Session Information
17 SES 09, Rousseau and the First Builders of a New Science of the Child. Claimed and Controversial Lineages end 19th – beginning 20th Century
Symposium
Contribution
The symposium aims at analyzing the different receptions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s oeuvre, more particularly Emile, in the pedagogical milieus of Europe at the end 19th and in the first decades of 20th century. In this period, the expansion of educational systems was accompanied by a renewal of pedagogical reflection taking many different forms: seminars, societies, and congresses, editorial means were dedicated to the construction of a new field of knowledge that also aimed at renewing pedagogical practices. Reformist milieus, among them the emblematic New Education Fellowship (1921, NEF) aspired also to the same improvement, advocating a Copernican revolution for pedagogy that puts the child into the center of educational action as opposed to either the teachers or the programs as the central focus. Many of the main figures of this new science of the child and of the pedagogical renewals proclaimed the oeuvre of Jean-Jacques Rousseau as their inspiration. Rousseau was raised to the rank of the Copernicus of pedagogy. He was said to have initiated pedagogy’s renaissance in claiming the necessity to recognize the children’s specificity, to adjust educational action to their supposed natural development, to promote their freedom and autonomy, and to favor their learning as they utilized their interests and natural curiosity.
NEF’s journals Pour l'Ere nouvelle, das Werdende Zeitalter, the New Era testify as do the writings of their editors like the globe-trotter of New Education Adolphe Ferrière; and the fact that the psychologist and physician Claparède decided to place his Institute of Educational Sciences under the heading of Rousseau.
This proclaimed lineage is also controversial, the more so as Rousseau’s writings on education allow for many interpretations. For some, his negative education was the only really active one; for others, his call for autonomy and freedom disappear when one looks at his pedagogical proposals that put forward the dominance of the master – tutor and governor; for still others, his optimism about human beings and the child hides, in fact, a fundamental pessimism. The symposium is dedicated to the study of the controversies that excited the representatives of New Education movements, such as child psychology and educational sciences, in inviting historians of education with complementary approaches, research problems, and points of view.
Obviously, the controversies are still vivid if one looks at the many events and publications that commemorate the 300th anniversary of Rousseau’s birth (1712-2012) and the 250th anniversary of his Emile and Contrat Social (1762).
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