Rousseau: Legacy

Rousseau: Reason, Society, and Legacy

The later stages of Rousseau’s system finish the picture begun in the previous two chapters. Once the child has come through infancy and early childhood, the age of reason opens at twelve and the social and moral capacities open at fifteen. After working through these two stages, the chapter closes with Rousseau’s influence on the nineteenth-century reform of European schooling and with the criticisms his system still has to answer.

Soft Pedagogy and the Childhood Curriculum

Rousseau’s surprising curriculum for ages five to twelve, including no books, no fairy tales, no second language, and no early reading

Boyhood: The Age of Reason

Why reason emerges at twelve, how curiosity replaces obedience as the engine of learning, and what makes reason an accessory faculty

Curriculum and Method for Boyhood

The rejection of rivalry, the role of geography and astronomy, and the priority of method over content in the years before youth

Youth: Living with Others

The emergence of sentiment, the move from individual to social life, and the curriculum of psychology, ethics, and literature

Rousseau's Influence

How Emile reshaped nineteenth-century educational reform, despite the church’s opposition and the controversies the book never escaped

Criticisms of Rousseau

The charges of inconsistency, the revolt against civilisation, the danger of no-restriction policies, and what survives them