Rousseau's educational thoughts are as follows:
1. The core of Rousseau's educational thought is the theory of natural education. The purpose of nature education is to cultivate "natural persons" whose natural nature is fully developed. This kind of person is actually a self-reliant upper petty bourgeoisie. This idea emphasizes that education must conform to the natural course of children's natural development, that is, follow the characteristics of children's physical and mental development, while respecting children's personality characteristics.
Rousseau proved this point. He understood education as "natural education", "human education" and "material education", and the latter two realized the coordination of the three on the basis of following the former.
3. Rousseau's natural education theory has some extreme views, such as the supremacy of nature, and education is regarded as natural growth. But at that time, this thought had great progressive significance in anti-feudal education. This idea of emphasizing that children are the main body of education opens the precedent of modern educational theory, and his argument initially touches on the role of heredity, environment and education in human development.
Rousseau was a great French enlightenment thinker, philosopher and writer in the18th century. He has also made outstanding contributions to the study of children's literature and is known as "the discoverer of children". Representative works include Social Contract, Confessions, Dialogue, Emile, etc.
Among them, Emile is Rousseau's most important educational monograph and the world's first novel pedagogy work, which can be as famous as Plato's Republic in ancient Greece.
Through the narrative of Emil's growth process, the book systematically expounds his educational thoughts centered on natural education and free education, and systematically puts forward a new concept of children's education in the history of western education, thus completing the "Copernican Revolution" in the history of education.