A complete and accurate understanding of Rousseau's educational ideas

Tang Xiaomin

Rousseau (28 June 1712 --- 2 July 1778) was a prominent French thinker, writer, and educator. The intellectual pioneer of the French Revolution in the 18th century, he is the author of "The Social Contract", "Emile", "Confessions", "New Arlois" and so on. Emile is an educational novel in which Rousseau takes his imaginary child Emile as the object of education, and discusses Emile's naturalistic educational ideas by telling the story of Emile's growth and educational journey from birth to the age of 20. Rousseau's educational thought was aimed at the popular rationalist educational concept at that time, and when discussing his own thoughts, Rousseau often pushed an opinion to the extreme, forming a strong impact and leaving a strong impression on the reader. Although he also added to this extreme expression, these extreme words left a strong and profound impression that the reader often only remembered these words and ignored the additions he made. For example, emile begins: "Everything that comes from the hand of the Creator is good, but when it reaches the hands of man, it all becomes bad." "Man" does not want things to be as they are, even to man, and must train man like a horse in a horse training field." But Rousseau said, "If you don't do this, things may be worse,...... A person who is born without the upbringing of others may simply be out of shape. It does not completely negate the meaning of upbringing, but the reader mostly only remembers the idea that "everything that comes from the hand of the Creator is good, and when it reaches the hands of man, it all becomes bad."

For example, Rousseau wrote in his book that the initial education should be completely negative, "I would rather let a child grow five feet tall by the age of ten than have any judgment ability." "It is even said that the child grows up to be 12 years old, and even if it is impossible to distinguish between the left hand and the right hand, it seems that it does not matter." But in another place, Rousseau adds: "You are not in a hurry to achieve any end, but you can achieve it with great certainty and very quickly." I can almost certainly say that Emile was fully learned to read and write before she was ten years old, precisely because I paid very little attention to his ability to read and write before he was fifteen. It turned out that emile, whom he had taught, had fully learned to read and write before the age of 10. This is very noteworthy, because it shows that Rousseau did not fail to pay attention to reading and writing. But many readers, including some scholars of Rousseau, tend to ignore Rousseau's formulation and one-sidedly believe that Rousseau opposed children's reading. For example, Rousseau advocated "never reading before the age of twelve", and specifically said: "Children are the child's rational sleep period, this stage can only be perceived by feeling and experience, and the physique has not developed to the stage of using reason." We don't want to create young doctors and old children, because the precocious fruit, although attractive in appearance, is not luscious. Sensory organs are tools of children's wisdom, let children learn how to feel, how to touch, see, and listen through the sensory organs, do not let him use reading and other external means to change his natural development prematurely, before the age of 12, never read, so as to help his normal development of intelligence, so as not to let prejudice and error occupy his mind. Commentators believe that this is Rousseau's educational thought, but in fact it is not. Because Rousseau fully learned to read and write before Emile was 10 years old.

From Rousseau's own experience, we can see that Rousseau himself learned to read very early on and benefited from it a lot. In the Confessions, Rousseau put it this way: "I don't know what I did before I was five or six years old, nor how I learned to read. I just remember the first books I read, and that's when it started. My mother left some novels, and after dinner I read them with my father. At first, my father just wanted to use these interesting reading materials to make people practice reading, but soon after, we took turns reading between the two countries with great interest, endlessly, often all night, and when a book was in hand, we would never stop reading it. Sometimes when the father hears the swallows of the morning, he says with embarrassment: 'Let's go to sleep; I am even more childish than you.' ’”

Rousseau read not only many novels but also history books in his childhood. These history books had a profound impact on him. The most profound influence on Rousseau was the ancient Greek Protagge's "Biography of heroes", rousseau once said: "Because of this interesting reading, and the discussion of this book between my father and me, I developed my spirit of freedom and democracy, and my proud and unashamed character... I am constantly haunted by the thoughts of the great men of Rome and Athens, as if I were in the company of them; I myself am a citizen of the Republic and the son of a patriotic and fanatical father, and I have been inspired by my father's teachings; I believe that I am Greek or Roman; I have integrated myself with the personality in the book; when I think of the stoicism and fearlessness of the fascinating great Man Jays, I suddenly have bright eyes and a majestic voice. ”

Rousseau was "full of excitement" and "endless" when he read novels as a child. This is very noteworthy. This shows that children love to read, eager to know the stories in the book, and feel great pleasure from it. It can be said that it is also the nature of children to like to read. We cannot take the nature of children too simply. Children not only like to play, but also like to listen to stories, and like to listen to adults read poems. The famous scholar Qi Gong recalled that when he was a child, he once told his grandfather to teach him to read poetry, saying: "To this day, I still clearly remember the scene when he put one hand on my lap and gently beat the beat on the table with the other hand, shaking his head and teaching me to recite the poem "You Jinshan Temple" in Dongpo: 'My family's river originated at the beginning, and the eunuchs sent the river straight into the sea. The tide was high, and there were still sand marks in the cold. ShiPantuo on the south bank of Zhongling, ancient times haunted with the waves------ the rivers and mountains are so unreturned mountains, the river god sees strange alarms me stubbornly. I thank the god of the river, and the field does not return like a river! He was completely intoxicated, and so was I, but it was not the beautiful words that enchanted me, for I was too young to understand the meaning, and my grandfather did not give me a word-by-word explanation, but the syllables of the ups and downs conquered me, and I felt as if I were listening to one of the most beautiful and moving pieces of music, which made me very interested in poetry. Zhao Yuanren, a master of linguistics, recalled the scene of reading and reciting poetry in his childhood, saying: "Reading poetry at night is a little easier than reading during the day, and I think it is also a little fun." I read "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Dynasty." My brother and my sisters also read "A Thousand Family Poems" and other poetry collections. But when we read poems at home, I just didn't read them and gradually memorized them. Because we read poems at home like we are in the study during the day, and everyone is reading your me and reading mine at the same time. Sometimes when I stop, I hear them reading something. I remembered Wu Weiye's "Round Round Song" they read, and I didn't even see that I had memorized it. There is also Bai Juyi's "Long Hate Song", they read it before us, and when I first read "Long Hate Song", I was already half familiar with it. Zhao Yuanren not only reads poetry, but also recites poetry, but he thinks it is "fun."

The belief that Rousseau was generally opposed to children's reading is a misunderstanding of Rousseau's educational ideas. Rousseau opposed reading, and in fact opposed rational education. He put it this way: "Educating children with reason is an important principle of Locke; this principle is the most fashionable today; yet it seems to me that it is so fashionable, but it is far from indicative of its reliability; as far as I am concerned, I find that no one is more foolish than the children who have received much more rational education." Of all the faculties of man, the faculty of reason can be said to be a synthesis of various other faculties, and therefore it is the most difficult to develop, and it develops late. But some people still want to use it to develop other senses! What is what Rousseau called "rational education"? Rational education is the education to cultivate rationality, including moral education and the training of logical thinking. Reading poems and memorizing shiwen is not necessarily rational education, and the current "doing problems" in primary and secondary school language teaching is intended to cultivate the thinking ability of primary school students, which basically belongs to the category of rational education. In an interview, the writer Wang Meng once mentioned his grandson's language title: "Outside my window, there is a poplar tree. Then four options are given under the original question. The first: there was a poplar tree growing outside my window; the second: I could see from my window the poplar tree standing outside; the third: there was a tree outside the window, and this tree was poplar. Ask the student to pick the right one from it. Wang Meng couldn't do it, he said, "I'm stupid when I look at it, because they all mean the same thing!" Wang Meng's grandson is in the fourth grade of primary school and should be less than 12 years old. The kind of language problems that the school asked him to do were exactly the rational education that Rousseau opposed.

It is said that in the primary school students' language test, one of the topics requires the following four sentences to be connected with related words: 1, Zhang Haidi's sister is paralyzed; 2, Zhang Haidi's sister stubbornly studies; 3, Zhang Haidi's sister has learned many foreign languages; 4, Zhang Haidi's sister has learned acupuncture. The correct answer to this question is "Although Zhang Haidi's sister is paralyzed, she stubbornly learns, not only learns multiple foreign languages, but also learns acupuncture", and as a result, one child wrote "Although Zhang Haidi's sister tenaciously learned acupuncture and multiple foreign languages, she was still paralyzed.". A child wrote: "Sister Zhang Haidi not only learned foreign languages, but also learned acupuncture, she studied so tenaciously that she was finally paralyzed." Some children wrote: "The reason why Zhang Haidi's sister is paralyzed is because she studied tenaciously, not only learned many foreign languages, but even learned acupuncture." Also: "Sister Zhang Haidi is so tenacious to learn, not only learned many foreign languages and acupuncture, but also learned to be paralyzed." Such a question is also the test of rational education that Rousseau opposed.

When Wang Meng taught his grandson, he lamented that the current language education, language teaching and literary interpretation "teach children to be stupid." Wang Meng's exclamation is also Rousseau's exclamation at that time: "No one is more stupid than those children who have received a lot of rational education." ”