"When I thus get rid of children's lessons, I get rid of the chief cause of their sorrows, namely their books. Reading is the curse of childhood, yet it is almost the only occupation you can find for children. Emile, at twelve years old, will hardly know what a book is. "But," you say, "he must, at least, know how to read.

Rousseau has said in his Emile (book iv.): "Even though philosophers should be in a position to discover the truth, which of them would take any interest in it? Each one knows well that his system is not better founded than the others, but he supports it because it is his. ...The essential thing is to think differently from others. With believers he is an atheist; with atheists he is a believer." How much substantial truth there is in these gloomy confessions of this man of painful sincerity.

"For Rosseau, then, education would have to be a way not of instilling the ideals of civilization but rather of liberating the young from civilization and its evils.

Much of the program he described in his didactic novel Emile is what he calls "negative education," an antidote and inoculation against the pervasive evils of civilization. It has come to be called "The Child's Charter"-a basis for modern child psychology. And it would be the prospectus and statement of principles for "progressive education" in the United States, led by John Dewey (1859-1952), who conceived it as a way of bringing democracy into the classroom (The School and Society, 1899; Democracy and Education, 1916). The movement attended tot he child's physical and emotional as well as his intellectual development, favored "learning by doing," and encouraged experimental and independent thinking. The teacher, then, aimed not at instilling a body of knowledge but at developing the pupil's own skill at learning from experience."

The child must be brought up free (that he allow others to be free). He must learn to endure the restraint to which freedom subjects itself for its own preservation (experience no subordination to his command). Thus he must be disciplined. This precedes instruction. Training must continue without interruption. He must learn to do without things and to be cheerful about it. He must not be obliged to dissimulate, he must acquire immediate horror of lies, must learn so to respect the rights of men that they become an insurmountable wall for him. His instruction must be more negative. He must not learn religion before he knows morality. He must be refined, but not spoiled (pampered). He must learn to speak frankly, and must assume no false shame. Before adolescence he must not learn fine manners ; thoroughness is the chief thing. Thus he is crude longer, but earlier useful and capable.

Long discourses, and philosophical readings, at best, amaze and confound, but do not instruct children. When I say, therefore, that they must be treated as rational creatures, I mean that you must make them sensible, by the mildness of your carriage, and in the composure even in the correction of them, that what you do is reasonable in you, and useful and necessary for them; and that it is not out of caprichio, passion or fancy, that you command or forbid them any thing.

So Bertrand Russell once said to me that the pupil in school should study whatever he liked. I asked whether this was not a crime against the pupil. ... Should he be allowed to grow up without knowing Shakespeare? ... Lord Russell replied that he would require a boy to read one play of Shakespeare; if he did not like it, he should not be compelled to read any more.

Recall the dictum of Rousseau: "It matters little to me whether my pupil is intended for the army, the church, or law. Before his parents chose a calling for him, nature called him to be a man. ... When he leaves me, he will be neither a magistrate, a soldier, nor a priest; he will be a man."

The internal or dialectical critique of received opinion does not take place in a single stroke, but in a series of successive approximations to the truth, each of which will seem in its time to be the final one. The student must not be encouraged to race through these stages to the end, but on the contrary to settle down and live with each for a while, so that he has the time to truly take it in and absorb it—and to allow it to transform him. Our lives do not change as quickly as our thoughts. If the student tries to move too fast, he leaves his life behind, and his thinking becomes purely intellectual. He ceases to believe what he thinks and think what he believes. Tempo is everything. Prematurity—showing the student more than he is ready to understand or digest at the moment—is the great wrecker of educations. As Rousseau remarks in Emile, “never show the child anything he cannot see.” Again: the child “must remain in absolute ignorance of ideas ... which are not within his reach.”

"Hold childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill. Leave exceptional cases to show themselves, let their qualities be tested and confirmed, before special methods are adopted. Give nature time to work before you take over her business, lest you interfere with her dealings. You assert that you know the value of time and are afraid to waste it. You fail to perceive that it is a greater waste of time to use it ill than to do nothing, and that a child ill taught is further from virtue than a child who has learnt nothing at all. You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long. Plato, in his Republic, which is considered so stern, teaches the children only through festivals, games, songs, and amusements. It seems as if he had accomplished his purpose when he had taught them to be happy; and Seneca, speaking of the Roman lads in olden days, says, "They were always on their feet, they were never taught anything which kept them sitting." Were they any the worse for it in manhood? Do not be afraid, therefore, of this so-called idleness. What would you think of a man who refused to sleep lest he should waste part of his life? You would say, "He is mad; he is not enjoying his life, he is robbing himself of part of it; to avoid sleep he is hastening his death." Remember that these two cases are alike, and that childhood is the sleep of reason.

The apparent ease with which children learn is their ruin. You fail to see that this very facility proves that they are not learning. Their shining, polished brain reflects, as in a mirror, the things you show them, but nothing sinks in. The child remembers the words and the ideas are reflected back; his hearers understand them, but to him they are meaningless.

Although memory and reason are wholly different faculties, the one does not really develop apart from the other.

A mother gave her children Aesop’s fables to read, in the hope of educating and improving their minds; but they very soon brought the book back, and the eldest, wise beyond his years, delivered himself as follows: This is no book for us; it’s much too childish and stupid. You can’t make us believe that foxes and wolves and ravens are able to talk; we’ve got beyond stories of that kind! In these young hopefuls you have the enlightened Rationalists of the future.

Je condamne l'ignorance qui règne en ce moment dans les démocraties aussi bien que dans les régimes totalitaires. Cette ignorance est si forte, souvent si totale, qu'on la dirait voulue par le système, sinon par le régime. J'ai souvent réfléchi à ce que pourrait être l'éducation de l'enfant. Je pense qu'il faudrait des études de base, très simples, où l'enfant apprendrait qu'il existe au sein de l'univers, sur une planète dont il devra plus tard ménager les ressources, qu'il dépend de l'air, de l'eau, de tous les êtres vivants, et que la moindre erreur ou la moindre violence risque de tout détruire. Il apprendrait que les hommes se sont entre-tués dans des guerres qui n'ont jamais fait que produire d'autres guerres, et que chaque pays arrange son histoire, mensongèrement, de façon à flatter son orgueil. On lui apprendrait assez du passé pour qu'il se sente relié aux hommes qui l'ont précédé, pour qu'il les admire là où ils méritent de l'être, sans s'en faire des idoles, non plus que du présent ou d'un hypothétique avenir. On essaierait de le familiariser à la fois avec les livres et les choses ; il saurait le nom des plantes, il connaîtrait les animaux sans se livrer aux hideuses vivisections imposées aux enfants et aux très jeunes adolescents sous prétexte de biologie ; il apprendrait à donner les premiers soins aux blessés ; son éducation sexuelle comprendrait la présence à un accouchement, son éducation mentale la vue des grands malades et des morts. On lui donnerait aussi les simples notions de morale sans laquelle la vie en société est impossible, instruction que les écoles élémentaires et moyennes n'osent plus donner dans ce pays. En matière de religion, on ne lui imposerait aucune pratique ou aucun dogme, mais on lui dirait quelque chose de toutes les grandes religions du monde, et surtout de celles du pays où il se trouve, pour éveiller en lui le respect et détruire d'avance certains odieux préjugés. On lui apprendrait à aimer le travail quand le travail est

Children should be early taught to reverence virtue, to abhor lust; and boys should be so trained that they will associate with the name of woman only pure, chaste, and noble thoughts. Few things are more deeply injurious to the character of woman, and more conducive to the production of foul imaginations in children, than the free discussion of such subjects as the “Beecher scandal” and like topics. The inquisitive minds and lively imaginations of childhood penetrate the rotten mysteries of such foul subjects at a much earlier age than many persons imagine. The inquiring minds of children will be occupied in some way, and it is of the utmost importance that they should be early filled without thoughts that will lead them to noble and pure actions. Teach Self-Control.-One important part of early training is the cultivation of self-control, and a habit of self-denial, whenever right demands it. Another most essential part of a child’s moral training in the cultivation of right motives. To present a child no higher motives for doing right than the hope of securing some pleasant reward, or the fear of suffering some terrible punishment, is the surest way to make of him a supremely selfish man, with no higher aim than to secure good to himself no matter what may become of other people. And if he can convince himself that the pleasure he will secure by the commission of a certain act will more than counterbalance the probable risk of suffering, he will not hesitate to commit it, leaving wholly out of the consideration the question. Is it right ? or noble ? or pure ? A love of right for its own sake is the only solid basis upon which to build a moral character. Children should not be taught to do right in order to avoid a whipping, or imprisonment in a dark closet,-a horrid kind of punishment sometimes resorted to,-or even to escape “the lake of fire and brimstone.” Neither should they be constantly coaxed to right-doing by promised rewards,-a new toy, a book, an excursion, nor even the pleasures of Heaven. All of these incentives are selfish, and invariably narrow the character and belittle life when made the “chief” motives of action. Bur rather begin at the earliest possible moment to instill into the mind a love for right, and truth, and purity, and virtue, and an abhorrence for their contraries ; then will he have a worthy principle by which to square his life ;then will he be safe from the assaults of passion, of vice, of lust. A mind so trained stands up on an eminence from which all evil men and devils combined cannot displace it so long as it adheres to its noble principles.

Teach a child to love others as it loves itself; let this be the first and most impressive injunction that invades its ears; allow it never to infringe this rule in its conduct toward others, and never to associate with those who do; teach it that the highest virtue is forbearance and helpfulness; inculcate the equal rights of all to the joys of the universe; forbid all competitive indulgence as degrading and ungallant; teach it the propriety of exercising its combativeness against the tendencies of the inanimate, never against a fellow-creature; allow only those amusements which encourage kindness and the rivalry of good-doing;—and when that child grows to manhood or womanhood, and encounters the conditions of more serious life, it will encounter them, not ideally, perhaps, but in a spirit very remote from that in which it would have approached them had it come up thru conditions of incessant egoism.

Madame Picard believed that a child should be allowed to read anything: 'A book never does any harm if it is well written.' While she was there, I had once asked permission to read Madame Bovary and my mother, in an oversweet voice, had said: 'But if my darling reads books like that at his age, what will he do when he grows up?' 'I shall live them!' This reply had met with the most complete and lasting success.