Category Archives: Rousseau

Free post, Rousseau, Weekly Post Check-In

Multiple Ways of Learning

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“Suppose the child were stupid enough not to perceive the result of these experiments, then you must call touch to the help of sight. Instead of taking the stick out of the water, leave it where it is and let the child pass his hand along it from end to end; he will feel no angle, therefore the stick is not broken.” (Rousseau 22)

 

While reading this it reminds me of Bach’s idea of not learning anything in school. This quote in my opinion means that there isn’t one solid way of learning something. We can learn in different ways and that depends from person to person. So the quote basically says that if you can’t learn it one way than learn it another way. This can be related to Bach’s idea because he stated that he didn’t learn anything in school and thought it was a waste of time. The part when he realized he didn’t learn anything isn’t the problem that he was dumb and you cant blame the teacher as well. Different people learn differently so when Bach said for him is was a waste of time was only for him. Maybe for other students it wasn’t and they actually learned it the way the teacher taught them unlike Bach. Another idea is that when someone doesn’t know anything that doesn’t automatically mean they are “stupid” or “dumb”, it just means they require another way of learning and understanding that idea or concept. This quote supports that idea. Some people can learn through the use of words only, whereas others need visuals to better understand the idea or concept. So when teachers teach us usually through a certain way the kids who don’t understand or learn through that would have a disadvantage compared to someone who can understand the way that certain teacher teaches. This affects the grades of student and so when Bach said that grades on papers don’t say anything about a person’s education can be true to a certain extent.

 

 

Peer Response Post, Rousseau

Balance

This is written in response to Barry Sitt’s post that can be found here.

I agree with you wholeheartedly and would like to expand on your post. Some may call the concept Rousseau implies in your first quote to be a kind of tough love, but it’s actually quite cruel. I understand Rousseau’s beliefs that a child should learn for himself, but there should be guidance provided to the child along the way. Rousseau says to never make a child say “Forgive me” for “he does not know how to do you wrong…he can do nothing morally wrong, and he deserves neither punishment nor reproof” (8). A child may not be aware of right or wrong for he has no grounds to base that on, but that is especially why he should be taught. “The first impulses of nature” may not always be right – what if it is in the child’s nature to murder (8)? It may start out relatively small; he may “seize a bird as he seizes a stone,” killing it without knowing that in a few years, he will be able to look back on that memory and see his past action as morally wrong and that it happened because at the time, no one had taught him otherwise(4).

Rousseau makes a good point – no one knows how long a child may live or if a child may ever have the opportunity to become a man at all. He says that because of that, children should be allowed to live life to the fullest, and he believes that it is only through life’s most natural, lawless state that a child’s true joy can be achieved. Rousseau asks: “How do you know that all this fine teaching…will not do him more harm than good in the future?” (5) But to that, I ask: how does Rousseau know that not teaching the child at all would do him more good than harm in the future? If a child has never experienced having to sit still, he will most likely not fare well when it becomes time to start studying as an adolescent. The transition from child to adolescent will be very short and therefore too blunt. Rousseau writes: “To train a child to be really attentive so that he may be really impressed by any truth of experience, he must spend anxious days before he discovers that truth” (16).  But what if, due to a child’s freely roaming upbringing, those anxious days result in anxious years? By the time the child is expected to be a man, he would not have learned what a man is expected to know. In reference to the original post – it would be a waste not to educate a child; “Life is about being proactive.”

Instead, there should be a good balance between playtime and education, and between tough love and affection. A child will grow up well when given the appropriate amount of time to truly enjoy his innocent fun, but lessons on proper manners and morals won’t necessarily “increase suffering in childhood” (5). When formulated correctly, playtime and education in a child can turn him into a man far quicker than one alone would. The same applies with tough love and affection – if the former is the only one witnessed in a child’s upbringing, he will be hardened, and if the latter is given out too generously, a child will be too weak-hearted. A man does not rely only on himself or material objects, but on a balance between those things and other humans. Rousseau asks: “What then is human wisdom? Where is the path of true happiness?” (5) I believe the answer stems from balance.