A Critical Evaluation Of J.j Rousseau’s Concept Of Education
Chapter One
Preface
Background of the study
All that we warrant at birth and need when grown up is given, to us by education. This education comes to us from nature, from men or from effects. The internal development of our faculties and the organs is the education of nature. The use we learn to make of this development is the education of men.( Cahn 155) These are the words of a man who has had a propound influence on the field of education. This man is none other than Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau is one of those proponents who has been greatly misknew. numerous have blamed his gospel as being completely outdated and not much applicable in moment’s situation. But this seems paradoxical as Rousseau has also been that person who has had a great influence in the field ofeducation.However, also other styles fashioned on his gospel have been introduced in different fields of education, If not his system. So one would consider whether Rousseau has commodity to offer us or not. The reply to such a mistrustfulness isyes.However, also the gospel behind the system is of great significance, If not his system. It’s important to understand that Rousseau has been blamed more because people haven’t really understood why he expressed himself the way he did. Two main aspects come out veritably explosively in his gospel. They’re nature, and the child. Both these were of great significance in his gospel of education. In order to grasp the reason for his gospel one ought to understand his background and the environment in which he wrote. therefore a brief life- sketch and his workshop, in the preface, should enable us to see what events and situations conditioned Rousseau to suppose andwrite the way he did. he simple Protestant megacity of Geneva. His father, a watchmaker, was droopy from a Parisian family, and inherited much of the Romanticism, unpredictable disposition, and love of pleasures of his forbears. The mama of Rousseau, too, although the son of a church man, was of a morbid and novelettish disposition. She failed at the birth of Jean Rousseau.( Graves 77) Rousseau was brought up by an indulgent aunt, who noway bothered to correct him when he faltered. She fully failed to inseminate in him any moral principles. This tendency for a want of tone- control was fostered increased by his father, who had an inversely careless station. When Rousseau was only six, his father would sit with him night after night and read to him the most silliest and sensational loves, which were left before by his woman . It’s for this reason that extreme emotionality, imaginativeness and precocity were nurtured within the child at a really early age. “ After a time or so, the novels were exhausted and Rousseau had to turn for material, to the further sensible library of his forefather, the dominie. ”( Graves 78) Some of these workshop included the resemblant lives of Plutarch and the standard histories of the day. These workshop had a lasting print on his character. They contributed to his sense of heroism and what he latterly nominated ‘ that democratic spirit and love of liberty, that proud and insurmountable turn of the mind, which rendered me intolerant of restraint. ’ His want of control may in this way have first come to turn itself toward the revolution and the destruction of being society.( Graves 78) Jean- Jacques Rousseau( 1712- 1778) was the precursor of the romantic movement in trades( and literature). The eighteenth- century period in history generally tagged “ The Age of Enlightenment ” was characterized by a rebellion against the established order. The period also marked a turning point in the history and identity of Europe, and, by extension, gospel itself. It was an age that was critical of being propositions, styles, systems and practices; an age petrified with individualistic doctrine that man was free to express himself; an age in which the trades and lores gained anextra-ordinary elevation; an age whose common trademark was the rejection of the authority( of preachers and lords) and accordingly anything which could be recommended by reason or common sense was accepted( John, 2009221). therefore, The Age of Enlightenment was substantially rationalistic in its outlook. It was during this period that reason gained ascendance over faith; a period in which certainty was only possible through reason. That is, reason was seen as the only answer to man’s difficulty and confusion. It was a time of individual( not political) liberty, reformation and revolution in lores, trades and education. In describing this age, Curtis and Boultwood agree with Rogers( 387- 388) that the most egregious features of The Enlightenment were “ its practical and unimaginative character, its abomination of vague enthusiasm, and misty ideas; its determination to apply the test of a oppressively accurate reason to everything and reject out- correctly whatever won’t stand the test of time; the constant reference in all this, as the court of final appeal to the one undoubted fact was the existent himself with his rights and his rational power of understanding ”( 263- 264). Though Rousseau was clearly a member of The Age of Enlightenment, but he wasn’t all this about this Age as contended by Curtis and Boultwood. He can be reckoned as a archconservative to this movement. He came a leftist who was set to reform the “ reforms ”. It’s material to posit that utmost outstanding thinkers of this period discovered commodity about tone in colorful ways and senses. For case, Descartes discovered the thinking- tone in his Cogito, ergo sum; Locke discovered the passing- tone in his empiricism; Schopenhauer discovered the dwindling- tone in his pessimism; Luther discovered the believing- tone in his “ by faith only ”. Rousseau, on his part, discovered the feeling- tone, the unique kind of tone that feels; the tone that’s passionate, the tone that’s natural and emotional; the tone that’s in need of freedom and equivalency with all men( John, 2009222). Speaking like Pascal, Rousseau, in this new discovery on tone, holds that the heart has its reasons which the head can noway understand. Rousseau’s peculiar study is an issue in philosophical circle. Though he attended no university, and he started doing colorful kinds of slavish jobs at the age of twelve, yet the kind of intellectualization which he displayed and lived by ultimately came a challenge to the heretofore academic and philosophic status- quo of his time, and the very thing that shook the foundations of France, Russia, Britain, Germany and America in particular and the whole world in general. The entire philosophic figure- up and the current of the Enlightenment innovated by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Voltaire, Schopenhauer, and other professional proponents was formerly again forced to bere-examined in the light of Rousseau’s internal paradigm. Rousseau was a fat pen, a important and original thinker, whose productivity generated the dears of the French Revolution of the 18thcentury and pithily compelled Tozer in the “ preface ” to his 1948 restatement of The Social Contract to concur with Sir Henry Maime in the following words “ The world has not seen further than formerly or doubly by all the course of history a literature which has exercised similar fabulous influence over the minds of men, over every cast and shade of intellect, as Rousseau’s between 1749 and 1762 ”( 12).
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Before one delves into Rousseau’s child- centered education, it’s important to give a summary of his educational study. This is to enable us have a background of his gospel. Rousseau’s educational ideas came to spotlight in 1761 with the publication of Emile, seminal work on education. The book marked the morning of a new revolution in education. Rousseau indeed declares “ My studies aren’t like those of others ”( 197515). The book caused a universal outburst of outrage; the Catholic Church condemned it and ordered for its clones to be intimately burnt and the arrest of its author. In Emile, Rousseau presents a triplex discussion on education, videlicet the natural or negative phase, the social or moral phase and the communal or political phase. In this study, we shall not be concerned with the social and political confines. This is because Rousseau believes veritably explosively that the natural phase takes preeminence over and above the rest the natural phase thus becomes the anchor upon which the social and political angles rest. This stands to mean that the social and political phases are bare products of the natural phase of education. It’s in view of this that the experimenter intends to estimateJ.J ROUSSEAU’s conception of education.
Ideal Of The Study
The main ideal of the study is to estimateJ.J ROUSSEAU’s conception of education. To prop the completion of the study, the followingsub-objective was put forward by the experimenter ’
i) To estimate theJ.J ROUSSEAU’s conception of education
ii) To ascertain the effect ofJ.J ROUSSEAU’s conception of education in the growth of the education sector
iii) To ascertain the impact ofJ.J ROUSSEAU’s conception of education on the child education
Exploration Suppositions
To prop the completion of the study, the following exploration suppositions were formulated by the experimenter;
ROUSSEAU’s conception of education doesn’t have any significant impact on the growth of the educational sector
ROUSSEAU’s conception of education does have a significant impact on the growth of the educational sector.
ROUSSEAU’s conception of education has a significant effect on the elaboration of the education sector.
ROUSSEAU’s conception of education doesn’t have any significant effect on the elaboration of the education sector.
Significance Of The Study
At the completion of the study, the findings will be of great significance to the educational sector,J.J ROUSSEAU’s conception of education will help in expanding the borders of the educational sector in Nigeria. The study will also be useful to the department of gospel as the study will also add to the being literature in thedepartment.The study will also be of great significance to pupil who intend to embark on a study in analogous content as the findings of the study will serve as a settler to them. Eventually the study will be of great significance to scholars, preceptors and the general public as the finding will add to the pool of being literature
Compass And Limitation Of The Study
The compass of this study covers critical evaluation ofJ.J ROUSSEAU’s conception of education, but in the cause of the study, the experimenter encounters some constrain which limited the compass of the study;
a) Vacuity OF RESEARCH MATERIAL The exploration material available to the experimenter is inadequate, thereby limiting the study.
b) TIME The time frame allocated to the study doesn’t enhance wider content as the experimenter has to combine other academic conditioning and examinations with the study.
c) FINANCE The finance available for the exploration work doesn’t allow for wider content as coffers are veritably limited as the experimenter has other academic bills to cover.
Description Of Terms
Education
Education is the process of easing literacy or the accession of knowledge, chops, values, beliefs and habits. Educational styles include liar, discussiob, tutoring, training and direct exploration. Education constantly takes place under the guidance of preceptors but learners may also educate themselves. Education can take place in formal or informal settings and any experience that has a constructive effect on the way one thinks, feels or acts may be considered educational. The methodology of tutoring is called pedagogy. Education is generally divided formally into similar stages as preschool or kindergarten, primary academy, secondary academy and also council, university or internship.
Enlightenment
European politics, gospel, wisdom and dispatches were radically reoriented during the course of the “ long 18th century ”( 1685- 1815) as part of a movement appertained to by its actors as the Age of Reason, or simply the Enlightenment.
Association Of The Study
This exploration work is organized in five chapters, for easy understanding, as follows.
Chapter one is concern with the preface, which correspond of the( background of the study), statement of the problem, objects of the study, exploration questions, exploration suppositions, significance of the study, compass of the study etc. Chapter two being the review of the affiliated literature presents the theoretical frame, abstract frame and other areas concerning the subject matter. Chapter three is a exploration methodology covers deals on the exploration design and styles espoused in the study. Chapter four concentrate on the data collection and analysis and donation of finding. Chapter five gives summary, conclusion, and recommendations made of the study.
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