The Romantic Child and Emile

The Romantic Child and Emile by Rousseau

Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote Emile in 1762. The alternate title of this innovative novel is On Education because Rousseau's motivation for the story was to describe a system of education that would allow the natural innocence and intrinsic goodness of the young child to survive without corruption into adulthood. It is sometimes regarded as the first detailed and complete philosophy of education in Western culture. "To say that children enjoyed special status in the Romantic period is perhaps to spout a cliche. The Romantics created a new economy of respect for children by acknowledging their differences from adults, and henceforth viewing them as adequate children as opposed to deficient adults." (Ferguson, Winter 2003) This was an important and highly significant time for the fields of education, child psychology and child development, sociology, and family studies. The meaning of childhood changed considerably in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and Emile is one of the most famous texts to depict this new world view. The methods that Rousseau employed to introduce and promote his ideas are best depicted within five components, corresponding with the five individual units that make up the whole of Emile. These five components consist of the fundamental philosophy of Rousseau's educational system and how best to incorporate that philosophy into raising a child, the initial interaction between the child and the world, the need for early selection of a trade, the child's emotional education during his adolescence, and the philosophic foundation of female educational requirements. The opening line of Emile is famous for its implied criticisms on the nature and intent of society: "Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man." (Rousseau, 1979) This statements is indicative of Rousseau's general philosophic view of man and the world, discussed in detail in The Social Contract, first published in the same year as Emile. The premise is that man's base nature must be suppressed in order to live in harmony with and function appropriately in civilized society. In Emile, Rousseau attempts to figure out how it might be possible to raise a child to take a proper place in a society that both expects and demands accountability, responsibility, and productivity, without training the fundamental innocence and goodness out of the child's nature. In Book I, Rousseau begins with the early physical and emotional development of the child. He endorses breastfeeding and swaddling for the infant, and advises one not to shelter a young child so he learns early that there are harshness and hardships to be found in the adult world. Within this point of view is the memory of this author's childhood and a father whose constant refrain was, "Life is hard! Life is not easy! Life is not fair!" This was a man who believed strongly in building a foundation of resilience and endurance in his children with rigid expectations and harsh discipline. He seems to have completely missed Rousseau's other point, which was that children needed to be nurtured, cared for, and have stability and consistency provided for them in order to thrive. This is one of the major aspects of Romanticism, a notion that was entirely missing from raising children up to this point. Book II of Emile describes the educational framework of a child's formative years, most likely from the approximate ages of seven to eleven or twelve, within Rousseau's philosophy. In this theory, education in this stage should take place within the context of personal experiences and interactions with the outside world. The emphasis should be on developing the senses and drawing inferences from them. Book III has the child successfully integrated with the physical world and ready to make a decision regarding his trade, which Rousseau believed was necessary in order for him to search out the appropriate role models and focus on the necessary skills. Book IV is the section that interests this writer the most. The child is now physically strong and able to carefully observe and interpret the world around him. He is ready for the last part of his education, what Rousseau terms 'sentiment.' "We have made an active and thinking being. It remains for us, in order to complete the being, only to make a loving and feeling being - that is to say, perfect reason by sentiment." (Rousseau, 1979) This is most fascinating because Rousseau is recognizing not only the fact of what we now call emotional intelligence, but the need to be trained in it. In order to socialize a child, he must be taught to acknowledge and understand his own emotions. In this way he is able to realize when he is behaving inappropriately due to an excessive emotional state, and subsequently to know what to do to avoid this behavior or how to stop it once it has started. William Stroup's article The Romantic Child discusses in great detail the literature of Romanticism. Stroup focuses on the evolution and modernization of early childhood learning theories and relational interactions between the child and his parents, peers, and society. His take on this period is that the three most important themes of Romanticism are nature, innocence, and individuality, three aspects that could be said to embody Rousseau's philosophy of childhood. Frances Ferguson (Winter 2003) tells us that romanticism was a revolt against the aristocratic and political norms of the time and a reaction against the scientific rationalism of nature. This incredible worldview gave birth to thee Romantic child, and allowed him to take advantage of his youth and focus on living in a state of intuition, imagination, and feeling, for the first time in history.