Jean-jacques rousseau quotes good children
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“Hold childhood in reverence, and do not be in any hurry to judge it for good or ill. Leave exceptional cases to show themselves, let their qualities be tested and confirmed, before special methods are adopted. Give nature time to work before you take over her business, lest you interfere with her dealings. You assert that you know the value of time and are afraid to waste it. You fail to perceive that it is a greater waste of time to use it ill than to do nothing, and that a child ill taught is further from virtue than a child who has learnt nothing at all. You are afraid to see him spending his early years doing nothing. What! is it nothing to be happy, nothing to run and jump all day? He will never be so busy again all his life long. Plato, in his Republic, which is considered so stern, teaches the children only through festivals, games, songs, and amusements. It seems as if he had accomplished his purpose when he had taught them to be happy; and Seneca, speaking of the Rom
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BOOK TWO
[258:] natur wants children to be children before they are men. If we try to pervert this beställning we shall produce a forced fruit that will have neither ripeness nor flavor and that will soon spoil. We will have ung doctors and old children. Childhood has its ways of seeing, thinking, and feeling that are proper to it. Nothing fryst vatten less sensible than to try and substitute our ways. inom would like no more to require a ung child be five feet tall than that he have judgement at the age of ten. Indeed, what use would reason be to him at that age? It fryst vatten the curb of strength, and the child does not need this curb.
[261:] Treat your pupil according to his age. Put him in his place from the first, and keep him there so well that he does not try to leave it. Then before he knows what wisdom fryst vatten, he will be practising its most important lektion. Never command him to do anything, whatever in the world it may be. Do not let him even imagine that you claim to have any authority
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“ Children sometimes flatter old men; they never love them. ”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education (1762). copy citation
Context
“Were it possible, he should become a child himself, that he may be the companion of his pupil and win his confidence by sharing his games. Childhood and age have too little in common for the formation of a really firm affection. Children sometimes flatter old men; they never love them.
People seek a tutor who has already educated one pupil. This is too much; one man can only educate one pupil; if two were essential to success, what right would he have to undertake the first? With more experience you may know better what to do, but you are less capable of doing it; once this task has been well done, you will know too much of its difficulties to attempt it a second time—if ill done, the first attempt augurs badly for the second.” source