Emile: On Education

Author Jean-Jacques Rousseau appears often in Emile as the boy’s tutor, guiding Emile from near-infancy until the boy becomes a man. As a character in the story, Rousseau exhibits great foresight and planning, staging events sometimes months in advance that will teach the child important lessons.

Outside the book, Rousseau serves as a tutor for many years; his is not armchair advice but teachings hard-won from experience. As a writer, Rousseau releases Emile and The Social Contract in 1762. Both books are banned in France and Switzerland but become popular across Europe and influence generations of democrats and revolutionaries.

The iconic tutor takes an oath to guide and instruct his pupil until he becomes a man. His purpose is to help the child learn not the dreary scholarship and social niceties taught to most high-born children but the more vigorous lessons imparted by the natural world. The purpose of this instruction is to develop in the student the traits of self-reliance, curiosity, and inventiveness which will afford him the freedom and independence of mind he would not acquire under the standard educational system. Rousseau sometimes inserts himself directly into Emile as the tutor, especially in Book 5, when he undertakes the difficult task of helping his student make his way safely through the dangers of the social passions.