Émile and the Discovery of Childhood

In 1762 Rousseau published Émile, or On Education, a novel-like treatise following an imaginary boy raised by a tutor. Rousseau argued that children are not small adults: they pass through stages, learn best through experience and curiosity, and should be shielded from adult vanity and rote lessons until they are ready. Émile learns geography by getting lost and science by observing nature. The book helped shape new ideas about childhood, influencing educators such as Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi.

It also had sharp limits and contradictions. In Book V, the girl Sophie is educated only to please and serve her future husband, a view Mary Wollstonecraft later attacked. And Rousseau himself had placed his five children in a Paris foundling hospital. A section called the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar, which favored natural religion over church teaching, led the Parlement of Paris to condemn the book and order Rousseau's arrest.