Rousseau has a very interesting perspective on education and learning. In Rousseuau’s Emile: or A Treatise on Education, it is evident that he believes the best way for children to become educated is for them to grow up in a state of nature. He believes that instead of raising children with strict discipline and giving them formal education, they should be allowed to go explore the world and learn things on their own. He states that formal education is the wrong way to teach a child because of always-changing circumstances.

Rousseau states that a true scholar is one who can learn to adapt to many different circumstances. “We must therefore look at the general rather than the particular, and consider our scholar as man in the abstract, man exposed to all the changes and chances of mortal life. ” (Rousseau 2).  He also says that formal education is only suitable in cases where everything is perfect. “…if every man’s fortune were so firmly grasped that he could never lose it, then the established method of education would have certain advantages; the child brought up to his own calling would never leave it, he could never have to face the difficulties of any other condition.” (Rousseau 2). He is saying that a formally educated child can have a good life, only if no other problems ever arise.

I feel that Rousseau is basically trying to say that there is a difference between learning about the world from someone else inside closed walls and experiencing the real world and learning about it by yourself. Rousseau states that the best way for children to learn something is to show it to them rather than just telling them about it. “As a general rule–never substitute the symbol for the thing signified, unless it is impossible to show the thing itself, for the child’s attention is so taken up with the symbol that he will forget what it signifies” (Rousseau 16). It is evident that Rousseau believes that experience is the best teacher.