Rousseau, the Enlightenment and early American education

Abstract

Rousseau and the Enlightenment should have been profound influences on early American education. Rousseau especially was widely read in the new nation, and Émile offered a powerful model for child-rearing in a young republic which professed to prize individualism, liberty, and citizenship. But in fact Rousseau had no such impact. He was little followed by the pedagogues of the new republic, and he has not been credited with any consequential effect by subsequent scholars. The implication of his lack of influence is plain. The new American nation was never as Enlightened—as hopeful about human nature or as suspicious of authority, as devoted to liberation or as hostile to tradition and parochialism—as American myth would have it. The resistance to Rousseau suggests that early Americans prized freedom and individuality less than conformism and collective, even coercive, control.

Keywords:

• Rousseau
• Public Schools
• Enlightenment
• Republicanism