Volume 44, Issue 2, June 2021
Graham P. McDonough
Pages 159-186
Exaggerating Emile (and Skipping Sophie) while sliding past The Social Contract
Why Philosophy of Education Textbooks Require a Comprehensive View of Rousseau’s Work
This paper examines how philosophy of education textbooks present Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s views on women and socialization. It reviews ten texts, involving nine authors, and finds that they generally focus on the concepts of Nature, Negative Education, and Child Development from Books I-III of Emile, but severely restrict mentioning its Book V and The Social Contract. While these results implicitly reflect Rousseau’s historical influence on “progressive” educators, they do not seriously attend to well-established critiques of Rousseau’s sexism and omit acknowledging his intent that Emile’s Negative Education in Nature leads toward his socialization in the General Will.