Education 230 Lecture SlidesJanuary 25, 2011

Group ActivityThe Wesley Family PSA

John and Susanna Wesley have been reanimated in our time, and have chosen to create a public service announcement….and they have commissioned YOU to write the script.

What will you create?Don’t worry—you don’t have to perform anything in front of the class. You simply need to explain your idea…

Jean Jacques Rousseau

The Life of Rousseau

Born 1712

The interlude with Baroness de Warens

The move to Paris

His “big break”

Life in exile

Died 1778

The key question

What is the leitmotif/controlling idea in this book?

Square Watermelons!

Gnarled Trees!

A Rectangular Cat?

The key idea

“Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man.” (11)

A child’s natural growth…

Can you see any possible problems with this?

The state vs. the individual

“If we have to combat either nature or society, we must choose between making a man or making a citizen. We cannot make both. There is an inevitable conflict of aims from which come two opposing forms of education: the one communal and public, the other individual and domestic.” (13)

Why can we not make both? (maybe we can)

“There are no longer any real fatherlands and therefore no real citizens.” (13)

Why does he say this?

Education for social roles?

“In the natural order where all men are equal, manhood is the common vocation. One who is well educated for that will not do badly in the duties that pertain to it. The fact that my pupil is intended for the army, the church or the bar, does not greatly concern me. Before the vocation determined by his parents comes the call of nature to the life of human kind. Life is the business I would have him learn. When he leaves my hands, I admit he will not be a magistrate, a soldier or a priest. First and foremost, he will be a man.” (14-15ROU)

Does this still ring true?

Group activity: liberal education

Does society stifle us?

“Man’s wisdom is but servile prejudice: his customs but subjection and restraint. From the beginning to the end of life civilized man is a slave. At birth he is sewn up in swaddling bands, and at death nailed down in a coffin. All through he is fettered by social institutions.” (15ROU).

A possible conflict?“The only habit the child should be allowed to acquire is to contract none.” (82R, 22 ROU)

“Prepare in good tie for the reign of freedom and the exercise of its powers, by allowing his body its natural habits and accustoming him always to be his own master and follow the dictates of his will as soon as he has a will of his own.”

Can this apparent conflict be reconciled?

Rousseau’s conception of happiness

“True happiness comes with equality of power and will. The only man who gets his own way is the one who does not need another’s help to get it: from which it follows that the supreme good is not authority, but freedom. The true freeman wants only what he can get, and does only what pleases him. This is my fundamental maxim Apply it to childhood and all the rules of education follow.” (88R, 35ROU)

What does Rousseau mean here?

Reasoning with children

Rousseau is opposed to reasoning with children.

What do we mean by “reason”?

What kind of reasoning might be worthwhile vis a vis children?

Hard lessons

What is the alternative to reasoning with children? Did Rousseau support traditional rewards and punishments?

The merits of suffering.

Negative education

“May I set forth at this point the most important and the mot useful rule in all education? It is not to save time, but to waste it.” (41)

Verbal learning

“Their smooth polished brain is like a mirror which throws back the objects presented to it. Nothing gets in, nothing remains behind.” (94R, 46ROU)

A connection to 19th century education

The principle of utility

“As soon as we have managed to give our pupil some idea of what the word ‘utility’ means, we have another strong hold on him. The word makes a deep impression on him, provided it has meaning for him on his own age level and he can see it bearing on his present well being. ‘What is the good of that?’ Henceforth this is the standard question, the decisive question between him and me.” (99R, 81ROU)

Is this potentially problematic?

The Principle of Utility, ctd.

Why do some children hate school so much?

The conscripted clientele

• Teaching Emile to read

The one key book

• Is it Aristotle? Is it Buffon?

• No, it’s…

Robinson Crusoe

Why Robinson Crusoe?

• The ideal of the rugged individual

• An idealized state of nature

Rousseau on Fables

• Rousseau’s diagnosis of the problem with fables.

• Plato agrees.

• What do you think about this?

The rest of the book

• Eventual integration into society

• Sophie

Next week

• Make sure that you read Dewey with care.

• The other readings are meant to give you an idea of 19th century traditional education. Don’t neglect to read them, either!