Youth: Living with Others

The fourth and final stage of Rousseau’s system is the transition from childhood into adulthood. The years from fifteen to twenty are the years in which the student becomes a social and moral being. The body has changed, the inner life has changed, and the educational work changes with it. Rousseau’s advice for this stage is more concrete than for the earlier ones because the educator can now use the tools (instruction, literature, religion) that the earlier stages held back.

What changes at fifteen

Three changes mark the threshold of the fourth stage. They happen together and they reshape the educational work.

The first is passing out of childhood. The student is no longer a child in the basic sense. Their body, their mind, and their position in the world have all shifted enough that the old practices no longer fit. A youth needs different treatment from a boy; an educator who keeps applying boyhood methods will fail them.

The second is the emergence of sex. Rousseau treats this directly. Sexual maturity arrives in this stage and changes the student’s inner life. The student is now drawn to other people in ways they were not before. The drives that will shape adult relationships have come online. The educator who pretends this is not happening is missing the largest single change of the stage.

The third is the emergence of human sentiments. This is the deepest of the three changes for Rousseau’s system. The student is now capable of feelings directed at other humans as such: sympathy, love, friendship, justice, indignation at cruelty done to others. The earlier stages were dominated by the student’s own needs, sensations, and curiosities. The fourth stage opens onto a wider life in which the student feels alongside and on behalf of other people.

The three changes together mean that the student is now ready for the social and moral education that the earlier stages held back. The educator does not have to wait any longer. The faculties that receive social and moral instruction are now in place.

Flashcard

What three changes mark the start of Rousseau's fourth stage of education, *youth* (15 to 20)?

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Answer

Passing out of childhood, the emergence of sex, and the emergence of human sentiments

The student is no longer a child in body, mind, or social position. Sexual maturity has arrived and reshapes the inner life. Human sentiments (sympathy, love, friendship, justice, indignation at cruelty) become available. Together the three changes make the student ready for the social and moral education the earlier stages held back.

Education for others

The orientation of the whole education shifts at this stage. Through infancy, childhood, and boyhood, the work was oriented toward the student as an individual. The student’s body developed, their senses sharpened, their reason came online. In youth, the orientation turns outward. The student must now learn to live with others harmoniously, and love for others becomes a controlling motive at this stage.

This is not a small adjustment. It is a re-orientation of the whole educational project. The student who has been encouraged through three stages to follow their own needs and their own curiosity must now extend that movement to take in the needs and the inner lives of other people. The earlier independence is not abandoned; it becomes the foundation on which social life is built. A student who never developed independence first cannot now extend independence to take in others, because the independence to extend is not there.

The educator’s job is therefore to support this outward extension. They introduce the student to the realities of human life: that other people are also subjects with their own inner lives, that those inner lives matter, that the student’s own actions affect them. Some of this is intellectual (the student learns about human nature). Some is experiential (the student forms real relationships, sees other lives up close, learns from contact what cannot be learned from books alone).

The goal of education at this stage, Rousseau says, is emotional development and moral perfection. Two phrases that need careful reading.

Emotional development means the deliberate growth of the feeling life. The student is helped to develop sympathy, generosity, fairness, the capacity to love and the capacity to refuse to harm. These do not arrive automatically. They have to be exercised and grown, the way the body was exercised and grown in the earlier stages.

Moral perfection sounds high-flown but is meant practically. The student is helped to become a person whose moral life is as fully developed as their physical and intellectual life. Perfection here means completion rather than flawlessness. A morally complete person has worked out their values, has practised acting on them, and can be relied on to act well in the situations of adult life.

Flashcard

How does the orientation of education shift in Rousseau's fourth stage?

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Answer

From inward (the individual student’s development) to outward (life with other people)

The earlier stages developed the student as an individual: body, senses, reason. In youth, the work turns outward to the student’s social and moral life. Love for others becomes a controlling motive; the goal is emotional development and moral perfection. The earlier independence becomes the foundation on which social life is built rather than something that is abandoned.

Limits of the youth’s mind

Rousseau adds a sober note about what the student of this age cannot yet do. A youth’s mind is still limited to a relatively low level of experience. They do not yet fully know themselves, and they therefore cannot fully judge others. Their capacity for social and religious experience is still developing.

These limits matter because they tell the educator what to teach and what to wait on. At this stage, Rousseau says, the educator can begin to teach the values that the earlier stages held back. The student is ready to receive them now. But the educator should not expect the deep self-knowledge or the fully formed social judgement that only comes with more years of life. The student is on the threshold of moral life, not at its end.

This is also why Rousseau emphasises the true work of education at this stage: the inner emergence, growth, exercise, and integration of the feelings, sentiments, and passions. The work is internal. It cannot be done by external rules alone. The student has to feel their way into the moral life by exercising the feelings, watching what those feelings do, integrating them with their judgement, and gradually developing the kind of integrated emotional and moral life that adulthood requires.

The educator supports this work but cannot do it for the student. As in the earlier stages, the educator’s product is the situation in which the student can do their own development. The difference is that the development now includes the full emotional and moral life, not just the bodily, sensory, or rational capacities of earlier stages.

Flashcard

What does Rousseau mean by the *true work of education* in the youth stage?

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Answer

The inner emergence, growth, exercise, and integration of feelings, sentiments, and passions

The work is internal. It cannot be done by external rules alone. The student feels their way into the moral life by exercising the feelings, watching what those feelings do, integrating them with their judgement, and developing the kind of integrated emotional and moral life adulthood requires. The educator supports this work but cannot do it for the student.

The curriculum of the youth stage

The youth stage finally lets the educator use the curriculum tools that the earlier stages held back. The list Rousseau proposes is rich.

Knowledge of human nature and the social order comes first. The student needs to understand how human beings work and how the society around them is organised. This is essential for the integration of the youth into society as a functioning adult.

Psychology is one of the main subjects. The student should understand how minds work, including their own. Self-knowledge is the foundation on which moral judgement rests.

Sociology is the companion subject. The student should understand how groups, institutions, and societies operate. Moral action takes place in a social setting, and a moral actor who does not understand the setting will act poorly even with good intentions.

Ethics is the explicit moral subject. The student now has the faculty to receive moral instruction directly, and the educator can teach ethics openly rather than relying on natural consequences alone.

The warm experiences of the actual relations of living men belong alongside the formal subjects. Real relationships with real people teach what no textbook can. The student needs both the formal study and the lived experience; one without the other produces a half-formed adult.

Literature is taught at this stage, specifically ancient literature. The reasoning is that great works of literature contain compressed moral experience that the young person can absorb. The student lives many lives through reading and arrives at adulthood with a wider moral experience than their own years would have allowed.

Religion has a significant role in the educational process at this stage. Religion for Rousseau meant the natural religion of the human heart, not the institutional religion he had so famously criticised. The natural religion was the sense of connection to a larger order, the recognition of moral truth, the inner sense of awe and gratitude that arose in any honest person paying attention to the world. This is the form of religious education Rousseau endorsed for the youth stage.

Flashcard

What does Rousseau put in the curriculum of the youth stage?

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Answer

Human nature, psychology, sociology, ethics, real relationships, literature, and natural religion

The youth stage finally lets the educator use the curriculum tools the earlier stages held back. The list is rich because the student is now ready: psychology and sociology for understanding people, ethics for moral instruction, real relationships and ancient literature for compressed moral experience, and the natural religion of the human heart for the inner sense of connection to a larger order.