Jean Jacques Rousseau was an 18th century philosopher who advocated a naturalistic view of education and human development. In his work Emile, he outlined 5 stages of human growth: infancy, childhood, preadolescence, adolescence, and young adulthood. For each stage, he described characteristics and appropriate types of learning. His philosophy emphasized allowing children to develop naturally according to their instincts and experiences at each stage. He also advocated for a child-centered approach where the tutor gently guides learning rather than imposing formal instruction.

2. Jean Jacques Rousseau
Proponent of Naturalism in the late
eighteenth century
Emile
Confessions
Discourse on the Arts and Sciences
Discourse on Political Economy
The Social Contract

3. • Rousseau’s political and educational
philosophy was his belief that human
character should be form according to nature.
• Two forms of self-esteem
1. amour de soi – “love of oneself”
2. amour prope – “selfishness”

4. • Rousseau’s concept of childhood sharply contrasted with the
view of the child that was dominant when he wrote Emile.
• In Emile, Rousseau identified the following stages of
human growth and development
1. Infancy – birth to five
2. Childhood – from five to twelve
3. Preadolescence – from twelve to fifteen
4. Adolescence fifteen to eighteen
5. Young adulthood – eighteen to twenty.

5. Infancy – 1st Stage
• During the first stage, infancy, from birth to age five,
human beings are helpless and much must be done to satisfy
their needs.
• The human being, as a natural creature, is governed by
instincts and experiences, feelings of either pleasure or pain.
• The human beings, at this age are incapable of abstract
reasoning and moral judgement.

6. Childhood – 2nd Stage
• Marked by a growing physical strength and the ability to do
more for one’s self, is a time when the instinct to self-
preservation is strong.
• It was a time for exercising and training the senses.
• Rousseau also warned against the “youthful sages”.

7. Preadolescence – 3rd Stage
• Emile began to learn about the relationships and utility of
objects.
• Emile reads Robinson Crusoe

8. Adolescence – 4th Stage
• Emile is ready to enter the world of social relationships.
• Nurtured sense of amour de soi

9. Young Adulthood– 5th Stage
• Aware of moral relationships, experiences values of justice
and goodness that arise from his primitive affections but are
now enlightened by reason.

10. •In considering these
stages of human
development, it should be
pointed out that for all
his liberalism, Rousseau
remained much of a male
chauvinist.

11. Naturalist Themes in Education
• Nature and the natural
• Naturalist epistemology
• Human growth and development from Naturalist
perspective.
• Naturalist view of curriculum
• Teacher-learner relationship in the Naturalist context

12. Nature and the Natural
• For Naturalist in education, nature and “the natural” were
the key elements in their educational theory.
• In many commentaries, the Naturalists in education are
referred to as reformers who were rebelling against
supernaturalism, religious indoctrination, classicalism, and
verbalism in education.
• The Enlightenment philosophes and the education
Naturalists were revolutionary in their questioning of the
old order.

13. Epistemology, knowing and Naturalism
• Naturalists, influenced by the Enlightenment, saw reality in
each individual rather than in the whole.
• Sensationalist theorist such as Ettienne de Condillac and
educational reformers such as Pestalozzi saw the source of
error lying in both abstraction and speculation, which were
not based on finely tuned or accurate sensation.

14. Epistemology, knowing and Naturalism
• Pestalozzi referred to his great discovery as Anschauung, a
term which meant the forming of clear concepts from sense
perception.
• Francis Parker, a father of American progressivism, stressed
nature study in which children, by means of field trips and
excursions, studied nature first hand.

15. Epistemology, knowing and Naturalism
• William Heard Kilpatrick, a leading progressive, devised the
project method that relied on selected aspects of Naturalism.
• John Holt, a neo-Rousseauean, in his advocacy of child
freedom, would argue that children constructed their own
reality as they explored their environment.

16. Axiology, Values, and Human Nature
• Rousseau rejected both Calvinist view.
• The curriculum and instruction should come from the child’s
nature.
• A “noble savage”, the natural person is direct, forthright,
and unaffected.
• For Rousseau, Pestalozzi, and other Naturalists, the love of
self and self-esteem gradually radiated outwardly over the
association with other persons.

17. Human Growth and Development
• Instead of preparing a person for an appropriate social or
economic role, Naturalists construe appropriateness as being
correct for the person’s readiness and development.

18. Naturalism and the Curriculum
• For the Idealist, Realists, and Thomist, the liberal asrts and
sciences were highly regarded as the funded wisdom of the
human race and as ideal subject matter for cultivating the
human intellect. In contrast, Rousseau, disputing the value
of the arts and sciences. For some who studies them, the arts
and sciences contributed to amour prope.

19. The Teacher and Learner
• The tutor is a person who is completely in tune with nature.
• An educator who is not in a hurry to have Emile learn,
is patient, permissive, and nonintrusive.
• The tutor, portrayed in Emile, is an almost invisible
guide to learning.

20. The Teacher and Learner
• Rousseau’s tutor in Emile was prophetic of the child-
centered teacher of modern progressive education.
• For critics such as Jonathan Kozol and John Holt, the
teacher creates a rather open-ended and nonprescriptive
environment in which children create their oen subjective
realities by exploring their own world of learning.