Rousseau on Education

In Our Time: Philosophy

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2019

⏱️ 52 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) on the education of children, as set out in his novel or treatise Emile, published in 1762. He held that children are born with natural goodness, which he sought to protect as they developed, allowing each to form their own conclusions from experience, avoiding the domineering influence of others. In particular, he was keen to stop infants forming the view that human relations were based on domination and subordination. Rousseau viewed Emile as his most imporant work, and it became very influential. It was also banned and burned, and Rousseau was attacked for not following these principles with his own children, who he abandoned, and for proposing a subordinate role for women in this scheme. The image above is of Emile playing with a mask on his mother's lap, from a Milanese edition published in 1805. With Richard Whatmore Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews and Co-Director of the St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History Caroline Warman Professor of French Literature and Thought at Jesus College, Oxford and Denis McManus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton Producer: Simon Tillotson

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:04.6	Thanks for downloading this episode of In Our Time.
0:07.2	There's a reading list to go with it on our website and you can get news about our
0:10.8	programs if you follow us on Twitter at BBC in our time. I hope you enjoy the programs.
0:16.8	Hello in 1762 Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote Emille or on education which he considered his greatest work.
0:24.0	Amil is partly a novel, partly treaties on how to make children immune from the corruption
0:29.3	of the
0:29.9	he saw it of civilization, mainly by letting them work things out for themselves rather than telling them what
0:35.1	to do. Only then would they learn self-respect and free themselves from the self-consciousness
0:41.0	which he found throughout society and which led inevitably he
0:44.1	ought to unhappiness.
0:45.1	quote man is born free but everywhere he is in change he wrote his most famous sentence
0:50.3	we need to discuss Russo on education are, Dennis McManus, professor of philosophy at the University of Southampton,
0:56.8	Caroline Worman, professor of French literature and thought at Jesus College Oxford,
1:00.8	and Richard Wartmore, professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews
1:04.8	and co-director of St Andrews Institute of Intellectual History.
1:08.6	Richard Wortmore, can you tell us about his childhood, Russo's childhood?
1:12.0	Yes, Russo is born in 1712. His mother was
1:18.1	rich, his father was a relatively poor artisan. A disaster occurs because Rousseau's mother dies after a couple of days after his birth and he subsequently has a turbulent education himself.
1:36.0	The fact that a profound significance is that he's born at Geneva.
1:43.2	Now, it's very important because it's an independent republic.
1:47.5	Some people still call the Geneva's Swiss.
	...

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