The harsh demands and regimentation are shown, for instance, in the daily timetable and the syllabus. The children arose at 5:00 am, and there was almost continuous instruction with frequent Bible reading and religious lessons until 7:00 in the evening. The grammar school had lessons in reading, writing, basic mathematics, catechism, the Holy Scriptures, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, optionally another Oriental language, geography, history, mathematics (including astronomy and geometry), botany, zoology, mineralogy, anatomy, and theology, as well as lathework, glass polishing, field trips to observe trades, factory work, horticulture, and so forth. These latter subjects were counted as “recreation.” The pansophic idea of Comenius was being followed here, in the sense that there was to be an all-encompassing education. It is worth noting that Francke was actually trying to inject realism into education—promoting, as he did, scientific subjects, lessons in manual skills, planned field trips, and even the reading of newspapers in the classroom. Johann Julius Hecker
Johann Julius Hecker came to Halle shortly before Francke’s death in 1727 and became a teacher in the Pädagogium. In 1739 he was summoned by Frederick I of Prussia to Berlin, where he established a six-year Realschule, or “realist school,” designed to prepare youth for the Pietistic and Calvinistic ideal of hard work and, especially, for the new technical and industrial age that was already dawning in countries such as England and France. Godliness was to be combined with a realistic and practical way of life. As early as 1699 Francke had conceived the idea of a school for children who were not meant for scholarship but who could serve usefully in commercial pursuits or administration, and in 1739 one of his teachers, Christoph Semler, published a pamphlet proposing such a “mathematical and mechanical Realschule.” It was Hecker’s fortune to put these plans into realization. His school included, among other things, classes for architecture, building, manufacturing, commerce, and trade. Both the exact sciences and manual skills were in the curriculum. A room for natural history specimens, geographic maps, and realia was set aside for the illustration of lessons. Schools like Hecker’s were gradually opened in other cities. In the 19th century, courses were extended to nine years, and such an institution was renamed Oberrealschule, or “higher realist school.” Thenceforth it was one of the main types of German secondary education. Hecker also compiled the general school regulations (1763) that formed the main outlines of the Prussian school system. The background and influence of naturalism
Pietists emphasized Christian devotion and diligence as paths to the good life; Enlightenment thinkers focused on reason and clear thinking as the sensible way to happiness. Rousseau and his followers were intrigued by a third and more elusive ideaclass="underline" naturalism. Rousseau, in his A Discourse on Inequality, an account of the historical development of the human race, distinguished between “natural man” (man as formed by nature) and “social man” (man as shaped by society). He argued that good education should develop the nature of man. Yet Rousseau found that mankind has not one nature but severaclass="underline" man originally lived in a “pure state of nature” but was altered by changes beyond control and took on a different nature; this nature, in turn, was changed as man became social. The creation of the arts and sciences caused man to become “less pure,” more artificial, and egoistic, and man’s egoistic nature prevents him from regaining the simplicity of original human nature. Rousseau is pessimistic, almost fatalistic, about changing the nature of modern man.
Émile, his major work on education, describes an attempt to educate a simple and pure natural child for life in a world from which social man is estranged. Émile is removed from man’s society to a little society inhabited only by the child and his tutor. Social elements enter the little society through the tutor’s knowledge when the tutor thinks Émile can learn something from them. Rousseau’s aim throughout is to show how a natural education, unlike the artificial and formal education of society, enables Émile to become social, moral, and rational while remaining true to his original nature. Because Émile is educated to be a man, not a priest, a soldier, or an attorney, he will be able to do what is needed in any situation.
Illustration of Émile from Émile; or, On Education (1762), by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.Photos.com/Thinkstock
The first book of Émile describes the period from birth to learning to speak. The most important thing for the healthy and natural development of the child at this age is that he learn to use his physical powers, especially the sense organs. The teacher must pay special attention to distinguishing between the real needs of the child and his whims and fancies. The second book covers the time from the child’s learning to speak to the age of 12. Games and other forms of amusement should be allowed at this age, and the child should by no means be overtaxed by scholarly instruction at too early an age. The child Émile is to learn through experience, not through words; he is to bow not to the commands of man but to necessities. The third book is devoted to the ages from 12 to 15. This is the time of learning, not from books of course but from the “book of the world.” Émile must gain knowledge in concrete situations provided by his tutor. He learns a trade, among other things. He studies science, not by receiving instruction in its facts but by making the instruments necessary to solve scientific problems of a practical sort. Not until the age of 15, described in the fourth book, does Émile study the history of man and social experience and thus encounter the world of morals and conscience. During this stage Émile is on the threshold of social maturity and the “age of reason.” Finally, he marries and, his education over, tells his tutor that the only chains he knows are those of necessity and that he will thus be free anywhere on earth.
The final book describes the education of Sophie, the girl who marries Émile. In Rousseau’s view, the education of girls was to be similar with regard to naturalness, but it differed because of sexual differences. A girl cannot be educated to be a man. According to Rousseau, a woman should be the centre of the family, a housewife, and a mother. She should strive to please her husband, concern herself more than he with having a good reputation, and be satisfied with a simple religion of the emotions. Because her intellectual education is not of the essence, “her studies must all be on the practical side.”
At the close of Émile, Rousseau cannot assure the reader that Émile and Sophie will be happy when they live apart from the tutor; the outcome of his experiment is in doubt, even in his own mind. Even so, probably no other writer in modern times has inspired as many generations as did Rousseau. His dramatic portrayal of the estrangement of natural man from society jolted and influenced such contemporary thinkers as Immanuel Kant and continues to intrigue philosophers and social scientists. His idea that teachers must see things as children do inspired Pestalozzi and has endured as a much-imitated ideal. Finally, his emphasis on understanding the child’s nature had a profound influence by creating interest in the study of child development, inspiring the work of such psychologists as G. Stanley Hall and Jean Piaget. The Sensationists
A group of French writers contemporary with Rousseau and paralleling in some ways the thought of both Rousseau and Locke are known as the Sensationists, or, sometimes, the Sensationist psychologists. One of them was Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, who, along with Voltaire, may be said to have introduced Locke’s philosophy to France and established it there.