Children do not learn by themselves

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David Rabadà

All sound education should seek a method capable of provoking a genuine and applicable social lift for students. Some thinkers and educators have proposed that allowing pupils the freedom to learn by themselves is the best approach — that freedom is the key to achieving the goal of education. According to this view, young learners would, by their own means, find a way to become autonomous, civic-minded, and sociable. In this model, there would be no need for clear routines, formal subjects, or specialist teachers — only the child’s innate goodness guided by a teacher who serves more as an emotional facilitator than an instructor.

This is the school of simplistic, superficially joyful, and fundamentally misleading learning, which many educators and politicians present as innovation, though its roots lie in the benevolent philosophy of Rousseau. In other words, these ideas, so prevalent in today’s so-called innovative pedagogies, are not new at all — they date back more than 300 years. Rousseau believed that every child was naturally good, that formal instruction manipulated, corrupted, and impoverished their instincts, and therefore, learners should not be corrected. Instead, they should be allowed to freely pursue their goals without an instructive teacher guiding them. In essence, the student was to be handed over to their own freedom, placing them at the centre of the educational process.

Rousseau also argued, somewhat paradoxically, that science, literature, and the arts had morally corrupted society. According to this 18th-century thinker, it was better to let children arrive at their own pure, primitive, and untamed education, free from the influences of social instruction. Knowledge, in this view, was not the central axis of education — socialization was. It becomes evident that contemporary educational laws have borrowed heavily from Rousseau, seen in the current trimming of curricula, the reduction of subject specializations, the promotion of interdisciplinary approaches, and the emphasis on competency-based education. Some educators, academics, and politicians have labelled this approach as innovation.

Rousseau’s ideas managed to convince various philosophers, educators, and teachers such as Froebel, Beaumont, Fichte, Piaget, Dewey, Claparède, and Demolins, who, in the early 20th century, consolidated what became known as the New Education movement. This movement later influenced modern Spanish educational reforms, which have lowered academic standards for students and contributed to poor results in PISA tests. This approach has found allies in organizations such as the Fundacion Bofill, Escola Nova 21, the Plataforma para la defensa el Bachillerato, emotional education initiatives, Flipped Classroom methodologies, and other ideologies and associations which — often unknowingly — have championed Rousseau’s romantic ideals of freedom, rooted in ideas from three centuries ago. Yet, they continue to self-proclaim as innovators.

Opposing Rousseau and the prevailing contemporary educational ideology are the proponents of structured teaching, which emphasizes the transmission of knowledge, effort, and repetition of well-conducted exercises tailored to each age group. For teachers who support structured education, the primary goal is for children to learn — without distractions — to master their emotions, become knowledgeable, and focus on their studies. They argue that if a family lacks sufficient resources, society must provide not only knowledge but also adequate means to educate children. Otherwise, the social mobility that education should foster will be erased by government policies.

The debate between Rousseau’s educational philosophy and structured teaching remains very much alive today. Followers of Rousseau do not prioritize effort, guidance, or direct instruction but emphasize screen-based stimulation, playful project-based learning, and the rejection of rote memorization in the classroom. Advocates of romantic education claim that everything can be found on the internet, making it unnecessary to memorize information from books. By contrast, supporters of structured teaching argue that while the internet holds a wealth of information, it also contains unchecked and false claims, which should not be mistaken for verified knowledge. To these educators, critical thinking is built upon facts, reason, and logic. To romantic educators, however, structured knowledge is seen as a tool of manipulation that restricts an individual’s free choice in their education. They view structured and disciplined teaching as an obstacle to personal freedom.

Another fundamental difference between the two approaches lies in the role of the teacher. In structured education, the teacher is the driving force of learning, whereas in romantic education, the child is the focal point. In other words, structured educators believe that children should not be abandoned to their innate freedom; instead, teaching should help lift them out of their ancestral state. Meanwhile, romantic educators argue that children should construct their own knowledge, guided by their natural curiosity, without the risk of being manipulated by formal instruction.

Today, our educational laws lean more heavily towards Rousseau’s romantic principles than towards structured teaching rooted in knowledge transmission. These state plans are increasingly designed from offices far removed from classrooms, often influenced by so-called “chalk fugitives“. Indeed, Spanish educational laws are the product of Piaget’s romantic constructivism, which has successfully persuaded most politicians and their advisors.

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons