01.
We all benefit from all three kinds of education
We are born weak, so we need strength; we are born helpless, so we need help; we are born stupid, so we need reason. Everything we lacked when we were born, everything we needed when we grew up, came from the gift of education!
This kind of education in us comes either from nature, or from man, or from things. The inner development of our bodies and abilities is the education of nature; the education of man when others teach us how to take advantage of this development; the education of things in which we gain experience from our surroundings.
Each of us benefits from all three kinds of education. As far as the individual is concerned, if these three kinds of education conflict with each other, then the student will be badly affected and will never be to his liking; if these three kinds of education are in harmony, then he will achieve his goals and live in peace. Such a person is a well-educated person.
At present, of these three different kinds of education, the education of nature cannot be determined by us at all, the education of things can only be determined in part by us, and only the education of man is what we can really control. Even so, this control is largely hypothetical, because who can control the words and deeds of everyone around the child?
02.
Learn to live and be human
In the natural order, everyone is equal, and their common vocation is to acquire humanity. Therefore, a well-educated person will not ignore this goal and its associated requirements. In fact, I have no opinion on whether my students intend to be soldiers, or priests, or lawyers. Before his parents could choose a profession for him, nature would make him a man first.
Life, that's what I taught him. Coming out from under my door, I confess that he may be neither a civilian nor a soldier or a priest, but he will be a man. How a person should behave, he can quickly learn. Fate will not allow him to change his status, and he will always be in his place.
The object of our real study is people and their environment. It seems to me that whoever among us is the one who can best withstand the comforts and sorrows of life is the one who has received the best education. It follows from this that true education is more about practice than on oral training. When we start living, we start getting an education.
Our education begins on our own, and our first teacher was our au pair. The ancients also often used the word "education" to express another meaning, that is, "nurture". Varro said: "Midwives deliver babies, nursing mothers, teachers enlighten, teachers teach." ”
Therefore, education, training and teaching are three things, and their purposes are as different as those of nannies, school teachers and teachers. However, these differences should not all be accepted, and children should be guided by only one purpose.
03.
Learn to protect yourself
People tend to think only about how to protect their children, which is clearly not enough. We should teach our child how to protect himself as an adult; to bear the blows of fate; to face the rich and the poor bravely; to live in the ice and snow of Iceland and the scorching rocks of the island of Malta when necessary.
You only waste your efforts to protect him from death, and he will die after all. Although his death was not caused by your careful care, your painstaking efforts may still be misunderstood.
Therefore, he should not be taught how to avoid death, but how to live: to live means not only to breathe, but also to act, to make full use of our senses, our spirits and our talents, to use every part of our existence that makes us feel.
The people who live the most meaningful life are not the people who live the most, but the people who feel the most about life. A man may have lived to be 100 years old, but he may never have really lived, so he might as well go to the grave at a young age!
Our wisdom is the prejudice of slavery, and all our customs are filled with slavery, coercion, and oppression. Civilized people are born into slavery, and when they die, they are slaves: he is bound in swaddling as soon as he is born, and he is nailed to a coffin as soon as he dies. Throughout their lives, people are imprisoned by various institutions.
04.
Proper tempering
When a mother does not care about her children, but cares excessively for her children, she deviates from nature in another opposite path. She tends to turn her children into her idols.
She originally wanted to prevent the child from feeling her own weakness, but she raised the child to become more and more delicate. She wants her child to be protected from the laws of nature and free from all kinds of painful experiences, but she does not realize that because she wants to make her child less tortured, the child's future will be buried with all kinds of disasters and crises. She did not expect how cruel such a kind act would be, which would perpetuate the delicacy of the child's infancy, so that he would not be able to bear all kinds of labor in adulthood.
Observe nature and follow the path it indicates. It is constantly exercising the child, it is tempering the child with all kinds of difficulties, and it will soon teach the child what pain and failure are. Don't you understand that because you want to change the laws of nature, you end up ruining the child and making your child's care ineffective? Your child is exposed to naturally given exercise outdoors, which seems doubly dangerous to you.
But on the contrary, this avoids danger. Experience tells us that spoiled children are more likely to suffer misfortune. As long as we do not make them do more than they can, and let them use their physical strength in comparison with pity for their physical strength, the former is less dangerous.
Therefore, they must be trained to withstand the tribulations that they will have to face one day, to exercise their physique, to be able to withstand harsh temperatures, climates and environments, to endure hunger, thirst and fatigue. Dip them in the Styx!
Before their physical habits are formed, you can get them to develop the habits you want them to have without any danger. Once habits are established, any change can be dangerous. A child can tolerate changes that an adult cannot tolerate, because the child's body is soft and resilient, and it does not take much effort to make it tend to any direction.
Adults' bodies are stiff, and only by resorting to violence can they change the patterns of behavior they have formed. Therefore, we can raise a child's life and health to be very strong without endangering him. Even if there is some danger, there is no need to hesitate. Because a person's life will be full of all kinds of dangers, what better way than to face them?
Rousseau | Li Pingfeng | translate
Excerpt from Emile
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