Introduction:

In modern times, Rousseau was undoubtedly, the most important naturalist philosopher
of education. His most important writings are Emile and Social Contract. Emile is a
novel in which the author has described the education of Emile, an imaginary child. The
author described the methods of bringing the child in contact with Nature and removing
social evils. The child is left under the guidance of an ideal teacher away from school
and society. The teacher teaches the child in a natural environment. The book Emile
consists of five parts respectively devoted to infancy, childhood, adolescence, youth
and the imaginary wife of Emile named Sofia.

Rousseau hated society for the evils and wanted to reform it. He realized ,"Everything is
good as it comes from the hands of the author of the nature but everything degenerates
in the hands of man". Thus Rousseau, on the one hand, opposed society and praised
Nature on the other hand. In Rousseau's social naturalism, he devices education as a
method to develop society. According to him one cannot become a man and citizen at
the same time.

His aim is man making and not the making of social man and citizen. In man making
the man should follow his own inner feelings and natural tendencies. The child should
be left to behave naturally. He learns in the contact of plants, animals, birds and natural
objects. Society and man spoil the child. Thus, Rousseau pleaded for liberty and
equality. According to him education means, "natural development of organs and
powers of the child"

Negative Education:
According to Rousseau, the first education ought to be purely negative. It consists not at
all in teaching virtue or truth but in shielding the heart from vices and mind from errors.
Thus Rousseau was against imparting any education to the child. According to him, "In
childhood the aim of education is not to utilize time but to lose it".

In Rousseau's time the children were given moral and religious education through
various types of books in order to prepare them for adult life. Rousseau precisely
reversed the old order. As he said, "Take the reverse of the accepted practice and
you will almost always do right", This was what he called, negative Education.

Positive education which emphasizes the mind and trying to make the child an adult.
Negative education, on the other hand, strengthens the sense organs and the power of
reasoning. As Rousseau said, "Nature wants that the child should remain a child
before he becomes an adult. By changing this sequence we shall get raw fruits which
shall soon perish. The child has his own ways of seeing, thinking and experiencing. We
should not impose our own methods on him. It will be a folly". People do not
understand the child and assume their ideas as his ideas.

Thus, negative education is self education. It is the education of sense organs and the
body. This may be more possible in the playground rather than in the classroom. As
Rousseau said, "Whatever the child learns in playground is four times more useful than
what he learns in the classroom".

According to Rousseau man's development may be classified into the following

four stages:
1. Infancy, from birth to 5 years of age.
2. Childhood, from 5 years to 12 years of age.
3. Adolescence, from 12 years to 15 years of age.
4. Youth, from 15 years to 20 years of age.
Rousseau has suggested suitable education in all these stages in his book Emile.

Aims of Education:
In the opinion of Rousseau, education aimed at the natural development of the child's
inner faculties and powers. Education should help the child to remain alive. Life implies
not merely the taking of breath but working. To live is to work, to develop and to
properly utilize the various parts of the body, the sense organs and the various other
powers of the body. In his book Emile, Rousseau seeks to train Emile in the profession
of living so that he may become a human being before becoming a soldier, a
churchman or a magistrate. Education, thus, in Rousseau's opinion, must aim at making
the child a real human being.

But the aims of education change at different stages of the child's development,
because at each stage something different needs stress. The following are the
various aims of education according to each level of the child's development:

Infancy: This stage begins at birth and continues up to five years of age. The chief
objective during these five years is bodily development, the development and
strengthening of every part of the body. This is essential if the child is to grow up
healthy and strong. It forms the basis of subsequent healthy development of the mind.
Rousseau expressed the opinion, "All wickedness comes from weakness. The child
should be made strong so that he will do nothing which is bad". When the child is
allowed to freely engage in playing and exercising his body, he remains active and has
no time to indulge in undesirable activities. Nothing needs to be done to develop his
instincts other than to give him complete liberty. If such freedom is given, he naturally
develops his own instincts.
Childhood: This stage lasts from the fifth year to the twelfth, and it is the period of
developing the child's sense organs. This development is achieved through experience
and observation. Hence the child should be made to observe and experience those
things in his environment which will assist the development of his sense organs.

Adolescence: The child has, by this time, achieved the development of his body and
his sense organs, and is, therefore, prepared, for systematic education. At this stage,
education aims at developing the adolescent personality through hard work, guidance
and study. During adolescence the individual should be given knowledge of various
kinds so that he is enabled to fulfill his needs.

Youth: The individual passes through his youth between his fifteenth and twentieth
year and undergoes development of emotions and sentiments. Rousseau pointed out,
"We have formed his body, his senses and intelligence, it remains to
give him a heart'". Development of the sentiments will lead to development of moral
and social qualities, but it is essential to pay attention to the development of religious
emotions also. Summing up, the aim of education is to achieve the bodily, sensory,
mental, social and moral development of the individual.

Curriculum of Education:
It is possible to arrive at Rousseau's concept of a curriculum from an analysis of
the various stages of devélopment:

1. Infancy. Rousseau insisted that it is imperative to first understand child psychology

and then to frame a curriculum. Instead of giving him controlled information of various
subjects at this stage, it is far more important to pay attention to the development of his
body and his senses. Before. thinking of making the child a successful engineer or
doctor, it is desirable to make him a healthy and self-sufficient young animal. In this
stage, the child can be taught a great deal through normal conversation carried on in
the child's

mother tongue. This will develop his linguistic ability. It is better not to try and instill
any kind of habits in the child at this stage. Rousseau stated, "The only habit the child
should be allowed to contract is that of having no habits'".
2. Childhood. Even in childhood, Rousseau objected to the use of any textbooks for
education. He thought it necessary to give the child a chance to learn everything
through direct experience and observation. The child should be given liberty to learn
through experience, because experience develops the sense organs which in turn lead
to mental development, reason and development of the power of argument and
reasoning. During childhood, the child should not be given any verbal lessons history,
geography or even language. It is not desirable even to do any moral preaching.
Rousseau opined that the child will learn his morality by the natural consequences of his
own actions. Hence, up to the childhood stage no curriculum of any kind is required.

3. Adolescence. Having arrived at the appropriate level of bodily and sensory development,
the child can now be exposed to teaching according to a formal curriculum consisting of
education in natural science, language, mathematics, woodwork, music, painting, social life
and some kind of professional training. The very object of training in all these various
subjects is the training and development of the sense organs. The study of science will
enhance the child's curiosity and his inclination towards research, invention and self-
education. Painting helps to train the muscles and eyes. Handicrafts help in developing the
ability to work, apart from the mental development which is part of the process. Passing
through various phases of social life, the individual learns that men depend upon each
other, and thereby the child learns to assume and fulfill social responsibility. Rousseau
gave it as his opinion that books do not give knowledge, but only train one to talk. Hence it
is better if the curriculum for adolescence is based on active work than on books. During
this period the adolescent must get adequate opportunity and time for hard work, education
and study.

4. Youth. In the curriculum for youth, special stress has been laid on moral and religious
education. But even moral education is to be derived through actual experience rather
than through formal lectures. The youth learns a moral lesson when the sight of a
physically' handicapped person arouses in him the emotions of pity, sympathy and love.
Religious education also follows the same pattern, but it can be assisted by the teaching
of history, mythological stories and religious stories. The youth derives many lessons
from these stories.

Educational Method:
The method generally pursued in education in his time was mainly oral and theoretical,
Rousseau criticized the prevalent teaching methods. Rousseau wanted to adopt
playway method in education in place of verbal teaching. He maintained, "Education
should be practical rather than oral. The child will not have to read through books, he
will have to stop reading words''. Then, what should be the proper method of teaching
the child? For Rousseau education to the child should be provided by play. "Thus,
real education is self education. The infant himself learns to develop by utilization of
his sense organs and reacting to the environment".

Principles of Education:
Rousseau is a naturalist in his methodology of education just as much as he is a
naturalist in the curriculum of education. He has stressed the importance of the
two following principles governing the process of education:

1. Learning through self-experience. Rousseau wanted to educate Emile through

experience and not through books. He was opposed to bookish education, because he
contended that books try to teach one to talk about those things which one does not, in
fact, know. That is why he wanted to keep Emile away from books for twelve years, so
much so that he did not want Emile even to know what a book is. Rousseau has,
praised only one book, Robinson Crusoe, because it presents the natural needs of
human beings in such a simple manner that the child can easily comprehend them.
From this book the child can also learn the manner in which these needs are to be
satisfied.

2. Learning through doing. Rousseau opposed the rote method of learning on the
ground that knowledge acquired through actual doing or actual experience is far more
permanent than knowledge acquired through words. He wanted the child's power of
reasoning and not his power of memorizing things to be developed. That is why
Rousseau was so severely critical of the existing methods of education. He wanted the
child to become educated through his own observation, experience and analysis.
Instead of stuffing the child's mind with his own knowledge, the edicator's task is to
arouse the child's curiosity so that the child is inspired to find out things for himself, thus
developing his own mind.

Bangladesh Context: The elements in the theory of education of Rousseau can be

labelled as utopia. Because not all of what Rousseau said cannot be implemented in
society. In an overpopulated country like Bangladesh, all of the elements cannot be
carried out all the time. The negative education that Rousseau talked about is
somewhat improbable in a classroom crowded with more than a hundred students.
Besides, insufficient space and classrooms are the impediments to the implementation
of the theory till 12. To improve the mind and body, the students need sufficient space
and care which is absent in Bangladesh. The Educational Institutions in Dhaka city have
so limited space that they cannot accommodate the student adequately.
However, the aim of Rousseau, the development of mind and body can be
implemented. By making the study materials vivacious, students' sense organs and
introspection can be developed. Rousseau's emphasis on teaching the mother tongue
can be carried out through conversation in the classroom. Besides, the tendency of
the parents should be changed. Parents from Bangladesh always coerce their children
to be competitive at any cost and force them to get the highest marks in the class. The
pressure on the child destroys their freedom and their inclination to learn something
avidly. As society is the cause of all evil, this tendency of forcing students should be
expunged.

Efficient teachers and properly accommodated institutions thwart the implementation of

such educational method as Rousseau suggested. Moreover, the curriculum can
contribute a tremendous role in the education of Bangladesh. Rousseau's idea of
reflection of society in the curriculum can be imbued. American pragmatic
educationalist John Dewey considered the curriculum as an instrument of social
change. And the curriculum and educational institutions should reflect the society.
Thus, the possibility of the implementation of the educational method Rousseau
suggested can be introduced partially.

During Rabindranath Tagore's time, the education system at Shantiniketan, also known
as Visva-Bharati, focused on a holistic and experiential approach to learning. The
curriculum emphasized the integration of arts, literature, and music with academic
subjects. Students were encouraged to explore their creativity and express themselves
through various artistic forms. The open-air classrooms and natural surroundings
provided a nurturing environment for students to connect with nature and foster a
sense of harmony and spirituality. The emphasis was on fostering individuality, critical
thinking, and a deep appreciation for culture and humanity.