|
L’Éducation
By Frederick William
Dame
Frederick William Dame has an international education (United States
of America, Federal Republic of Germany, Great Britain) with eight degrees (undergraduate, graduate, and post graduate) in
history, English, political science-international relations, political theory, adult education, philology, and cultural relations. Mr.
Dame has educated at graduate and undergraduate levels for the United States Army, the University of Maryland, the University
of Kaiserslautern, the Fachhochschule Trier, and the Technische Akademie Kaiserslautern. In addition, Mr. Dame has been
a regular speaker for the Department of Defense Public Schools, Europe, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, and the Goethe Institut.
He has written and translated books and essays on a variety of topics in the fields of architecture, culture, history,
literature, music, philology, poetry, and politics, among other subjects. Mr. Dame has a number of hobbies. Presently,
he devotes much of his leisure time to the alpine horn.
Detailed, academic research on the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, particularly that of Stephen Ellenburg, Rousseau's
Political Philosophy; Roger D. Masters The Political Philosophy of Rousseau; and James Miller, Rousseau
Dreamer of Democracy, has shown that no pedagogical philosophy can be completely understood without investigating and
learning from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s writings. [1] Indeed, without
education civilization does not exist. Education is the medium for the transmission of civilization’s culture;
its knowledge, skills, and character. Education is the instrument that turns the animal stage into the human stage.
Only through education do human beings differ from animals. Education formulates the connection between the citizen
and the nation-state.
The philosophy of the nation-state, regardless of the system, whether it runs the spectrum of despotism to democratic republicanism,
always seeks to consolidate and imbed itself within the individual so that an allegiance to the fatherland or the motherland,
as well as a desire for the maintenance of the governmental system will emerge.[2] The theory of
education expounded by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the role that education plays in this consolidating connection between citizen
and nation-state are manifest. Indeed, education as revolution is a method of educating adults into the realization
of new, corporate, moral, civil systems as the American Revolution and its aftermath attests proves. Politics and education
are intricately linked to each another in a symbiosis that will guarantee the ever continuance of the corporate civil form.
Education surely has intimacy to the relationship of matters concerning morality, social power, and economic conditions.
The Marxist interpretation claims that education is a means to an end – the indoctrination of revolution to overthrow
any society that is not communist. The Nazi-Fascist interpretation is of the same color: to breed a selected people
for the ultimate and complete destruction of all cultures that are not Nazi-Fascist. Both views miss the point.
Education is a cause in itself. At one and the same time on two different levels that are always in contact with
each other, education is apart from and yet satisfies the needs of the populace. This is why education is necessary:
it facilitates the sociological process whereby citizens become political beings. The achievement of the status of a
political human being is exactly the content-goal that Jean-Jacques Rousseau has in mind when he uses the word education.
This content-goal far exceeds the boundaries that the general concept of education has developed into in our present times.
Education is far more than what is meant by its suggestive and popularly accepted element of "going to school."
The participants in the process of education are those who educate and those who are educated. Both parties have to
understand that the core foundation of education is set with the aforementioned characteristics in mind and the unmistaken
intention it has in the Latin word éducare, meaning to lead out, to bring up, which in turn comes from
the Indo-European deuk-, to lead.[3] In other words,
the root of the process and the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau tell us that when we receive an education we are led
out of a previous situation and brought up to a higher level. Moreover, the higher level is not only one
of mentality, but a higher level socially and politically. Education is an ever-continuing process that leads
forth from one level to another, higher and better level. Explicitly, éducation is the process of bringing
up and coming forth of leaders in society. The word education is political from the very beginning of its word root
deuk- as some of the offspring and subsequent developed family words like doge, ducal, ducat,
duchess, duchy, duke, attest.
Education was originally and primarily associated with elites who led society. At no place in his writings does
Jean-Jacques use any other word to convey what he means by éducation.[4] The word remains
the same throughout his complete works and throughout his life. Rousseau definitely does not mean the words enseigner
or apprendre. In English, both mean to teach. They cannot in any degree of stretching their meaning attain
the intent behind élever to elevate in the sense of éducation. To teach is of an
exceedingly lesser stature. To teach means to impart knowledge or skill; to give instruction to;
to provide knowledge of; to instruct in; to cause to learn by example or experience. All of these
meanings derive from the Latin dicere meaning to say, to tell, to proclaim, the ultimate origin of which is
the Indo-European word root stem deik- , meaning to show, to pronounce solemnly.[5]
Rousseau's goal in éducation is what we can term a real education, an éducation véritable, an éducation naturelle,
an éducation authentique. This means that Èmile is to learn how to go forth in life and live according to the
moral dictates of his own moral conscience. In no way whatsoever does Rousseau intend that Émile receive
a leçon, a teaching. Rousseau’s intent is simple. As he is pervasively concerned with
the original state of matters, Jean-Jacques Rousseau means that an original éducation is as much élever in the
political and sociological sense as it is in the intellectual regard. It is a criminalization of Rousseau’s originality
that modern English speaking peoples, particularly speakers of American English, use the words to educate and to
teach to mean each other without really understanding them or wanting to understand them. They do not have the same
meaning.
For Rousseau, those who received an education were, first of all, children; secondly adolescents; thirdly, adults. The
lackadaisical misuse of the word student has undergone the same, false development process. This word has no
function any more in its relationship to the real meaning because its purpose – particularly as Americans use it –
has metamorphosed into becoming one of raising expectations that cannot meet the qualifications assigned to it by its original
definition. The development is sophomoric and occurs extremely often in the pseudo-intellectual jargon of modern society:
without knowing what the substance evokes, words are used in such a way that a non-organic intent comes to the fore and the
result is that nothing more than commonplace, illogical attitudes and conceptions result. In the United States of America, particularly in urban areas and heavily populated areas like California, any person at any age whatever who goes to an institution
using the nomenclature school to learn something is a student. It is not uncommon for little children,
still babies or just out of the baby age, between two and four years old to be called play group students. When
they are finished with their play-group student days, they go through a graduation ceremony and enter kindergarten
as kindergarten students; then they become grade school students; then they advance on to the
level of junior high school students; then they attain the status of being high school students;
then the ultimata ratio is that they undertake a further stem on the pedagogical false road of rising expectations
to become a student at college, which in the United States of America is often interchanged at will with university
and vice-versa. Students, students everywhere, and no one stops to think. Students, students throughout the length and
breadth of the land, and no one really knows that the original meaning and the modern use do not really sync.[6] This is part of the
problem with the American educational system. The participants are not named what they are. The result is a misjudgment
of values and false impression of status. They are falsely led to believe in a revolution of rising expectations.
Why not call child playgroup participants toddlers (?) because that is what they do! Why not refer to those children
attending a kindergarten as pre-schoolers (?), because that is where they are! Why not name those who are in
grade school grade schoolers (?) or at most pupils (?) because as the Latin says, they are pupus (boy)
and pupa (girl)![7] Why not term those
who attend the next level, junior high schoolers, or junior high school pupils (?) because that is where
they are and what they are! Finally, why not designate those youth who go to a high school as being high schoolers,
or at best, __th graders or pre-students (?) because that is what they really are! The only exception
can be those who are child geniuses and do not attend these schools anyway. The author did not become a student until
attending university. The author did not go to college! Student, of course, has its base in Latin studēre
meaning to be diligent, to press forward. Studēre has its likely origin in the Indo-European
word roots *steud- and *teud-, which means to hit.[8] The latter
word root produced the Latin tundere, to hit, from whence we have the words contusion and obtuse, among others.
The subsurface meaning behind study is that there is a concerted application of extreme effort, or one is concerned with an
undertaking intensively. Beginning in the fifteenth century student, and to study were used only with
respect to the undertaking of an advanced degree. In the sixteenth century, they became terms that were used in connection
to the university only. Being concerned with a particular matter, and not connected with a university, like to study
a role in a drama, came into use in the eighteenth century. Historically, and in all dictionaries, the word student
is used and should be used only in conjunction with university, college, or special schools of learning such as
The London School of Economics and Diplomacy, The Chicago School of Law, The Bartlett School of Architecture, etc. The
use of student as a collective nomenclature to refer to all of those concerned with going to a school or college, or
university is an American pedagogical invention of the twentieth century.
What can we learn from this groundwork exercise? Placing the nomenclatures together, a relationship develops that surely
supports Rousseau’s concern with origins and an educational philosophy. The similitude is as follows: éducation,
élève, and étudiant is to education, elevating, and student as leçon, apprendre,
and écolier is to teaching, learning, and pupil. Does this belittle the latter part of the
comparison? Surely not! The intent is to emphasize the very logical difference.
It is in the Rousseauian, socio-intellectual-political sense that éducation became the catalyst that integrated the
Colonial populace into the new, corporate society of American democratic, republican federalism, for it showed with diligent
pursuit that through universal education – in the long run even for minorities – the complete society
can raise the level of the political awareness for their own and future generations.
Rousseau’s Plan
In Émile, Jean-Jacques Rousseau presents a plan for developing the individual according to philosophical precepts focused
on experience and sensations. There is practically no regard paid to pedagogical training according to the whims of
society. The pedagogical argumentation is that if individuals are educated in accordance with man's innate, moral nature,
the outcome will be a change in the worth of modern civilization because the human being’s original nature is good.
It is the influence of society that has corrupted that righteous nature. The development of natural human goodness and
the returning of humans to their natural state is the expedient to the reforming of society. To this end, Émile
offers a plan of education that emphasizes direct contact with the physical world and sets aside education that may be obtained
from books alone.
The pedagogical philosopher places much emphasis on discovery in the child's education. Concurrently, he acknowledges
that the child must develop a well-regulated freedom in order to lead a self-sufficient existence as an adult so that the
new citizen can better enter the social state. The freedom is not anarchy, but a morally and equitably controlled freedom
that will enable the child to come to the recognition that the greatest freedom is self-respect and respect for the morality
and justness of the laws in the new society that he will experience as an adult in the corporate. Truly this is a social
idealism because the real object of the "... étude est celle
de la condition humaine."[9] The reason of the
heart, mind, and soul is the essence of passion that preserves and guards the human condition. "Nos passions sont les principaux instrumens
de nôtre conservation, ... ."[10]
A renovation of the social order
is extremely necessary because under existing conditions (in Rousseau’s age), "... un homme abandonné dès (sic) naissance
à lui-même parmi les autres seroit le plus défiguré de tours."[11] That the process of education plays an
exceedingly important role in the renovation of society is intuitively obvious. "Nous naissons foibles, nous avons besoin de forces; nous naissons dépourvus de tout, nous avons besoin
d'assistance; nous naissons stupides, nous avons besoin de judgement. Tout ce que nous n'avons pas à nôtre naissance
cet dont nous avons besoin étant grands nous est donné par l'éducation. Cette éducation nous vient de la nature, ou
des hommes, ou des choses."[12]
The
education system that cements a country's moral and just, social structure cannot have a complete understanding without including
Rousseau's philosophy. The learning process traces some principles, shows some influence, and records transformations
of his ideas. That way of thinking is not only applicable to the development of the child, but to the continued growth
of the adult citizen, as well. For all who participate in the process of education it is important to realize that when
placed in complementary positions, both education and politics form an active, corporate framework of specific importance.
In that framework is the essence of the relationship between the nature of education and the nature of politics. Without
the interactions of education and politics with each other, it would be impossible for human beings to become political and
it would be impossible for politics to become humane; to possess the necessary degrees of humanity if political undertakings
are to succeed for the betterment of moral, just, human beings, and their moral and just society.
Our now-a-day conception and existence of public schools was not present in Colonial America. Education occurred
in the home, the church, voluntary associations, library companies, circulating libraries, philosophical societies, apprenticeships,
private study, by private tutors, and if the community felt it necessary, small schoolhouses were built in which three to
four classes were schooled in one room and taught by the same teacher at different grade levels. The educative goal
was simply to teach the youth the three Rs: reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmatic.
A fourth R that accompanied them inside and outside of school was religion.
Beginning with the early Puritan Colonists in Massachusetts,
the vehicle of education was the church. The Sunday sermon was the main literary form of education for the congregation.
It was in the Sunday services that the churchgoer could be educated in Biblical teachings, the history of classical literature,
and the history of the church. The pastor always gave immediate feedback on questions of importance. It was a
mixture of voluntary participation and a strong commitment that learning from God’s word was mandatory. If one
did not partake of the weekly Bible classes and Sunday School, where reading and writing were also taught, one would surely
got to purgatory, for according to Romans 13:2, "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power (of God) resisteth the ordinance
of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." Particularly the children were the target
group to be taught the right way because they were the gift from God. They had to be taught how to live correctly and
the proper foundation of the society was the protection of life and property. This was the interpretation that was given
to Romans 13:3, "For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil." Thus for the early Pilgrim Colonials the
Bible was the educational and cultural influence that established the social and political foundations of the early communities.
Education was not a matter for civil governments.
Children learned in the home from their parents, first from the mother who taught the children reading from the Bible and
then from the father as he taught his offspring how to till the soil and earn a living. Auxiliary books were Pilgrim’s
Progress (1678-1684) by John Bunyan (1628-1688), The New England Primer (1688-1690) by Benjamin Harris
(flourished 1673-1716) and Divine Songs (1715) by Isaac Watts (1674-1748). From such books, the youth learned
about busy bees, fowl, productive cattle, strong, loyal horses, and the responsibility of humans to Nature and vice-versa
in the cultivation of the soil and the harvest that Nature provided for the upright worker were ever continuing learning processes.
For the non-agricultural professions the youth learned that "Honesty is the best policy."[13] There were
no educational experiments that were conceived by so-called education specialists and funded by quasi-government programs.
If a family was wealthy, enough they would engage a private tutor to educate the sons and daughters in Latin, Greek, mathematics,
accounting, and bookkeeping, arts of science like surveying, and even cultural activities such as music and dancing.
In the middle of the eighteenth century in Quaker Philadelphia, evening schools taught women, blacks, poor people (who did
not have to pay attendance fees) proper English and vocations. Another religious group in Pennsylvania, the Mennonites, maintained their own schools. They still do.[14] Rich families in
the Southern Colonies engaged private tutors to teach their children at an early age. Upon having reached a certain
qualitative education in the classical languages, literature, the sciences, and cultural activities, many times the young
adults were sent to England for a finishing-off education. The offspring who could not afford such a continuing
education could choose from nine Colonial colleges that were not funded by any civil government. Harvard University, for example, was established
by a grant from the General Court of Massachusetts. John Harvard donated up to eight hundred pounds and his private
library of approximately four hundred books to the institution. Financial support came mainly from donations.
Essentially the same development occurred in New Jersey with Princeton
University and Queens College,
now Rutgers University.
No financial assistance was received from a civil government.[15] Future Americans
who could not financially or on their free time afford to get an education always had the opportunity to use libraries (They
normally had excellent books on science, the classics of ancient Greece, Rome, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance.), buy
books, which were relatively inexpensive, or join certain conversation groups hosted by a family or personage from the local
community. Philosophical societies like Benjamin Franklin’s Junto, established in Philadelphia
in 1727, or The Literary Republic of George
Rineholt (no dates) founded in Philadelphia
in 1764 were also available. Education in Colonial and later industrial America was never considered to be the responsibility of the local, civil governments
or the national government. By the beginning of the Civil War in 1860, the statistics on schools in the United States of America show that there were approximately
6000 private institutions of learning as compared with 300 public schools. This statistic is somewhat underscored by
an investigation conducted by Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) in 1800. His findings were that only four
out of a thousand Americans were illiterate.[16] The American
citizen belonged to a populace that was exceedingly literate.
Although the education of the populace in the American Colonies cannot be considered a system of learning with
the initiative residing with individual communities and supported by them and the larger political bodies, the Colonial governments,
there is definitely a relationship between education and the daily activities of politics. This relationship is quite
similar in its argumentative elements to the rendition in the section on philosophy and political character identity in
the respective section.
What is the meaning of the word education? A general description is that
education is "The field of study ... concerned with teaching and learning." Dictionary definitions say that it is "The act
or process of imparting knowledge or skill." Alternatively, we read that education is "The obtaining of knowledge through
a process of schooling." as well as "The knowledge or skill obtained or developed by a learning process."[17
|
