Early Years Pioneers: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau have had a profound influence on Western views about both childhood and child-centred education. Although it is doubtful whether he was the founder of child-centred educational theory, he was undoubtedly one of its most influential exponents.

Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712. He was left motherless as a small child and abandoned by his father at the age of ten. He is best known as an 18th century philosopher who wrote a number of major texts, including Emile and The Social Contract.

Emile, published in 1762, is an account in five books of the development of a fictitious pupil who is in the care of a tutor (effectively Rousseau himself). In his books Rousseau depicted the pupil Emile as being naturally good, innocent but vulnerable and entitled to freedom and happiness. The advocacy of children being born 'good' was in stark contrast to the prevailing views about childhood at the time, particularly those held by the Catholic Church. So controversial were Rousseau's views that copies of Emile were 'sentenced to burning on the streets of Paris' (Darling, 1994).