Emile, or On Education

Emile, or On Education is a 1762 treatise by the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the nature of education and human development, which Rousseau himself considered the best and most important of his works. Rather than offering practical parenting advice, it uses the fictional pupil Emile and his tutor to explore how a person might keep their natural goodness while still living within society, opening with the claim that everything is good as it leaves the hands of its maker and degenerates in the hands of man. It argues for learning through sensory experience and direct contact with the world rather than through books alone, especially in early childhood, and it introduces more complex sentiment and social feeling only as the pupil matures into adolescence. The work had a lasting influence on educational philosophy, shaping the design of France's national education system during the Revolution and, through Noah Webster's adaptations, early American schoolbooks. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/