ETHICS OF ROUSSEAU’S PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION
ETHICS OF ROUSSEAU’S PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION

Summary/Abstract: Jean Jacque Rousseau’s conception of early childhood education indispensably, inevitably and reasonably indicates the values of child freedom in learning, and proposes the needs of respecting the freedom of the child in attempt to be formed and developed along his or her interests in contributing the development of the society he or she belongs. Outside this moral consciousness, the philosophy of Rousseau’s early childhood education calls to question the roles of the human persons in the development contents of the society in relation of curriculum contents of child mental formation, and this, Rousseau examines the directedness of early childhood education with three main concerns as principles: the Principle of Negative Education; Methods of Teaching; and the Aims of Education. Such ethical conception of child development projects that child has the right and freedom to be formed along what he or she likes being dependent on the dictates of natural law and principles, not what the society wants the child to be or study by the curriculum that is rudimentary to societal values, away from the personal values and capacities. Adopting evaluative mode of analysis therefore, the essay concludes that the ethical imports of Rousseau’s early childhood education as a basis of contemporary educational philosophy in promoting child-centred curriculum and learning, where personal potentialities and creativities of learners can be fully harnessed along the respect of natural law and freedom. With this, there are bound to be an healthy and vibrant society where integral freedom with real sense of responsibility is allow to be exercised from early stage of human development through education.

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