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Texts:1980 Rousseau and American Educational Scholarship: Difference between revisions

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<p>Throughout Morley's <i>Rousseau</i>, and other works like it, the intended effect was to discourage the close study of Rousseau's work.<sup>[[#A19| A19 ]]</sup> Morley's own criticisms of Rousseau's books were extremely casual and sententious. In writing about Rousseau's more substantial works, Morley contented himself with brief, slipshod exposition, followed with rotund disquisitions on the error of Rousseau's points, however misstated, all this, a prelude to his own explanation of what Rousseau should have thought, had Rousseau been capable of right thinking and right living. Rousseau could infect others, owing to the gift of a brilliant style, and therefore the vaccine against potential contagion needed to be developed. But Rousseau could not reason systematically and there was no cumulative body of thought, carefully wrought, for which he stood, for he lacked the disposition and training, the character or intellect, to achieve such a work, and therefore Rousseau need not be studied.<sup>[[#A20| A20 ]]</sup> Rousseau reduced to the involuntary and unconscious voice of certain progressive movements is precisely where the Rousseau of the schools of education has since remained.</p>
<p>Throughout Morley's <i>Rousseau</i>, and other works like it, the intended effect was to discourage the close study of Rousseau's work.<sup>[[#A19| A19 ]]</sup> Morley's own criticisms of Rousseau's books were extremely casual and sententious. In writing about Rousseau's more substantial works, Morley contented himself with brief, slipshod exposition, followed with rotund disquisitions on the error of Rousseau's points, however misstated, all this, a prelude to his own explanation of what Rousseau should have thought, had Rousseau been capable of right thinking and right living. Rousseau could infect others, owing to the gift of a brilliant style, and therefore the vaccine against potential contagion needed to be developed. But Rousseau could not reason systematically and there was no cumulative body of thought, carefully wrought, for which he stood, for he lacked the disposition and training, the character or intellect, to achieve such a work, and therefore Rousseau need not be studied.<sup>[[#A20| A20 ]]</sup> Rousseau reduced to the involuntary and unconscious voice of certain progressive movements is precisely where the Rousseau of the schools of education has since remained.</p>
Consequently, let us start our effort to find the reasons why the history of educational thought has not become a field of scholarship by criticizing certain aspects of Bailyn's argument in <i>Education in the Forming of American Society</i>, for there are points at which Bailyn's critique was too impassioned, with the result that significant distinctions were blurred. The blurring of these distinctions made it difficult to understand precisely what caused the traditional history to be weak and what constituted Bailyn's real achievement, what gave his critique its leavening power. The main points of that critique are by now well known: the history of American education had been a repetitive, anachronistic search for the origins of the twentieth-century educational system, particularly the system of public schooling; it had been based on a narrow definition of education as schooling, one of interest to a narrow professional audience but unsuited to guide investigation of the role of education in American history; the tone of the whole endeavor arose from the effort to dignify and enthuse the educational profession, not to speak truthfully to the disinterested intellect; and the main workers in the field were set apart, institutionally and intellectually, from other American historians, content with their isolation from history as long as what they wrote had an audience in education.<sup>[[#A83| A83 ]]</sup></p>


<p>One need only survey the fruits that have followed to be convinced of the substantial validity in Bailyn's critique, and we shall see all the problems that he identified in the history of American education richly exemplified in the history of educational thought. But two questions need to be raised about Bailyn's forays into the history of education, one concerning his assessment of what caused the weaknesses in the traditional history of education, and another concerning what it was in his critique that proved so liberating, so constructive, what quality in <i>Education in the Forming of American Society</i> provoked so much further work. Let us turn to the first of these problems and probe it with some care, with particular reference to the early history of educational thought, with the hope of coming to a more precise comprehension of how and why the characteristic limitations of that history arose. Having done that, we will be able to return to Bailyn's book and better understand the reasons for its intellectual influence.</p>
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<p>During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Rousseau's educational thought received considerable attention. In 1858, Henry Barnard published a partial translation of the chapter on Rousseau from Karl von Raumer's <i>Geschichte der Pädagogik</i>. Barnard himself prefaced it with a brief survey of Rousseau's life, as survey full of misinformation and very hostile in tone "With these wretched early habits, which had strengthened his natural evil tendencies, ... he entered upon the vagrant and unhappy series of wanderings and adventures which might have been expected."<sup>[[#A21| A21 ]]</sup> Raumer, too, was no enthusiastic Rousseauist. <i>Émile</i> was a problem for nineteenth-century educators. One could not ignore it; but even more, one could not follow it. Raumer closed his exposition of <i>Émile</i> with a caution that would apply, not only to his, but also to most ensuing presentations. "The sketch which I have given of <i>Émile</i> will be made clearer by regarding it as a book at once instructive and corrupting.... Rousseau is corrupting, because he mingles truth and falsehood, good and evil, in the most cunning manner; so that good and bad are to be distinguished only by an exceedingly watchful and critical reader. I close with repeating my wish, that the proceeding sketch, and the subjoined remarks, may assist the reader in such a critical separation."<sup>[[#A22| A22 ]]</sup> All the early treatments of Rousseau in the history of educational thought propounded this caution, this attempt to separate the apparent good from the putative bad, this urge to domesticate <i>Émile</i>.</p>
<p>During the latter half of the nineteenth century, Rousseau's educational thought received considerable attention. In 1858, Henry Barnard published a partial translation of the chapter on Rousseau from Karl von Raumer's <i>Geschichte der Pädagogik</i>. Barnard himself prefaced it with a brief survey of Rousseau's life, as survey full of misinformation and very hostile in tone "With these wretched early habits, which had strengthened his natural evil tendencies, ... he entered upon the vagrant and unhappy series of wanderings and adventures which might have been expected."<sup>[[#A21| A21 ]]</sup> Raumer, too, was no enthusiastic Rousseauist. <i>Émile</i> was a problem for nineteenth-century educators. One could not ignore it; but even more, one could not follow it. Raumer closed his exposition of <i>Émile</i> with a caution that would apply, not only to his, but also to most ensuing presentations. "The sketch which I have given of <i>Émile</i> will be made clearer by regarding it as a book at once instructive and corrupting.... Rousseau is corrupting, because he mingles truth and falsehood, good and evil, in the most cunning manner; so that good and bad are to be distinguished only by an exceedingly watchful and critical reader. I close with repeating my wish, that the proceeding sketch, and the subjoined remarks, may assist the reader in such a critical separation."<sup>[[#A22| A22 ]]</sup> All the early treatments of Rousseau in the history of educational thought propounded this caution, this attempt to separate the apparent good from the putative bad, this urge to domesticate <i>Émile</i>.</p>


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<div class="anno" ID="A17">A17</div><div class="annotext">There are some interesting reflections on what it would mean to hold someone like Rousseau to be insane in a strict meaning of the word in a three-part review of Morley's <i>Rousseau</i> in <i>The Literary World</i>, April 11, 25, and May 2, 1873, esp. p. 265 (April 25).</div>
<div class="anno" ID="A17">A17</div><div class="annotext">There are some interesting reflections on what it would mean to hold someone like Rousseau to be insane in a strict meaning of the word in a three-part review of Morley's <i>Rousseau</i> in <i>The Literary World</i>, April 11, 25, and May 2, 1873, esp. p. 265 (April 25).</div>


<div class="anno" ID="A18">A8</div><div class="annotext">Morley, <i>Rousseau</i>, op. cit. (n. 12), pp. 192-5.</div>
<div class="anno" ID="A18">A18</div><div class="annotext">Morley, <i>Rousseau</i>, op. cit. (n. 12), pp. 192-5.</div>


<div class="anno" ID="A19">A9</div><div class="annotext">Peter Gay, in his useful bibliographical essay, "Reading About Rousseau," <i>The Party of Humanity</i> (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), esp. pp. 217-8 on Morley, notes the ill effects on the understanding of Rousseau's thought of the nineteenth-century proclivity to partisanship, pro and con. See also the remark by Gosse quoted above in n. 14. After the first wave of translations in the 1760' and 1770's, there were virtually no translations of Rousseau into English until the end of the nineteenth-century, judging from Jean Sénelier's <i>Biblioqraphie générale des oeuvres de J.-J. Rousseau</i> (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), a not entirely reliable source. The intention embodied in the late nineteenth-century translations of Emile will be discussed below.</div>
<div class="anno" ID="A19">A19</div><div class="annotext">Peter Gay, in his useful bibliographical essay, "Reading About Rousseau," <i>The Party of Humanity</i> (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), esp. pp. 217-8 on Morley, notes the ill effects on the understanding of Rousseau's thought of the nineteenth-century proclivity to partisanship, pro and con. See also the remark by Gosse quoted above in n. 14. After the first wave of translations in the 1760' and 1770's, there were virtually no translations of Rousseau into English until the end of the nineteenth-century, judging from Jean Sénelier's <i>Biblioqraphie générale des oeuvres de J.-J. Rousseau</i> (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), a not entirely reliable source. The intention embodied in the late nineteenth-century translations of Emile will be discussed below.</div>


<div class="anno" ID="A20">A20</div><div class="annotext">Morley, <i>Rousseau</i>, op. cit. (n. 12), Vol. 1, p. 88-9: "Rousseau was a man of singular genius, and he set an extraordinary mark on Europe, but this mark would have been very different if he had ever mastered any one system of thought, of if he had ever fully grasped what systematic thinking means.... In short, Rousseau has distinctions in abundance, but the distinction of knowing how to think, in the exact sense of that term, was hardly among them...." Ibid., p. 186: "Rousseau was always apt to think in a slipshod manner. He sensibly though illogically accepted wholesome practical maxims, as if they flowed from theoretical premises that were in truth utterly incompatible with them." Vol. 2, p. 137: "Let us here remark that it was exactly what strikes us as the desperate absurdity of the assumptions of the <i>Social Contract</i>, which constituted the power of that work, when it accidentally fell into the hands of men who surveyed a national system wrecked in all its parts. The <i>Social Contract</i> is worked out precisely in that fashion which, if it touches men at all, makes them into fanatics."</div>
<div class="anno" ID="A20">A20</div><div class="annotext">Morley, <i>Rousseau</i>, op. cit. (n. 12), Vol. 1, p. 88-9: "Rousseau was a man of singular genius, and he set an extraordinary mark on Europe, but this mark would have been very different if he had ever mastered any one system of thought, of if he had ever fully grasped what systematic thinking means.... In short, Rousseau has distinctions in abundance, but the distinction of knowing how to think, in the exact sense of that term, was hardly among them...." Ibid., p. 186: "Rousseau was always apt to think in a slipshod manner. He sensibly though illogically accepted wholesome practical maxims, as if they flowed from theoretical premises that were in truth utterly incompatible with them." Vol. 2, p. 137: "Let us here remark that it was exactly what strikes us as the desperate absurdity of the assumptions of the <i>Social Contract</i>, which constituted the power of that work, when it accidentally fell into the hands of men who surveyed a national system wrecked in all its parts. The <i>Social Contract</i> is worked out precisely in that fashion which, if it touches men at all, makes them into fanatics."</div>
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