In 'Emile,' he writes about the difference between what he believes women and men need in education. In fact, he sent his own five children to an orphanage as soon as they were born. However, his ideas were never put into practice by himself it was pure theory for him. He argued that men might have desired women but did not need them to survive, while women both desired men and needed them. Frequent walks in nature inspired JeanJacques Rousseau’s thoughts and theories about the true nature of humanity and consequently childhood, upbringing and education. His pedagogical principles still have a lot to offer to modern educators. Published in 1762, Emile, or On Education, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, launched a revolution in thinking about how society should educate and rear children. According to Rousseau, women needed to rely on men for their well-being because they were less rational than men. Whether you agree on his ideas or not, it is obvious that what he saw 250 years ago hasn’t changed much. For many of us, it’s thought-provoking to see our own childhood and upbringing through Rousseau’s eyes. It was a completely different era then … or was it? This was during the times of the Enlightenment when rationality, the human mind and formal teaching were prevailing ideas. The book was burned, and Rousseau had to flee from his home in France to avoid being arrested and thrown into jail. But when the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau submitted them in his educational novel “Émile” in 1762 people took serious offence. Today, these considerations don’t seem so strange or surprising. In this way, they gain become confident and self-reliant. Therefore, according to Rousseau, the best we can offer our children is an upbringing full of freedom, possibilities to follow their curiosity and opportunities to explore and make their own experiences. In Rousseau’s view, humankind is good by nature – opposing other thinkers like Thomas Hobbes who believed that humans are inherently competitive and violent by nature.

Rousseau emile