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| The empty child http://89.162.124.187/forum/viewtopic.php?f=154&t=2736 |
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| Author: | Anne Brit Raaen [ Wed May 23, 2007 6:31 pm ] |
| Post subject: | The empty child |
Denne analysen av en av klassikerne innen barneoppdragelse må jeg bare dele med dere: One blueprint for the great transformation was Emile, an attempt to reestablish Eden using a procedure Rousseau called "negative education." Before the book gets to protagonist Emile, we are treated to this instructive vignette of an anonymous student: The poor child lets himself be taken away, he turned to look backward with regret, fell silent, and departed, his eyes swollen with tears he dared not shed and his heavy heart with the sigh he dared not exhale. Thus is the student victim led to the schoolmaster. What happens next is reassurance that such a scene will never claim Emile: Oh you [spoken to Emile] who have nothing similar to fear; you, for whom no time of life is a time of constraint or boredom; you, who look forward to the day without disquiet and to the night without impatience—come, my happy and good natured pupil, come and console us.9 Look at Rousseau’s scene closely. Overlook its sexual innuendo and you notice the effusion is couched entirely in negatives. The teacher has no positive expectations at all; he promises an absence of pain, boredom, and ill-temper, just what Prozac delivers. Emile’s instructor says the boy likes him because he knows "he will never be a long time without distraction" and because "we never depend on each other." This idea of negation is striking. Nobody owes anybody anything; obligation and duty are illusions. Emile isn’t happy; he’s "the opposite of the unhappy child." Emile will learn "to commit himself to the habit of not contracting any habits." He will have no passionately held commitments, no outside interests, no enthusiasms, and no significant relationships other than with the tutor. He must void his memory of everything but the immediate moment, as children raised in adoption and foster care are prone to do. He is to feel, not think. He is to be emptied in preparation for his initiation as a mindless article of nature. Og så det store spørsmålet: The similarity of all this to a drugged state dawns on the critical reader. Emile is to find negative freedom—freedom from attachment, freedom from danger, freedom from duty and responsibility, etc. But Rousseau scrupulously avoids a question anybody might ask: What is this freedom for? What is its point? Fra John T. Gattos bok " Underground History of American Education". |
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| Author: | MH Skånland [ Wed May 23, 2007 9:31 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
Det er nok malapropos, Anne Brit, men kanskje du kan ha moro av å kikke på siste avsnitt i denne: Turbulence resolved. The Tempest (Siste kapittel i Haalands Shakespeare-bok, som jeg har lagt ut på www.mhskanland.net). |
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