Emile, or On Education

Rousseau's treatise on education, written as the story of a tutor raising an imaginary pupil, Emile, from birth to marriage. It begins from the claim that everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of things and degenerates in the hands of man, so education should protect the child's natural development rather than impose adult habits. Book I deals with infancy, Book II with childhood to about twelve: no reading or moral lectures, only learning from things and from the consequences of actions. Book III, for early adolescence, teaches useful knowledge and a trade, with Robinson Crusoe as the only book. Book IV, on adolescence, turns to compassion, social feeling and religion, and contains the 'Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar', a natural religion without revelation that led to the book being burned in Paris and Geneva. Book V describes Sophie, Emile's future wife, whose education is designed around pleasing and serving men, a view criticised by Mary Wollstonecraft and many since.

It founded child-centred education, and its ideas about learning by experience, stages of development and the dangers of social vanity still influence teachers and parents.