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1. Jean Jacques Rousseau, Emile, Book Two

Greg Shaw
-Softened by the echoes of history, Rousseau's vision, once electric, now only glows with the faint shimmer of a cherub's rosy cheek. Will it take as strong a stand to instill into society as brightly a principal of open-minded listening to ascertain and respect the specific capabilities of each individual child?

Stephanie K Dalquist
-Emile is his ideal child, but did Rousseau ever get a chance to even approximate his educational theories?
-What sort of direct experience did he have with children?
-It seems unrealistic/impossible to raise a child entirely outside of the society/culture around which it lives..."I have never heard of a child left alone killing himself or doing himself serious harm..." Rousseau wrote this in France, 1961. What is the difference in location or geography that makes this statment not true today, in the US?
-Rousseau claims that children do not need to learn more than one language because it would require the comparison of ideas that they can barely comprehend. Does he ever make account for the apparent comprehension of languages by children, and the lessons they learn in using the language (ie overgeneralizaton of grammatical rules (learning the common use of -ed for the past tense, saying "swimmed," until learning swam, etc.)

Petra Chong
-p.45: "Actually children's lies are all the work of their teachers. They try to teach them to tell the truth and in doing so teach them to lie." continued ... ".. I take care not to accuse Emile or to ask: 'Was it you?' Nothing could be more indiscreet than such a question, especially if the child is guilty." I find this attitude towards lying very interesting. Is Rousseau suggesting that it is better to avoid asking incriminating questions altogether?
-This does seem sensible to me because asking a question like "Did you have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky", does really only invite the answer "I did not". Is it better to hide wrongdoing by not mentioning it at all, than to lie about it? I am not convinced that this is a good way to teach children the difference between right and wrong.

Max Bajracharya
-Rousseau seems to argue that the rules of society (including language) should not be learned first, but rather the natural concepts that have led to these rules. But is this actually possible today, where a child is expected to integrate into society (school, etc) so early?

David Mellis
-Rousseau seems to argue that the rules of society (including language) should not be learned first, but rather the natural concepts that have led to these rules. But is this actually possible today, where a child is expected to integrate into society (school, etc) so early?

David Mellis
-Rousseau argues that children should not be told things (either commands or explanations), but rather allowed to experience the world for themselves. Our society seems to feel the opposite way, and places an emphasis, in some households, on rationally explaining decisions, and in others, giving orders. Letting children explore the world for themselves seems rare. Why is this? Is raising a children in the method Rousseau advocates possible? Desirable?

Mike Ananny
-Rousseau's notion of childhood as stages is interesting because it, from a sociological perspective, it is comparable to Vygotsky's stages of psychological development. However, whereas Vygotsky sees psychological stages as compounding and leading to each other, Rousseau seems to view stages of sociological development (e.g. the acquisition of reason in the face of social environment) as discrete and non-interacting. So, do you think that a child's sociological development can be more carefully controlled and discretely developed than a child's psychological development (which might progress on its own)?

Char DeCroos
- Consider how Rosseau connects dependance on things as being acceptable for raising the innocent child, while connecting dependance on man as a folly. Do you think that the prevailing view of raising children has taken an opposite view of this i.e. dependance on things to be avoided while dependance on fellow human beings as being all right?

Adam Smith
-"He (Emile) has acquired all the reason possible of his age, and in doing so has been free and as happy as his nature allowed him to be." How do you measure the potential for a child?
-Does IQ, work ethic or countenance play a varying or equal roles?

Jenwa Hsung
-So is it all Rousseau's fault that the history education in the American school system sucks so much, and that before fifth grade all of mathematics eduction is boring repetitive arithmatic? Because we can't "reason" until after that?
-Even if children can only understand things directly in relation to themselves, why shouldn't they be able to be sympathetic in the form of imagining how events would feel if applied to them? Rousseau allows them enough imagination to be afraid of the dark, after all.

David Spitz
-Rousseau objects to the use of reason in early education. In what ways does the tale of Pinocchio both affirm and deny Rousseau's assumptions?

Anindita Basu
-Rousseau claims to be liberating children in allowing them to be free and to stay in their natural states, but isn't he severely limiting their development and their liberty by not giving them the option of studying or advancing morally?
-Won't it be at least as difficult for Emile to begin moral development after experiencing such a different upbringing as it is for a child who underwent a typical upbringing? He seems determined to keep the child mentally ignorant and physically independent.

Jeannie R Ben-Hain
-Is it just me or does he contradict almost everything he says? He first says that self-esteem is of little consequence and then he contradicts himself later on in the book. He wants to keep a child in his place but without placing restrictions on it and not giving it any orders. Except in the same book he talks about "childproofing" a room. He claims that children cannot distinguish right from wrong, yet expects them to learn it solely from experience. How is a chile supposed to learn morality if when he does something wrong he is told that "the furniture had broken of itself"?
-Another question I had was about his insistence that children do not have an active sense of smell. Why then do we have so many products that do simulate this sense? (Scratch and sniff stickers, smelly markers, etc.)

Hilarie Claire Tomasiewicz
-In reference to raising a child, Rousseau states with certainty, "Do the opposite of what is usually done and you will almost always be right." (41) From his statement, then, can we assume that the influence of culture on a child will almost always be "wrong?"

Walter Dan Stiehl
-It would be interesting to see how abusive Rousseau's ideas of leaving a child alone to determine things would be in today's modern society? Specifically the section on the child breaking the windows in his room and being left in his room to suffer a cold as a result of his actions.

Girim Sung
-Rousseau argues that "children need to be educated differently" and that the "less they learn about studies and social life the better." While these methods seem to help create "better" people, will they help in equipping children with the tools to survive this world? If a child has super senses, a cultivated curiosity, a strong morality, but no discipline, this child might not be able survive in this harshly competitive life.
-If the child is forever enjoying the present moment and care-free of the future, will the child even have a future to enjoy? The reason we invest so much in the future is because we strongly believe that we will enjoy a rewarding and happy life as soon as we reach the "future which flees as we advance." Some sacrifice in the present moment is needed, to invest in this future.

Raffi Krikorian
-Rousseau mentions at the end of the paper "the clock strikes and all is changed. in an instant his eye grows dull and his merriment disappears." why does rousseau promote this large and instantaneous change in a child's life?
-Why is there no more preparation given to shift from childhood to youthhood or adulthood?
-Why is there not a gradual movement?

Jennifer Chung
-Would Rousseau advocate televison/movies? Rousseau writes (ironically) about how reading makes one adopt the ideas of someone else. He also makes a point (possibly the same one) about how reading isn't enough; watching, experiencing, etc. and engaging the senses are the way to go. So television, etc., gives children the ability to use their sense of sight and hearing, as opposed to the imagination Rousseau thinks they don't have. So, is Pinocchio the Disney movie better than Pinocchio the book?
-What Rousseau make of Chubby Maata's upbringing? Kind of contrary, as her society seems to be promoting reason. But I'll bet he would find it interesting, as the child does, in a way, get taught about liberty to choose and freedom of thought, etc., with the adults making sure she doesn't end up picking incorrectly, however. (I think.)

Brandy Evans
-First, although there were many places where I disagreed with him (and many where I agreed), I laughed when I read about how children simply are not able to learn a second language before the age of twelve, given what we know about language acquisition now. Right after that, when he talks about fables, he says that children are likely to not draw the morals that you would expect from them, but often the opposite of what the fable is meant to teach. But isn't the fact that they can extract any moral at all from a story proof that they are capable of the kind of reasonable thinking he says they aren't capable of?

Melanie Wong
-On page 38, He says "We shall have youthful sages and grown up children." What is so wrong with this? Isn't this just stereotyping child and adult behavior?

Daniel Huecker
-Given his views on the positive nature of the child, how would he respond to the story of Pinnochio? Would Pinnochio's behavior be due to his upbringing (realizing that he had none)?

2. Theodore Zeldin, "Children" in France: 1848-1945

Greg Shaw
-While many of the French parenting principals seem slightly odd from an American point of view, none seem wholly so, differing only in degree, not fundamental approach. Do the French see us the same way, or do we appear to be fundamentally odd parents to them?

Stephanie K Dalquist
-The end of the article, discussing the 1950's, mentions the separation of families, etc. Did this make for an era of adolescents/adults with somewhat impaired interaction skills?
-Or did they learn through observation of the other families, as mentioned? If so, how has this affected the currentinteractions among families, which are now the children of those children?

Petra Chong
-Does the rise of the concept of children's innocence have anything to do with the need or desire for Western society to see itself as more refined/civilised than the savage cultures of the rest of the world?
-I remember reading diaries/journals written by explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries which describe certain practices of Polynesia/Asian societies (freely available sex, sex at a young age). These journals were written before it was seen as undesirable for the writer to impose his own judgement on the events, so it was clear that such practices were disapproved of and that Western society was far more civilised. If Western children were more innocent (more pure) than children/people of other societies, does this then not prove that Western society is more civilized.

Max Bajracharya
-Zeldin mentions that for the French, "liberation came only after childhood, and that is why Americans think the French had a greater capacity for enjoying adult life, instead of looking back on childhood, as Americans do, as the happiest time of their life, when everything was allowed" (342). So, do American parents gain fulfillment by reliving their children's innocence and French parents from seeing their children grow out of their childhood?

David Mellis
-Zeldin mentions Alain and Durkheim, both of whom drew a distinction between the spheres of family and school and the purposes each serves. Was this distinction a new idea at that time (1930's). What does our society see as the function of the educational system with regards to upbringing and in contrast to the role of the family?

Mike Ananny
-What is the role of the school in relation to society and the family? Zeldin outlines three clear influences on the child's life: family, society and school (where the child develops his/her own social circle). Should school be a bridge between the family and a child-constructed society and should a child's group of friends and family complement each other? Or should children use school as an opportunity to explore a completely *different* set of values distinct from their family's?
-Zeldin points out differences between French and American approaches to incorporating a child's friends into the family and Durkheim argues that family alone is incapable of giving a child a completely adequate upbringing. So, should friends and family contradict or compliment?

Char DeCroos
-Is the child more difficult to satisfy than an adult?

Adam Smith
-How do you classify typical American? In this article which compares French children to American, I consistently think of families all over the spectrum.

Jenwa Hsung
-Did anyone in France actually follow Rousseau's advice?
-Is seems almost as if he was dismissed as a radical and not actually put into practice. What changed to break the cycle of people simply doing to their children what their parents did to them, and instead complaining about their parents in very public forums?

David Spitz
-Zeldin points to three spheres that exert a contradictory influences on French children: the school, the home, the peer group. What are the unique properties and influences of these spheres? Does one of these spheres have more influence than another? What do we make of the fact that the spheres themselves can be so highly segmented (mother, father, grandparents, baybitters; neighbors, classmates, bullies; good teacher, bad teacher, etc.)?

Anindita Basu
-From Rousseau through the child-rearing experts discussed in Zeldin, there seems to be a large gap between sense and reason that cannot be resolved in children. Is this common in other cultures or something particularly French?
-Is a balance between the two viewed as possible and/or desirable? Does the same division apply to women and are girls raised to be reasonable as well as boys?

Jeannie R Ben-Hain
-It seems that what we were talking about in class regarding the extension of childhood into later years shows up here. The ideas that the awakening of sexual desire should be repressed and postponed can also be applied to the ideas of "growing up". Its interesting that they say that a child must look at "marriage more as ... a moral responsibility of great dignity than carnal relations". But isnt this precisely what women were taught about marriage? They got married to make children and have them rise to higher social circles.

Hilarie Claire Tomasiewicz
-"Conservatives like Villele sought to maintain primogeniture because they believed that emotions were too fragile a basis for the family's existence."(315) If a family isn't almost solely built and strengthed by each member's emotional bonds to one another, then just what exactly is the glue that holds families together?

Walter Dan Stiehl
-How could people really treat their children "Like dogs?" This statement really is amazing to me.

Girim Sung
-Zeldin talks about the changing perspectives of raising children. Some conservatives believed that coldness and distance (aristocratic), authority and respect(even to the point to treat children like dogs), were essential in raising children. Others believed that children should be treated with affection and that there should be more emphasis on a child's well-being and opinions. With this approach, parents were afraid of raising a spoiled child (tyranny of the child). Was there ever a model that suggested or tried to describe an approach that would allow a parent the freedom of Rousseau's methods, but the practicality of Dupanloup's methods?

Raffi Krikorian
-zeldin's paper keeps mentioning the historically different ways of raising children in france, and she mentions at the end that the french don't have a dr. spock to turn to. why is that? why does a dr. spock character emerge in the united states?
-What causes a country like the US which is made of many different immigrants and cultures come up with one authority figure for childraising, but a country like France which is of one culture not have a single figure to turn to?

Jennifer Chung
-I found the quote "Quinet so dreaded his father that even at the age of fifty he did not dare help himself to food at his father's table, and when once he did, he was given a sermon by his mother" to be startling. Was Quinet a father by that time, and if so, how was it that even ascending into fatherhood, a boy could still be unable to come to the same level as his own father?
-Related, later on Zeldin says Alain wrote that "relations between the child and his father were necessarily difficult, particularly in the case of boys." Why in the case of boys? One would imagine that fathers would more easily identify with sons than daughters. (Perhaps fathers remembered their own distanced fathers strongly enough that being close to the sons was more difficult, because of the pre-bias; whereas, with girls, fathers don't have any similar unpleasant recollections?)
-Comment about Dupanloup -- "The great enemy of the child was parental egoism, ambition and vanity, which too often sought to push the child into a job unsuited to it." But if Dupanloup says children shouldn't have pride or sensuality, masturbate, etc., did he ever consider that *that* may have been in the nature of the child, and thus shouldn't be suppressed? I suppose one doesn't want societal abnorms to be present in one's kids, although it's okay if kids end up less respectable than their parents would have wished.
-Comment in general -- I also think Valles is a twit. But perhaps that's because I'm reading through a filter, and should find the original French before I create an opinion... Renard is better off critically, because he strives to explain his parents, I think (although understanding doesn't mean he loves them).

Brandy Evans
-At the very end, talking about American and French families in the park, I was just wondering - if French children are "much readier to play with children of all ages, unlike the Americans who divided into age groups cutting across families," why does it also say that they would only watch children from other families?
-How can you say they are so ready to play with kids of all ages when you also say that they don't do it?

Melanie Wong
-In this article as well as Rousseau's, there is a reoccurring theme that expelling the evil in children is more important that primarily teaching the good. Is this reflective of religious beliefs of the time that time, and ones that still exist today of natural sin?

Daniel Huecker
-Zeldin points to the church as a powerful influence on the rearing of the child, but how much is the church really just a reflection of the society it exists in? If the institution is a mirror of the society, and the society is reflection the values of the institution-- where is the source?

3. Carlo Collodi, Pinnochio

Greg Adams
-At face value Collodi makes the accusation that children's deepest innate desire is to get something for nothing; therefore, children must be explicitly trained by adults to appreciate the value of work by repeated exposure to negative consequences in reaction to the child taking something without just compensation. Couldn't this also be merely a hypothetical transcript of the thoughts kids have internally as they construct a model of how to behave for themselves?

Stephanie K. Dalquist
-(p.131) Pinocchio, after losing his father and his sister, questions who will look after him, make him a new jacket, etc., finding himself in the reality of a situation posed hypothetically to Chubby Maata. Was this sort of questioning at all a part of the time/place of Collodi's writing?

Max Bajracharya
-The piece of wood in the story had the wit of a child before it had the physical embodiment of one. In a sense, Gepetto is only the agent of the embodiment, but not the personality, of Pinocchio. As Pinocchio's embodiment becomes more "real" (he eventually becomes a boy), so does his integration into society and the control Gepetto has over him. What is this embodiment meant to represent and how does it fit into a standard childhood?

Mike Ananny
-Chapters two and three are rich with metaphoric events: Pinnochio already had a personality and a precocious exuberance even before Geppetto started to carve him --> a parallel to child as an innocent tabula rasa versus a child as an evil entity to be tamed early on? Also consider that the book was written in the 1880's when these were the competing views of children and also consider that the book was consumed by many people in many languages; does this suggest that people found Collodi's writings a good description and representative of their own children, their own practices, societal childhood ideals or something fantastical that was not at all representative of the norm?
-Basically, where does this attraction with children's literature come from? Is it a method for adults to share and discuss information in a form directly relevant to children? Is it another form of parenting manual?

Char DeCroos
-Do you consider Disney's treatment of this strange novel (The Adventures of Pinnocchio) an improvement?

Adam Smith
-How come only adults or sprits guide Pinocchio in the right direction? This reading suggests that the only way to become a good boy was to not to act like one.

David Spitz
-The Adventures of Pinocchi stringently applies the laws of cause-and-effect. How is the story's sensationalism understood by a child?
-In last week's game conference, it was suggested that video games also teach cause-and-effect. How might we compare a story to a game in this regard?

Anindita Basu
-What do the Fairy's various forms in different stages of the book represent? Why does she change from a child to a woman to a goat, etc? (As a side, it's interesting that of all of the morals in the original story, the one that we associate most strongly with Pinocchio is the lesson not to lie. Is that because of the Disney version or has the story actually evolved with cultural values and expectations for children?)

Jeannie R Ben-Hain
-Its interesting how much of this story directly conflicts with the other readings. This story is entirely a fable which Rousseau said could not teach moral lessons. Yet, the lessons this story can teach are clear and they are reiterated throughout the story. Collodi's insistance that children should eat food they do not desire because they may not have other choices someday contradicts Rousseau's belief that the child should only eat what he desires. Why is it that Old Joe and the fairy cannot coexist throughout the story? They represent Pinocchio's mother and father and though they agree on many of the lessons learned, they cannot be utmost in his life at the same time. Is this true of the family life of the time?

Hilarie Claire Tomasiewicz
-Laments Pinocchio at one point in the story, "I did wrong to rebel against my papa and to run away from home. If my papa were here i should not be dying of yawning! Oh, what a dreadful illness hunger is!" I was struck by the relationship of Pinoicchio's words to the psycology often associated with anorexia nervosa, a sickness inexorably intertwined adolescence (which I believe to be the tale end of childhood). When psycologists treat female anorexics, they often "trace" the beginnings of the disorder to her early relationship with her father. Bad situation with dad = eating disorder? Isn't it sickly ironic that a children's story happens to also associate "hunger" with paternal conflict?

Walter Dan Stiehl
-How much influence did Rousseau have on Collodi? It seems that Pinocchio in many ways is Emille from Rousseau's work.

Girim Sung
-After Geppetto finishes making Pinocchio, Collodi does not make Geppetto an active character in the plot of the book. Geppetto sacrifices his comfort for his puppet and then spends the rest of the novel searching for him. On the other hand, Collodi uses the fairy to take care of Pinocchio when he is sick and to instill in him the desire to do good. The fairy never sacrifices her comfort (she doesn't sell her coat or something like that), and doesn't search for him. The fairy stays where she is and weeps for his return. Collodi seems to be using the fairy and Geppetto to establish the female and male spheres. Geppetto's male domain is the whole world (earth and the sea), while the fairy's female sphere is within the cottage. Also, is Collodi saying, by Geppetto's absence during Pinocchio's development, that the fairy, females, are the primary caretaker of children until the children become boys? And in a subtle way, is Collodi agreeing with Jean Lacroix that "the [abs! ence] of the father [is] necessary to man's liberation?"
-Also, Collodi seems to believe that children have innocent desire to do good, but are incredibly weak if pressured from society. Was Collodi using Rousseau's idea of negative education on Pinocchio? Pinocchio only does good out of necessity (i.e. he will wait until he is extremely hungry before eating peels or working for others; to become a boy, fairy tells him he must be good).

Jennifer Chung
-Are children smart enough to realize, while being amused at the story of Pinocchio, that *they* were perhaps capable of making the same mistakes Pinocchio makes, and thus look out and avoid them? Did Collodi think kids thought like that? Or was he just trying to entertain? (The story seems more fanciful than teaching/fable-like/serious/sermony; for instance, consider the seemingly lack of time perspective. Collodi says things happen 5 months, or 2 years, or whatever, but he rushes through everything so quickly that it could all take place during a mere three weeks.)
-Why did the bildungsroman (puppetsroman?) get taken out of the Disney animated version? I suppose the Disney also shows that vices are bad, and thus has an amount of redeeming value. I also suppose the full-length novel would be difficult to fit into an hour slot.

Melanie Wong
-Do you actually believe that this gruesome (e.g., the disregard of life) novel was actually intended to be read to or by children?
-Is this reflective of the time period and/or culture in which it was written?

Daniel Huecker
-Pinnochio's body is created by a puppet-maker, yet everyone assumes his actions to be childlike. How might his behavior also be created by an adult (the writer)?