Customer Reviews

Emile (Everyman's Library)

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4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(1)
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(Ignore my 2-star rating, I had to put in something in order to get this review online.)

As I cross-checked the passages that most interested me with the French edition, I was surprised to find that *entire paragraphs* are left out of the Everyman's Library English translation. Allan Bloom's translation is complete, and is also quite good. And it's available in paperback. Definitely purchase the Bloom translation instead of this one.

i read this briskly for my childhood psychology class decades ago. i reread it this week. the author discusses his plentiful observations on raising a child. while some suggestions are really common sense / It is exciting to note how his observations formulated later child and developmental and educational theorists. As a psychologist AND as a dad / this is an essential resource and ought to be read by anyone who studies childhood or works professionally with children and parents. It is unduly wordy as is typical of the era. I give it a solid A and highly recommend it.

Rousseau's "Emile" is a must read for everybody who is interested in education. The book may be more than 200 years old, but many of its insights could come up in any brand new treatise about modern methods of teaching.

"Emile" is the fictitious account of the ideal education of a boy. (Maybe it was Rousseau's way of dealing with his own failures as a father.) Rousseau believes that education must be to blame for the deplorable state of the world, as "Everything is good that the Lord has made, it only degenerates in the hands of man." So Rousseau rejects the drill and cruelty of the schools of his times, he opts for freedom and learning by doing. Much of this is utopian, of course, but in one of his brilliant remarks Rousseau claims that "saying: Suggest something that can be done, is like saying: suggest what we have been doing all along."

This is one of the most brilliant books I have ever read. If you read just one book about education, make it this one, even if you are not prepared to agree with Rousseau.

This work by Jean Jacques Rousseau probably represents the single greatest work in defining what we would call education today. I am a Francophone living in Northern Ontario and so I have read just the french version, but barring that I believe that Rousseau was ahead of his time. His simple theory of education was the floor from which many other pedagogues would follow(Pestalozzi, Montessori, Itard, Séguin, among others). His theory of child development established him in all fairness, as the first psychologist of all time.

'The punishment is the natural consequence of the error' Such a novel concept for a time so tumultuous. One other statement is the following' You must begin by first knowing your children, because on the whole you do not'. Rousseau passions me and I believe him to be the reason why education turned towards the children rather than the teachers.

To conclude, I can say most assuredly that Rousseau, with his avant-garde tactics, awoke the world to the concept of an education centered around the child. If you lose the child, you lose the concept of education.

Reading Rousseau is best done before reading anything about Rousseau. This singularly original thinker has been so often maligned and misunderstood that any potential reader is usually scared off. Having heard the ugly rumors (Jean-Jacques as the the 'father of totalitarianism'), I must admit that I approached this work with some trepidation. What I found instead, was a delightful and penetrating look into the craft of educating.

Divided into five books, Rousseau accompanied his mythical Emile from the nursery to the wedding chapel, chronicling every step of the way as his pupil's sagacious tutor. Rousseau proved himself a psychologist of the first order laying open the vagaries of the child's (and possibly, every 'romantic's'!) mind. With his almost biblical use of parable and metaphor, Rousseau underscores his central theme of humanity's intrinsic nobility. This innate 'goodness' should not be educated out of the child, nor left to its own devices. Instead, Rousseau argues that it must be nurtured into fruition. Be too strict, and you murder the spirit; be too lenient, and you create a tyrant. Rousseau lays out a doctrine of wisdom, kindness, and truth. Make the child 'feel' his/her errors and he/she will err no more. With aphoristic brilliance, Jean-Jacques provides a blueprint for correct child-rearing and for a wise education. 'Reverse the usual practice and you will almost always do right...You instill vice by forbidding it...To control the child one must often control oneself.'

Jimack's translation gives the English reader a taste of just how refreshing and enlightening the original French text must be. Each sentence rolls off the page with a natural elegance and effortlessness as if it were a leaf falling to the forest floor, paving the reader's way with the bricks of a very practical wisdom. Written in the spirit of the Enlightenment, that most optimistic of times when humanity felt she had re-entered the Garden of Eden, 'Emile' does have its difficulties for the modern reader. The book's treatise on faith, 'Thoughts of a Savoyard Vicar,' fails to thoroughly examine all aspects of why we believe what we believe, while Book Five, where the grown Emile meets his partner-to-be, Sophy, amuses and often frustrates the reader with Rousseau's thinly disguised chauvinism. Rousseau held to a view distinctly unpopular nowadays; sexual roles are set by nature and best left undisturbed.

Yet, despite such anachronisms, 'Emile' is still the best educator's handbook around. It is the tree from which all modern educational theory has grown. Nurture nature and your pupils will blossom!

This was a good translation of the book, though what really stood out was a thorough introduction. For Rousseau Scholars, Emile is one of Rousseau's major works: in part a treatise on education, we find in Emile Rousseau's illustration of a major theme -- man is intrisically good, but that goodness is beaten out of him from assorted external factors.

I have enjoyed the work immensely, but it should be noted that typographical errors abound and the overall effect is one of carelessness. A single proof-read would have eliminated all the problems.

This is an interesting text that has continued to influence education since its original publication in 1762. This particular edition is nice, because of its size and being paperback, it is easily toted around.
The introduction by P.D. Jimack is interesting and well written, helping the reader to have some perspective before reading the text.

I haven't had to read this book yet for my class, but it seems to be in good shape. I believe it was a used copy...looks fine.