Jean-Jacque Rousseau's Philosophy Of Education

According to Jean-Jacque Rousseau, it was the responsibility of the school to teach in a way that every habit, skills, attitudes which had been handed down generation to generation be transferred, unchanged to each new generation. Rousseau advocates enjoyable education, and he did not want Emile, the boy in his book, to be taught anything formal, not even reading. Rousseau also was opposed to the teaching of fables and fairy tales to young minds as he feels that they could be quite misleading for fresh minds. This was emphasized through his negative education concept which suggested that a child’s mind should not be stuffed with information but instead the child learn on his/her own accord. The child was to be on his own and exploration and

He was of the opinion that every boy and girl should be educated to his/her limit and that providing education should be the responsibility of the state, not the parents. Babies and toddlers should be taught by using the play method; they learn unconsciously as they play happily in a natural atmosphere with their parents or elders and also learn moral virtues from them until the age of seven. Plato emphasized the teaching of gymnastic, for the physical training of the body, and also the teaching of music, for the creative and expressive mind development. During elementary school, subjects like poetry and literature should be taught. Plato opined that storytelling would be an essential tool for forming a child’s character. However, he also said that the creation of fables and legends have to be strictly supervised as it could backfire instead, if children were scared off by stories of monsters and horrors of hell, and make them cowards instead. By now, they would have reached a higher level of maturity to study subjects like literature and philosophy. Plato was of the opinion that women and men were equal and should be taught the same skills as men. After the age of seventeen, youths should be brought to the battle field to learn real life experiences. Later, between the ages of twenty-five to thirty years, they should be trained at mathematics and calculation for about ten years. The fifth stage is when they do dialectical training for about five years, and at the sixth stage, the student is ready to enter his/her real life. The one aspect of education that was emphasized by Plato was moral and ethical education. Plato was a strong believer of a good moral education to produce dutiful and responsible citizens. Plato’s preferred method of teaching was by question and answer, argument and