ROUSSEAU AND DEWEY, THEIR PERSPECTIVE IN EDUCATION

BASED ON EMILE AND LABORATORY SCHOOL

Asmi Rusmanayanti
Dosen Pendidikan Bahasa Inggris, FKIP UNLAM Banjarmasin
Abstract
Nowadays, there are many research have conducted to know more
educational theories. They are trying to know more about the history of
education whether about the educationalist, the ideas, the influence and else.
This paper will review a little bit more about Jean Jacques Rousseau and
John Dewey. You will see some theories about education. Moreover, you
will also see whether there was a similarities and differences between
Rousseau and Dewey as educationalists or not, and their influence to the
next educators.
Keywords: education, educationalist

INTRODUCTION
Rousseau and John Dewey were two of the towering figures in philosophy of
education. Rousseau, a great philosopher and composer of the Enlightenment whose
political philosophy influenced the Revolution, had known with many his spectacular
books which one of it was Emile. Moreover, Dewey, a founding figure of Pragmatism,
exercised a significant influence on American education. Originating in very different
philosophical settings, their ideas on education tend to represent polar opposites. These two
thinkers voices have a relevance that continues to speak to us about the problems of
education.
Why should those concerned with education study Rousseau? He had an unusual
childhood with no formal education. He was a poor teacher. Apparently unable to bring up
his own children, he committed them to orphanages soon after birth. At times he found
living among people difficult, preferring the solitary life. What can such a man offer
educators? The answer is that his work offers great insight. Drawing from a broad
spectrum of traditions including botany, music and philosophy, his thinking has influenced
subsequent generations of educational thinkers - and permeates the practice of informal
educators. His book mile was the most significant book on education after Plato's
Republic, and his other work had a profound impact on political theory and practice,
romanticism and the development of the novel (Wokler 1995: 1)
Moreover, how about John Dewey? What are the similarities or the differences
between Rousseau and Dewey as educationalists? What is the characteristics of Rousseau
in teaching and learning activities, based on the Emile? What is the characteristic of Dewey
for American education? Do they have any similarity or the differences between Rousseau
and Dewey? Those questions perhaps across to our mind if want to know more about the
Rousseaus and Deweys perspective in education.

A Brief About Rousseau and Dewey

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 - 1778) was born in Geneva (June 28) but became
famous as a 'French' political philosopher and educationalist. Rousseau was brought up first
by his father (Issac) and an aunt (his mother died a few days after his birth), and later and
by an uncle. He had happy memories of his childhood - although it had some odd features
such as not being allowed to play with children his own age. His father taught him to read
and helped him to appreciate the countryside. He increasingly turned to the latter for
solace.
John Dewey (October 20, 1859 June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher,
psychologist, and educational reformer, whose thoughts and ideas have been greatly
influential in the United States and around the world. He, along with Charles Sanders
Peirce and William James, is recognized as one of the founders of the philosophical school
of Pragmatism. He is also known as the father of functional psychology; he was a leading
representative of the progressive movement in U.S. schooling during the first half of the
20th century.
Rousseau and Dewey Perspective on Education
Rousseau set out his views on education in mile, a semi-fictitious work detailing the
growth of a young boy of that name, presided over by Rousseau himself. He brings him up
in the countryside, where, he believes, humans are most naturally suited, rather than in a
city, where we only learn bad habits, both physical and intellectual. The aim of education,
Rousseau says, is to learn how to live, and this is accomplished by following a guardian
who can point the way to good living. Moreover, the book is based on Rousseau's ideals of
healthy living. The boy must work out how to follow his social instincts and be protected
from the vices of urban individualism and self-consciousness.
For John Dewey, education and democracy are intimately connected. According to
Dewey good education should have both a societal purpose and purpose for the individual
student. For Dewey, the long-term matters, but so does the short-term quality of an
educational experience. Educators are responsible, therefore, for providing students with
experiences that are immediately valuable and which better enable the students to
contribute to society.
Rousseau; emile and Dewey; Laboratory school
Rousseau set out his views on education in mile, a semi-fictitious work detailing the
growth of a young boy of that name, presided over by Rousseau himself. He brings him up
in the countryside, where, he believes, humans are most naturally suited, rather than in a
city, where we only learn bad habits, both physical and intellectual. The aim of education,
Rousseau says, is to learn how to live righteously. This is accomplished by following a
guardian who can guide his pupil through various contrived learning experiences. Emile
was banned and burned in Paris and Geneva as soon as it was published for the
controversial section Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar, but despite, or perhaps
because of this reputation, it became a European bestseller. Furthermore, during the French
Revolution, Emile served as the inspiration for a new national system of education The
book is based on Rousseau's ideals of healthy living. The boy must work out how to follow
his social instincts and be protected from the vices of urban individualism and selfconsciousness.

The text is divided into five "books"; the first three are dedicated to the child Emile,
the fourth to an exploration of the adolescent Emile and the final book outlines the
education of his female counterpart, Sophie, and Emiles domestic and civic life. The
growth of a child is divided into three sections, first to the age of about 12, when
calculating and complex thinking is not possible, and children, according to his deepest
conviction, live like animals. Second, from 12 to about 16, when reason starts to develop,
and finally from the age of 16 onwards, when the child develops into an adult. During this
stage, the young adult should learn a skill, such as carpentry. This trade is offered because
it requires creativity and thought, but would not compromise one's morals. It is at this age
that Emile finds a young woman to complement him.
Book I
In Book I Rousseau discusses not only his fundamental philosophy but he also begins
to outline how one would have to raise a child to conform with that philosophy. He begins
with the early physical and emotional development of the infant and the child.
Stage 1: Infancy (birth - 2 years). The first stage is infancy, from birth to about two years.
(Book I). Infancy finishes with the weaning of the child. The only habit the child should be
allowed to acquire is to contract none... Prepare in good time form the reign of freedom and
the exercise of his powers, by allowing his body its natural habits and accustoming him
always to be his own master and follow the dictates of his will as soon as he has a will of
his own. (mile, Book 1 - translation by Boyd 1956: 23; Everyman edn: 30)
Stage 2: 'The age of Nature' ( 2 - 12). The second stage, from two to ten or twelve, is 'the
age of Nature'. During this time, the child receives only a 'negative education': no moral
instruction, no verbal learning. He sets out the most important rule of education. The
purpose of education at this stage is to develop physical qualities and particularly senses,
but not minds.
Stage 3: Pre-adolescence (12-15). The urge for activity now takes a mental form; there is
greater capacity for sustained attention (Boyd 1956: 69). The educator has to respond
accordingly. Our real teachers are experience and emotion, and man will never learn what
befits a man except under its own conditions. A child knows he must become a man; all the
ideas he may have as to man's estate are so many opportunities for his instruction, but he
should remain in complete ignorance of those ideas which are beyond his grasp.
Stage 4: Puberty (15-20). Rousseau believes that by the time mile is fifteen, his reason
will be well developed, and he will then be able to deal with he sees as the dangerous
emotions of adolescence, and with moral issues and religion. Most of Book IV deals with
mile's moral development. (It also contains the statement of Rousseau's' his own religious
principles, written as 'The creed of a Savoyard priest', which caused him so much trouble
with the religious authorities of the day).
Stage 5: Adulthood (20-25). In Book V, the adult mile is introduced to his ideal partner,
Sophie. He learns about love, and is ready to return to society, proof, Rousseau hopes, after
such a lengthy preparation, against its corrupting influences. The final task of the tutor is to
'instruct the young couple in their marital rights and duties' (Boyd 1956: 130).
Book II
The second book concerns the initial interactions of the child with the world.
Rousseau believed that at this phase education should be derived less from books and more

from their interactions with the world, with an emphasis on developing the senses, and the
ability to draw inferences from them. Rousseau concludes the chapter with an example of a
boy who has been successfully educated through this phase. The father takes the boy out
flying kites, and asks the child to infer the position of the kite by looking only at the
shadow. This is a task that the child has never specifically been taught, but through
inference and understanding of the physical world, the child is able to succeed in his task.
In some ways, this approach is the precursor of the Montessori method.
Book III
The third book concerns the selection of a trade. Rousseau believed that it is necessary that
the child must be taught a manual trade, which was rare for the time. He believed that the
benefits were not merely economic but also social: that the practice of apprenticeship was
ideal for integrating the child into society, and providing him with appropriate role models
of how to live his life.
Book IV
Once Emile is physically strong and learns to carefully observe the world around him, he is
ready for the last part of his educationsentiment. Emile is a teenager at this point and it is
only now that Rousseau believes he is capable of understanding complex human emotions,
particularly sympathy. Rousseau argues that the child cannot put himself in the place of
others but once adolescence has been reached and he is able do so, Emile can finally be
brought into the world and socialized.
Book V
In this Book V, Rousseau turns to the education of Sophie, Emiles wife-to-be. This
brief description of female education sparked an immense contemporary response, perhaps
even more so than Emile itself. Rousseau begins his description of Sophie, the ideal
woman, by describing the differences between men and women in a famous passage: In
what they have in common, they are equal. Where they differ, they are not comparable. A
perfect woman and a perfect man ought not to resemble each other in mind any more than
in looks, and perfection is not susceptible of more or less. In the union of the sexes each
contributes equally to the common aim, but not in the same way. From this diversity arises
the first assignable difference in the moral relations of the two sexes.
Dewey and The Laboratory School - 1896 (January)
Dewey polarizes two extremes in education -- traditional and progressive education.
Educational progressivism is the belief that education must be based on the principle that
humans are social animals who learn best in real-life activities with other people.
Progressivists claimed to rely on the best available scientific theories of learning. Given
this view of human nature, a progressive teacher desires to provide not just reading and
drill, but also real-world experiences and activities that center on the real life of the
students. A typical progressivist slogan is "Learning by Doing!"
John Dewey came to Chicago in 1894 with his wife, Alice Dewey, to start a school in order
to test his theories of learning. In January, 1896, a new elementary school opened its doors
in a house on 57th Street and embarked on one of the most important educational
experiments of the new century to come. In three rooms with a large backyard and within
sight of the neighborhood public school 16 students gathered under the guidance of John
Dewey, a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. Deweys intention was to

challenge conventional conservative attitudes about childhood education and to discover

how a school could become a cooperative community.
The curriculum was resembling to the culture-epoch curriculum in the progression from
early stages in human history to later ones. Yet, he found the unifying concept in the
OCCUPATIONS.
Deweys curriculum was a historical recapitulation, not in the historical stages (like culture
epoch), but rather in the evolution of basic social activities.
Thus, curriculum built around the social occupations would provide the harmonizing
bridge between individual and social ends, as also tie the parts of the curriculum together.
The subjects were taught from the social perspective. History: provided insights into the
social life of the people with a particular emphasis on their typical occupations, that served
to shape the social life.
Dewey thought that the way to achieve coordination between the individual development
of the child and the social environment the child lives in is to make a school a kind of
miniature community, where the child lived, participated and contributed, where the child
individuality would at the same time used to enrich the social community. The value of the
school was that the work should be directed toward what is value for the child at present,
but not a preparation for the future life.
The miniature community school should give the opportunity for the city child to
experience and feel a sense of real purpose
Dewey formulated the criticism for developmentalists by tracking the interest in the child
through three major developmental stages:
Political interest in the child (proper training of the child in the interest of a desirable
social order, the child was not treated as an individual);
Aesthetic interest (child is an ideal of a lost innocence, a child becomes a plaything of an
adult in an effort to make life more bearable);
The scientific interest in the child, was related to the first previous. Dewey told that it
was sentimental primitivism that prevented the fruitful blending of 2and3.
There are four characteristic childrens instincts: social (communicative), constructive (the
desire to make things), the expressive impulse, growing out of first two, and the artistic
impulse. The impulses were connected to the primitive life (culture-epochs theory
implied).
Dewey says that once we have a theory of experience, then as educators can set about
progressively organizing our subject matter in a way that it takes accounts of students' past
experiences, and then provides them with experiences which will help to open up, rather
than shut down, a person's access to future growth experiences, thereby expanding the
person's likely contribution to society. Throughout, there is a strong emphasis on the
subjective quality of a student's experience and the necessity for the teacher of
understanding the students' past experiences in order to effectively design a sequence of
liberating educational experiences to allow the person to fulfill their potential as a member
of society.
Key principles of the school, based on Dewey:
1. Education must coordinate social and psychological factors.
2. The school is a miniature community.

3. Laboratory school (Chicago): testing of theories.

4. Methodical approach.
5. Problem-based in a realistic context.
6. Reality of everyday life.
7. Communication, conversation, construction, and creativity.
8. No spirit of competition.
9. No division into grades.
Basically there are some similarities and differences between Rousseau and Dewey in
Education. Those will be elaborate quiet detail in the column below.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
John Dewey
1. French (Western Philosophy)
1. American (Western Philosophy)
th
2. 18 century
2. 20th century
2. Famous as a French political, 2. Famous as an American philosopher,
philosopher, and educationalist.
psychologist, educational reformer.
3. On education; Emile as one of his ideal Known as the father of functional
view of education.
psychology.
4. Related to Emile, He said that Society is 3. Laboratory School, to actualize his
bad.
pedagogical
theories/beliefs
which
5. Focus on nature.
provided.
6. Let him know nothing because you 4. School needs to be related with society,
have told him, but because he has learnt that was why school should be the miniature
it for himself. Let him not be taught of the society.
science, let him invent it. If ever you 5. Education and democracy are intimately
substitute in his mind authority for reason, connected.
he will cease to reason; he will be a mere 6. Given this view of human nature, a
plaything of other people's opinion....( Let progressive teacher desires to provide not
him know . . . for himself, The idea of just reading and drill, but also real world
letting the child learn things for himself now experiences and activities that center on the
seems a commonplace assumption in most real life of student, learning by doing.
progressive schools but was a relatively
revolutionary concept in 18th century 7. Dewey believed that learning was active
France. It is perhaps here in Book III that and that children came to school to do
Rousseau's and Dewey's pedagogical things; that learning arithmetic would come
principles most closely coincide.)
from learning proportions in cooking or
7. The way Rousseau teach Emile when figuring out how long it would take to get
they wanted to find the way back home from one place to another by mule. History,
from Montmorency, was also the same with how people lived, geography, what the
Deweys idea trust in childs own activity climate was like, and how plants and
(experience)
animals grew, were important subjects. It is
just the same idea as Rousseau when
Rousseau as Jean-Jacques wanted to teach
Emile about geography to Emile to the
forest name Montmorency.

The story than start at the next morning when Jean suggest a walk before lunch. Then JeanJacques and Emile get lost and did not know how to get back to their house. Then mile,
panic and start to in a sweat and crying hot tears. In this situation Jean-Jacques teach Emile
about geography and astronomy in a casual or daily life-teaching. He asked Emile to think
about the knowledge that they had learned the day before. About North, and South.
MILE: But yesterday we could see the forest, and here we cannot see the town.
JEAN-JACQUES: That's the problem . . . If we could only find our position without seeing
it.
MILE:Oh! my dear friend!
JEAN-JACQUES: Didn't we say the forest was
MILE: North of Montmorency.
JEAN-JACQUES: Then Montmorency must be---MILE: South of the forest.
JEAN-JACQUES: We have a way of finding the north at noon.
MILE: Yes, by the direction of the shadows.
JEAN-JACQUES: But the south?
MILE: What can we do?
JEAN-JACQUES: The south is opposite the north.
MILE: That is true; we only need to find the opposite of the shadows. Oh, there is the
south! There is the south! Montmorency must be over there! Let's look for it over there!
JEAN-JACQUES: You could be right; let's follow this path through the woods.
MILE, clapping his hands and letting out a cry of joy: Oh, I see Montmorency! There it
is, right in front of us, in plain view! Let's go have lunch, let's eat, let's run fast! Astronomy
is good for something.
Be sure that if he does not say this last phrase, he will think it -- it does not matter which
so long as I do not say it myself. He will certainly never forget this day's lesson as long as
he lives, whereas if I had made him imagine all this in his room, my speech would have
been forgotten the next day. One must speak as much as one can by actions and say only
those things that one cannot do.
CONCLUSION
Rousseau's gift to later generations is extraordinarily rich - and problematic. mile was the
most influential work on education after Plato's Republic. There were some similarities and
also differences between Rousseau and Dewey.
For example, Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has
learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him invent it. If ever you substitute
in his mind authority for reason, he will cease to reason; he will be a mere plaything of
other people's opinion....( Let him know . . . for himself, The idea of letting the child learn
things for himself now seems a commonplace assumption in most progressive schools but
was a relatively revolutionary concept in 18th century France. It is perhaps here in Book III
that Rousseau's and Dewey's pedagogical principles most closely coincide.
But there are also many differences, such as Rousseau said that society is a bad thing,
based on Emiles book, but for Dewey children should learn how to live in a society and
that was the reason why school should be the miniature of the society. It is important to
understand that, for Dewey, no experience has pre-ordained value. Thus, what may be a
rewarding experience for one person, could be a detrimental experience for another. The

value of the experience is to be judged by the effect that experience has on the individual's
present, their future, and the extent to which the individual is able to contribute to society.
Deweys intention was to challenge conventional conservative attitudes about childhood
education and to discover how a school could become a cooperative community.
In John Deweys experiential learning theory, everything occurs within a social
environment. Knowledge is socially constructed and based on experiences. This knowledge
should be organized in real-life experiences that provide a context for the information. The
teachers role is to organize this content and to facilitate the actual experiences which are
based on the capabilities and readiness of the learners. The quality of the experience is the
primary component of the theory. Upon completion of the experience, learners have
knowledge and ability to apply it to differentce situation. Therefore, they have created new
knowledge and are at a different level of readiness for continued acquisition and
construction of new knowledge.

REFERENCES
A. Rosenberg, 1990. Rousseaus Emile: The Nature and Purpose of Education. In: J.
Willinsky (ed.), 1990. The Educational Legacy of Romanticism. Calgary: Wilfrid
Lauri University Press, pp. 11-32.
Dewey,J. (1938) Experience and Education. New York. Samon and Schuster.
Harms, W., & DePencier, I. (1996). Experiencing Education, 100 Years of Learning at The
University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. University of Chicago Laboratory
Schools. Chicago
J.J. Rousseau, 1991 [or. 1762]. Emile [translated by Allan Bloom]. London: Penguin
Books, pp. 7-8, 165-186.
Kliebart, Herbert, M. (2004) The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893-1958 (Third
edition). New-York: Routledge.
Michele Erina Doyle., & Mark K. Smith (2007) Jean-Jacques Rousseau on education, the
encyclopedia of informal education, http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-rous.htm.
Retrieved December 12th, 2007.
--- . (2007). Jean-Jacques Rousseau. http://Jean-Jacques_Rousseau. Retrieved December
12th 2007
http://www.ucls.uchicago.edu/about/history/education.shtml