Cover of Emile, or, On education

Emile, or, On education

includes Emile and Sophie, or, The solitaries

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau · first published 2007

6mentions
3recommended by
6HN commenters
2013–2025first – last mentioned

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What Hacker News says

  • kwatsonafter · Jul 4, 2022 · Recommends

    In training academic Pedagogist here: It may be worthwhile to take a two or day three reading of Rousseau's classic, "Emile; or On Education." It gives tremendous insight into how it is that adults can have positive relationships with the children that they might be governing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile%2C_or_On_Education Rousseau…

    on “Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity” ↗
  • paganel · Jun 2, 2017 · Recommends

    Not the OP, and it's a rather old book, relatively speaking, but you might also give Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile, or On Education a chance. It's got nothing pedagogically scientific in it, at least compared to today's standards, but were I to have a kid I'd base my trying to teach him about things in life on what this book has…

    on “An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society” ↗
  • AfterHIA · Sep 27, 2025 · Recommends

    Destroying a child's social life in the name of bringing them up to a standard of state defined literacy is worse than the illiteracy. Consider Rousseau's, "Emile; or On Education." I was called a, "failing student" in school because I was sneaking off to the library to read Kant and Hegel as a teenager. I once got suspended for asking my math teacher about Godel's Completeness…

    on “Illiteracy Is a Policy Choice” ↗
  • tbirdz · Sep 5, 2013 · Mentions

    Some of the points about children learning naturally by themselves remind me somewhat of Rousseau's "Emile, or On Education" However, I don't know if anyone had been able to actually pull this off in real life. I think one downside could be for things that you have to learn to function well in society but have no natural interest…

    on “School is a prison and damaging our kids” ↗
  • wisty · Aug 25, 2019 · Mentions

    There's a Romantic (Rousseau was a major perpetrator) view of education that seems to be based mostly on just whistful thinking and novels. But I think there is a grain of truth to it. Emile, or On Education (by Rousseau) proposes an idealistic goal in which a boy is educated by a tutor (a class size of) without being 'denatured' (losing the innocence and good moral quantities that the romantics think small…

  • It is an over simplification but Rousseau does paint this picture of humanity's natural goodness corrupted by society, or what the author calls circumstance. This idea is a cornerstone of the Discourse on Inequality and Émile. Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men (1755) - “Nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive state… he is restrained by natural pity from doin

    on “You are how you act” ↗

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