Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who has had extraordinary influence.
According to Jan Amos Komenski man, created and redeemed by Jesus Christ, is a child in the likeness of God, called upon to fulfill the task of “mediator” between the Creator and his creatures. Education is certainly “discipline”, but this discipline presupposes the rich and natural possibilities of cooperation, provided by the pupil. In his growth through education, the pupil sets in motion all the lively potential he is endowed with: “senses, reason and faith”. Engaging “mind, hands and tongue” the pupil grows to maturity through the three capacities of “knowing, acting, speaking”.
The process, then, is characterised by “naturalness and spontaneity”, with the growing participative and active causality of the pupil: “one learns by doing”; “one builds oneself by building”. For his part the educator, more than reflecting a violent and decadent society, is the prophet of a new civil and religious world.
Formation, explains Komenski,
...should take place with the utmost delicacy and gentleness, almost spontaneously, just like
a living body grows in height step-by-step without the need of stretching or spreading out
its limbs; likewise, if you feed the body with prudence, nurture and exercise it, it will
almost unconsciously acquire height and robustness; likewise I say that, in the soul, the
food, the nourishment, the exercises, are all converted to wisdom, virtue and piety
Everyone should be educated in such a way as to attain a real rather than fictitious culture, a solid, not superficial one so that the human being as a rational soul may be guided by his own reason and not by the reason of others; everyone should get accustomed not only to read and understand the opinion of others from books, and also memorise and recite them, but to delve, by himself, into the roots of things and draw authentic knowledge and usefulness from them. The same solidity is needed for morality and piety.1329
The pupil's active role was also highlighted in the empirical world of John Locke, in his Thoughts on Education (l693). The crisis of the true absolute, the appearance of tolerance, and the birth of individualism are all linked. The starting point for an educator's activity needs to be an attentive knowledge of the aptitudes and inclinations peculiar to each individual.The starting point for this activity is childhood, in order to impede further deviations in less positive inclinations and consolidate properly oriented inclinations and passions:
The great principle and foundation of all virtues and values consist in this: that one is able
to deny oneself, one's desires, go against one's inclinations and follow only what reason
indicates as something better, even though one's natural appetites are bent toward a
different direction.1330
The method, then, should be “proportionate to a person's capacity and responsive to his natural talents and constitution. This is actually what should be looked at in education rightly conceived”. “For, in many cases, all that we can do or should long to do is to draw what is best from what nature has provided, to prevent vices and defects to which a given character is more inclined and direct it to achieve the benefits of which it is capable. Every natural talent should be helped to progress as much as possible, while it would be a wasted effort to try to graft into it a different one”.1331
When it is a question of finding a tutor for his son, a father should first of all try to find someone who
1329 J. A. Comenio,La grande didattica, in Opere, ed. M. Fattori, Turin, UTET 1974, pp. 192-193.
1330 J. Locke, Some thoughts concerning education, edited... by J. W. and J. S. Yolton. Oxford, Clarendon Press 1989,
§33, p. 13.
1331 J. Locke, Some thoughts concerning education, §66, p. 122.