Philosophical Groundwork of a New and Innovative Teaching

The purpose of Montaignes Education of Children is to lay raven the philosophical groundwork for a new and innovative way of teach children. The purpose of this new system is to foster the childs intellectual growth as opposed to filling the childs head with facts that he regurgitates, plainly does not understand. In Montaignes words, the breeding should put a child through its paces, making it thwack things, choose them, and discern them by itself (110).As wellspring as advance intellectual growth, Montaigne also intends to promote wisdom, character and physical exploitation as a way of teaching method the entire person. Montaignes assertion is that the purpose stub instruction should not be for the sole aim of the increase in knowledge, but to have become better and orthogonalr by it (112). The overall accomplishment of the genteelness should be to produce an individual that is both wise and knowing according to Montaigne the two are irreconcilably bound, as the sure st sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness (119).The methods used to achieve Montaignes i push-down storage education are a mixture of the ability and talent of the coach-and-four the individual attention paying to a student and the well-rounded nature of the curriculum. Montaigne asserts that a bookman is tho as good as the skill of his tutor. The ideal tutor in Montaignes eyes would be angiotensin-converting enzyme that is more wise than intentional, having a well made rather than a well filled head (110). The tutor should not have the student repeat what is told to him, as the goal of the education is not to memorize, but rather to learn.The tutor should be a ingest in order to offer the ideas of great authors to the student and then permit him know how to make them his protest (111). Furthermore, the tutor is entirely responsible for one student at a time and without interference from parents. Being alone(predicate) with the student allows the tutor to truly become aqu atinted with the students aptitudes and allows for the readiness of an individual and personal education for the one pupil. The actual subjects to be learned are divided by not only the discipline of study, but also the development of physical ability, honorable fiber and interpersonal skills.The development of heed, body and spirit together leads to the transformation of a child to a well-rounded man. Montaigne believes in the training of the body as well as the mind, a typically Greek concept. The tutor, therefore, is responsible for physical training as it is not enough to strengthen his soul we must also toughen his muscles (113). The training of body serves a duel purpose, to ease the burdened mind by giving it something else to think about and by building up the pupils body in order to fight off injury and disease.It is only afterward his body has been trained that the intellectual education can begin. Intellectually, Montaigne believes in beginning the students formal ed ucation with the sciences, in order to foster the sagaciousness of the worlds natural laws. The tutor should explain to him the meaning of logic, physics, geometry, rhetoric and the science he chooses as a way to give him the marrow and the subject digest (118). This explanation of basic scientific principles gives the student the ability to understand and attend the passages written by famous scientists given to him by the tutor.This assertion, that children should be allowed to accredit important information for themselves, is the cornerstone of Montaignes theory of education. The other subjects to be analyse should be literature and philosophy, and should be taught in the same manner as the sciences. Montaigne argues against the study of grammar and classical languages, such as Greek or Latin, as he believes these to be grounded in memorization as opposed to formal thought and reasoning. Montaigne asserts that the purpose of education is to produce not a grammarian or a log ician, but a gentleman (125).However, despite the talk over on formal education, the actual intellectual instruction received is secondary winding to the childs overall development as a person. The next part of the childs education is argued by Montaigne to be the most important. The tutor should not only be an instructor on the matters of reason and logic, but also a moral force in the life of the student. The tutors job is to instill strong virtues in the child while he is still young, instructing him in the good precepts concerning valor, prowess, magnanimity, and temperance, and the security measure of fearing nothing (120).The tutor is to teach the child moderation, civic responsibility, humility and a honest curiosity to inquire into all things (114). The goal of this instilling of virtues is to gain an adult, guided only by reason, who is as capable of making wise decisions as well as being educated (114). The student, only after the competition of a great deal of educatio n in academics and virtues, is taught a final lesson about interactions with others.At some point in the education the pupil is judge to interact with others and put his education to use. The student is expected to visit other countries in order to interact with a divers(prenominal) array of people and cultures. Through these interactions the pupil testament further his own education by rubbing and polishing his brains with the contact with those of others (112). The informal education through experience leads the student to gain a grasp of affectionate situations and begin to understand the way society works.The ultimate goal in this is to have the student put everything to use by finding important education in all of those around him (114). Montaigne even goes so cold as to assert that eventually even the stupidity and weakness of others will be an education to him (115). Overall, with the completion of the relationship between tutor and pupil the end result will be a reason ing, virtuous, educated and passing wise individual who will be well equipped to deal with the world and who will be constantly bettering himself.