Emile: On Education

Rousseau maintains that nature teaches children best. Through walking, exploring, playing, and experimenting, the child develops a hands-on feel for the things of the world, its laws, and how to use them. The energetic lessons offered by engagement with the natural world and, indoors, with crafts can help children grow strong both physically and mentally, as they acquire a good sense of materials, develop sharp instincts, and learn to brush off the bumps and bruises of life. Rousseau laments how “we have strayed from the path of nature” (7), and Emile as a whole seeks to place nature back at the forefront of education.

If people were unnecessary to each other, they would grow up in a “state of nature” that would train them to use their powers effectively to obtain what they need from the natural world. Rousseau adamantly believe that “you must make your choice between the man and the citizen, you cannot train both” (3). When you attempt to, you produce citizens who can’t think for themselves. They band together into complex societies, especially towns and cities, where cooperation brings beneficial resources but at the cost of frivolity, greed, ambition, dishonesty, over-dependence, and toadying

Nature’s discipline teaches respect for the laws of life, humility in one’s ambitions, and reward for intelligent effort. A person who lives in the country—closer to nature—also benefits from simple good health and happiness. Of these lucky people, Rousseau also believes that “the nearer they are to nature, the more does kindness hold sway in their character” (232). Country friendships and marriages also tend to be more genial and loyal than those of the city. Nature, therefore, is the best teacher and, in its bounty and beauty, an excellent host to the good life. 

As Emile approaches the age of 20, his mind and heart—till now carefully distracted by the tutor’s many instructions and assignments—finally turn toward an interest in the opposite sex. The passions this can inflame, especially feelings of romantic love, are so intense that they can overturn years of careful training. The tutor must be on his guard and watch over the student carefully, lest the young man be lured into the corrupt world of the city’s lustful and dissolute culture. Rousseau suggests giving the student “a single occupation which he loves, and the rest will soon be forgotten” (153).

Rousseau also inoculates Emile against temptation not by lecturing him but by showing him the world of license and depravity, relying on Emile’s long training in reason and in honest dealings with others to see the folly of such a life. Emile quickly gets the lesson and wants to return to the countryside.

Once there, Emile stumbles onto a young woman perfectly suited to him, with whom he quickly falls in love. It doesn’t matter that this apparently accidental encounter is in fact carefully staged by the tutor and the girl’s parents; Emile must now navigate the dangerous seas of his and Sophy’s powerful emotions and needs, lest they founder on their own passions. “If you would inspire young people with a love of good conduct avoid saying, ‘Be good’; make it their interest to be good; make them feel the value of goodness and they will love it” (190). To this end, the tutor’s “duplicity” is actually part of the educational process: He carefully guides both Emile and Sophy toward a relationship, and eventually a marriage, that serves them both as they master the art of caring for each other.