Published in 1762, as its title indicates it, lÉmile, or Of education of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a treaty of education or, as well, a treaty on “art to train the men”. It remains, today still, one of the works most read and most popular on the subject, so much so that on Japan, the authority of the development of the child imposes on all the teachers nursery schools the reading of the Emile .

The first four books describe the ideal education of a young fictitious boy, Emile, and are ordered chronologically, approaching, stage by stage, the educational questions which emergent as it grows. The last book treats education of the girls starting from an other fictional example: Sophie, raised and educated to be the wife of Emile.

Parallel to the properly teaching theories, the Emile includes/understands celebrates it Profession of faith of the Savoyard Vicar (delivers IV), which provides, on the religious ideas of Rousseau, of invaluable indications. She wanted to be a model as for the manner of introducing young people with the religious questions. The character of the Savoyard vicar would interfere the characters two monks that Rousseau had known child: the Gaime abbot, of Turin, and the Gâtier abbot, of Annecy.

Book I: 0/2 years: infans

It is primarily treated, in this first book, of the physical development of the child… Book I of the Emile treats infans, of the child who does not speak yet. The humbler gestures of the nurse are already directed towards fine the aiming: to prevent that nature is not opposed and that the infans does not discover that it can order by signs

Book II: childhood 2/12 years

For Rousseau, this age must less be that of the books that where and multiply the relations between Emile and the world extend, in order to develop the directions, and to accustom the child to proceed, starting from the significant data, with deductions.

This book is concluded for the example from a boy for whom this phase of education succeeded. The father takes along the child to make kite, and asks him to find the position of the kite starting from its shade. Although one did not learn how to him to do it, the child, having developed his capacity of comprehension of the physical world, and its capacity to proceed to inférences, reaches that point without sorrow. (In a certain manner, there is, in this approach the premises of the method Montessori).

Book III: 12/15 years, the old one of the force.

Here, starts to put the question of the choice of a trade. Rousseau regards as necessary the training of a manual trade, less for economic reasons that for company names: the training is an average ideal of socialization

Book IV: 15/20 years puberty

The fourth book is particularly devoted to the love and the religion. The Profession of faith of the Savoyard Vicar - often published separately -, which examines the origins of the faith, was the object of multiple controversies.

Book V: the adulthood, the marriage, the family, and the education of the women

Moment of the meeting of Sophie, who constitutes a transition between Book IV - in which the development of the body produces the opening on others and the awakening with sexuality - and end of the pedagogy of Rousseau, which consists in training a citizen right. The meeting of Sophie is at the same time meets in love, but as entered the social life, by the marriage and the family life as that supposes. Emile will have on the regulations of his governor to leave Sophie temporarily, to return to him citizen. It is there that appear the moment of the voyages on the one hand, in order to include/understand manners and uses of other people and thus to be able to choose most suitable, and the moment of the summary of the “social contract”; these two stages are two faces - one practices, the other theoretical one - of the same teaching: to assimilate the bases and the reasons of the civil society, however corrupted then. Because where that Emile went, it is the private interest, the abuse of power, and the deterioration of the State which reigns. Where to live when all is corrupted? The choice will be the following: where Emile was born; Which will be the function of the man educated according to nature in the middle of a perverted institution? Emile will avoid to the maximum this perversion while living in shift, where manners and the uses are most stable; its mission will be to exert its nature, i.e. to be right, and to found a family with Sophie. It is the moment of the paternity of Emile who marks remainder the end of his education.

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