe”?
An old geography book says candidly, that it is a round thing made of
plaster; and this is the only notion children have of it. What a fearful
waste, and worse than waste, it is to make them learn the signs without
the things, when if they ever learn the things, they must at the same
time acquire the signs! (Conf. Ruskin _supra_ p. 159, _note_.) “No! if
Nature gives to the child’s brain this pliability which makes it capable
of receiving impressions of every kind, this is not that we may engrave
on it the names of kings, dates, the technical words of heraldry, of
astronomy, of geography, and all those words meaningless at his age and
useless at any age, with which we oppress his sad and sterile childhood;
but that all the ideas which he can conceive and which are useful to
him, all those which relate to his happiness and will one day make his
duty plain to him, may trace themselves there in characters never to
be effaced, and may assist him in conducting himself through life in a
manner appropriate to his nature and his faculties.”[136]
§ 21. With Rousseau, as afterwards with Froebel, education was a kind
of “child-gardening.” “Plants are developed by cultivation,” says he,
“men by education: On façonne les plantes par la culture, et les hommes
par l’éducation” (_Ém._ j., 6). The governor, who is the child-gardener,
is to aim at three things: first, he is to shield the child from all
corrupting influences; second, he is to devote himself to developing
in the child a healthy and strong body in which the senses are to be
rendered acute by exercise; third, he is, by practice not precept, to
cultivate the child’s sense of duty.
§ 22. In his study of children Rousseau fixed on their never-resting
activity. “The failing energy concentrates itself in the heart of the
old man; in the heart of the child energy is overflowing and spreads
outwards; he feels in him life enough to animate all his surroundings.
Whether he makes or mars it is all one to him: it is enough that he has
changed the state of things, and every change is an action. If he seems
by preference to destroy, this is not from mischief; but the act of
construction is always slow, and the act of destruction being quicker is
more suited to his vivacity.”[137]
One of the first requisites in the care of the young is then to provide
for the expansion of their activity. All restraints such as swaddling
clothes for infants and “school” and “lessons” for children are to be
entirely done away with.[138] Literary instruction must not be thought
of. “There must be no other book than the world,” says Rousseau, “no
other instruction than facts. The child who reads does not think, he does
nothing but read, he gets no instruction; he learns words: Point d’autre
livre que le monde, point d’autre instruction que les faits. L’enfant qui
lit ne pense pas, il ne fait que lire; il ne s’instruit pas, il apprend
les mots.” (_Ém._ iij., 181.)[139]
§ 23. If it be objected that, according to Rousseau’s plan, there would
be a neglect of memory, he replies: “Without the study of books the kind
of memory that a child should have will not remain inactive; all he sees,
all he hears, strikes him, and he remembers it; he keeps a record in
himself of people’s actions and people’s talk; and all around him makes
the book by which without thinking of it he is constantly enriching
his memory against the time that his judgment may benefit by it: Sans
étudier dans les livres, l’espèce de mémoire que peut avoir un enfant ne
reste pas pour cela oisive; tout ce qu’il voit, tout ce qu’il entend le
frappe, et il s’en souvient; il tient registre en lui-même des actions,
des discours des hommes; et tout ce qui l’environne est le livre, dans
lequel, sans y songer, il enrichit continuellement sa mémoire, en
attendant que son jugement puisse en profiter.” (_Ém._ ij., 106.) We
should be most careful not to commit to our memory anything we do not
understand, for if we do, we can never tell what part of our stores
really belong to us. (_Ém._ iij., 236.)