'Why should we build our own happiness on the opinions of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?'

Childhood days have always been a favourite hunting ground for writers, philosophers and poets down the ages!

For a sample of an instance, let us take the case of abandoned children returning to their families, right from the stories of Moses, of Oedipus, of Oliver Twist, of Shakuntala, to the fairy tales of Hansel and Gretel, which have always been archetypal in their ambit for writers from far and wide across ages and climes!

In this regard, the 18^th century in literature, should possibly be seen as the most intense torchbearer to this celebration of childhood by writers, philosophers and educationists, in all its magnificent aura.

Childhood, to them all, was seen as the most important phase of a person’s life for reasons quite known and unknown to societies of those days.

First of all, childhood was the time, they felt, when there always was, a great purity of mind and soul, where the capacity to forgive, the capacity to love, and to be loved was much higher and stronger!

Secondly, the concept of imagination was much more intense and much more higher in children in this phase, than in any other phase in one’s life!

Thirdly,  there was also the conception amongst writers of this period, that children always had an amazing connect with Nature and the Environment, that is quite innate or latent within them! Hence it is that the mountains, the vales, the rivers, the little pets, the animals, the flora and the fauna help much in stimulating their sensibilities.

Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, written during this time, in 1762, looks an amazing, extraordinary, futuristic, visionary treatise on children and their education!

Rousseau’s vision of an idealized ‘natural man’ has its own gentle rubrics for us all to emulate and to inculcate in our children! There is, Rousseau believes, a natural goodness so innate and so spontaneous, contained within a person since childhood, that could be tapped, nurtured and maintained only by a highly systematic, idealized model of education, and it is here that Rousseau offers his own model for the reader! A model that is revolutionary by all means!

To this end, Rousseau’s Emile is divided into five books, discussing within each of its rubric, one developmental stage, each!

Books 1 & 2 are from birth to age 12, and describe the Age of Nature for a child

Books 3 & 4 are devoted to adolescence (the transitional stage!)

Book 5 describes the age of wisdom.

Which is followed by the age of happiness, according to Rousseau!

What an amazing perspective to children’s education! What an amazing perspective to training up a child in the right nuances there are, to life and living!

I would just take some time off to focus on the Age of Nature for a child, that Rousseau discusses in Books 1 & 2 of this lovable, eye-opener kinda treatise that doubles up as a novel!

In an age when education is becoming more and more commercial, and students are seen more as commodities or customers, and in an age when technology has slowly got the better of our children, it has become all the more imperative to discuss Rousseau’s rubrics and their relevance for us all today!

Considered to be the most significant treatise since Plato’s Republic, Rousseau’s Emile has treasure troves galore on offer for eager and vibrant parents, teachers and learners of all hues!

Rousseau’s lovable refrain on the ‘Age of Nature’ has often bordered within the scope of the two sentences given below!

That humans are by nature good – and it is society’s institutions that corrupt them!

Why should we build our own happiness on the opinions of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?

One gets a glimpse into this celebration of Nature, in Rousseau’s ten, classic, meditations that go by the title, Reveries of the Solitary Walker. On this front, again, ain’t one so spontaneously reminded of Thoreau’s equally phenomenal treatise, that comes up almost a hundred years later, on Walking, where he stresses upon the importance of nature to humankind, and how people cannot survive without nature, although we seem to be spending more and more time immersed in the daily grinds of society?

Rousseau, likewise, found for himself a therapeutic respite only in Nature’s solitude, and in a romantically lyrical communion with nature!

I am so tempted to refer to a wondrous friend of mine, Nirmaldasan, (A little feature on him, on our past post HERE), and a kutty little inspiring incident that had happened back then, in one of our sojourns to Pondicherry. We both, - Nirmaldasan and myself, - were taking a stroll down Nature’s blissfully blessed pathways, when... when all of a sudden, I could sense Nirmaldasan lagging behind on the nature-stroll! 

And... yes! I couldn’t well believe my eyes a wee bit when I saw him, in all earnestness, gently touching, petting and prodding a neem tree, on one of its beautiful, shady branches! He was almost throbbing with such immense love for the tree in particular,  and for Nature in general, that he remained rooted to the spot, continuing on his petting and prodding, of this grand, age-old, magnificent tree with such intense fondness and love! I was so surprised beyond measure!

Almost a full fifteen harmonious, therapeutic minutes in the pristine lap of Nature, passed us by, this way! 

Then on, not being able to control my teeming curiosity, I quietly proceeded to ask him the reason for his immense fondness and love for that particular neem tree! Nirmaldasan replied, with his customary smile, saying, 

‘Rufus, I was connecting myself to the nourishment, the warmth, the care and the love that this tree has within its grand, colossal frame! The more I connected with the tree, the more I could feel a power from the tree coming inside me and nourishing and rejuvenating me totally!’

Something that would sure look profane, absurd and weird for any many of us like me, who have never seen a tree this way! 

And yes! It would hardly cut ice with any many of us who break branches off such beautiful trees when our cars or trucks break down in the middle of the road, and subsequently throw away the broken branch, the moment our car’s fault is fixed! It would never cut ice with any many of us who look at trees and forests as objects and commodities for snapping clicks after clicks after clicks, with the pavapetta tree as a mere prop for a 'beautiful' 'natural' background, until the battery drains down our mobile phones!

How true the wondrous words of Wordsworth prove: “Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.”

And that’s exactly what Toru Dutt tells us through her 1881 poem, “Our Casuarina Tree!”

The tree, to little Toru, was such a source of rejuvenation, restoration and revitalization! The tree, then, to Toru, brings out the huge vibrancy and the vitality contained within its colossal frame, which it so gently transmits and passes on to the flowers, which in turn attract the bees and birds to its loving, sweet, motherly embrace! Very soon, as Toru describes the tree's beauty in all its grandeur, a flock of baboons, a herd of cattle, along with a bevy of birds come under its thick, loving shadows! This apart, the tree, to Toru, has also helped much in building harmonious relationships with her siblings! Now, when she looks back, she has these wonderful, nostalgic reminiscences galore on such sweet, delightful remembrances of the casuarina tree!

And that’s exactly what Rousseau advocates for children in the first twelve years of their innocent, Nature-connected lives!

In this phase, which he calls the 'Age of Nature,' that goes between ages two and 12, which he calls the second stage, the child, to Rousseau, receives only a ‘negative education’. Thus, the purpose of education, during this stage, is to help develop in the child an appreciation of Nature and everything connected with it! The cultivation of the five senses through Nature is crucial to this stage, he adds!

Rousseau speaks –

But if there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely, as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy, not with a poor, incomplete and relative happiness such as we find in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, complete and perfect happiness which leaves no emptiness to be filled in the soul. Such is the state which I often experienced on the Island Of Saint-Pierre in my solitary reveries, whether I lay in a boat and drifted where the water carried me, or sat by the shores of the stormy lake, or elsewhere, on the banks of a lovely river or a stream murmuring over the stones.

In an age, when our children aged between two and twelve of the Roussean rubric  are ‘everywhere chained’ (one of his favourite phrases, ever) and bogged down by the monster of madness called the mobile phone, in an age when our children are hardwired to the highpriests of technology, in an age when parents find it convenient to graciously hand over their cellphones with all its accompanying dangers into the hands of the ‘most beloved’ ‘precious’ ‘chella’ little child, who get so quickly immuned  to its highly devastating effects, it would only do a whole world of good for the little, chella, precious child if she/he is weaned away, far far away, from the madness and the badness, from the harms and the charms of technology!

Instead, they could rather be initiated into the world of Nature, the world of books, the world of music and the whole wide world of an interconnected ambience with the flora and the fauna around!

If and when this Roussuean rubric is followed in letter and in spirit, in our homes, in our schools, in our colleges, in our universities, in our churches, in our temples, in our mosques, in our gurudwaras, in our societies, we can surely hope, with such blessed assurance, that our children would surely inherit for themselves the Age of Happiness that Rousseau posits and predicts for children after age 25!

And on a happy note, let me add with such profuse delight that, the one and only educationist and reformist in the whole of India to offer children on a platter such an enriching education, an education that’s so in harmony and in connect with Nature, is none other than Jidduji! [J. Krishnamurti]. Our numerous blogposts on Jidduji’s ideals of a rewarding education would, I hope, sure give y’all an added authentication into this Roussean dictum on Nature!

Happy Earth Day folks! 

To be continued…