Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an ingenious forerunner of dis¬tance education

Journal title CADMO
Author/s Emma Nardi
Publishing Year 2020 Issue 2020/2
Language Italian Pages 18 P. 19-36 File size 426 KB
DOI 10.3280/CAD2020-002003
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Tickled by a mother who wanted to teach botany to her four-year-old daughter, Rousseau composed eight letters between 1771 and 1772, which are as many lessons, given that, in each letter he deals with the study of a family of plants, starting from the observation of a flower and then deriving its general characteristics. Rousseau did not have any visual support but, with his well-known wis¬dom, and only using language, he created a small masterpiece that could be defined as ante litteram distance education. This article reconstructs the teaching aspects implicitly used by Rousseau and means to show how his is not a simple report of information, but a great lesson in teaching methods for the development of observation skills and lexical development.

Keywords: Teaching, botanics, lexicon, rhetoric, observation.

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  4. Rousseau, J.-J., OEuvres complètes, sous la direction de Bernard Gagnebin et Marcel Raymond. Paris: Gallimard, Éditions de la Pléiade, 1964-1995.

Emma Nardi, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, un geniale precursore dell’istruzione a distanza in "CADMO" 2/2020, pp 19-36, DOI: 10.3280/CAD2020-002003