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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  

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Education. The aim of education is to prepare the
individual to make the best of the spontaneity and
initiative which allow him to play his full part in
society. If he is restricted in his self-expression owing
to the division of labor, education must supply him
with the facilities and the vicarious experience which
make up a full personality. Plato's concern with the
“citizen” must be complemented by the concern with
Rousseau's “man” (homme). “Life,” says Rousseau in
Émile, “is the trade I would teach him (my pupil).
When he leaves me,... he will be neither a magis-
trate, a soldier, nor a priest; he will be a man” (Oeuvres
complètes,
IV, Paris [1969], 252). Pestalozzi translates
Rousseau's educational ideas into practice, and his
assistant-masters, Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg and
Friedrich Wilhelm Froebel, spread them all over
Europe. Professional education, foreshadowed by the
emphasis of the Encyclopédie and the resulting innova-
tions, becomes universal. Education for citizenship
comes to complement economic and political reform
where there is a politically active and emancipated
citizenry, as in England (where Fellenberg's methods
were introduced by Lord Brougham). Where there is
little political participation, as in Germany, education,
like art and historiography, provides a haven for those
who resign themselves to “seeking Greece with their
souls” rather than putting into practice the reformist
aspirations of Faust and Wilhelm Meister.