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Rational education of children

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Quotations from a text by Emilie Lamotte (1908)
by Benoît Labourdette (2019)

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Education in which the child is not the first artisan
of his education is more dangerous than profitable.

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How to educate the child?

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How to make him a man
and not a slave?

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It is necessary for the child
to educate himself,

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not only because forced attendance
is detrimental to its development,

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not only because what he discovered
is more fixed in his mind than what he learned,

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but above all because the "ability
to discover is the first and most precious of all;

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the one that needs to be cared for, maintained,
developed with the greatest care and respect".

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Let us not lose sight of the fact
that providing answers in advance

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to the child who does not question
means stopping the momentum of research,

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making his mind lazy,
atrophying his sagacity.

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It is impossible to argue that the current education system
has any effect other than to depress the child.

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The child must be boldly
considered as a genius to whom

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the material of his discoveries and 
the instruments of his experience must be provided.

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There is no one method 
that is suitable for all children.

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Everyone demands
an appropriate culture.

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All faculties, including memory,
have their mode of acquisition,

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varying from one individual to another:

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this one determines what he hears, 
this one needs to read to retain;

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this one observes when he wants, 
this one when he can;

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this one the exact and limited things, 
this other one the imponderable things;

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one child will show equal 
ability in all branches

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while another will mark a tendency to specialize 
against which the most loyal efforts will fail.

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Naturally, we can only rely on the child
himself to know in which direction

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he will embark with joy and passion,
that is, with profit.

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I know what a smile serious teachers
would crush me with if they heard me,

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but I think that if instead 
of considering the child as a being

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 to whom we must infuse the science we possess,
and as evidenced by diplomas;

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we boldly considered him as a genius
to whom we must provide

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the material for his discoveries
and the instruments for his experiments,

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the result would be 
a harvest of geniuses.

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So it is a question of resolutely getting out of the rut, 
of enabling the student to learn,

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to experiment himself, to be himself 
the first artisan of his education.

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Emilie Lamotte
"Rational education of children" (excerpts)

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Text published in the monthly journal 
"L'idée libre" in 1922

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direction, images, sound
Benoît Labourdette 2019