Rousseau has given the concept of Follow Nature. The meaning of this maxim is

2025

Rousseau has given the concept of Follow Nature. The meaning of this maxim is

Answer: B. to regulate the education of a pupil according to his natureJean-Jacques Rousseau's doctrine of Naturalism, summed up in the maxim ‘Follow Nature’, holds that a child grows through its own inherent, natural stages of…

  1. A.

    to give full freedom to the teacher

  2. B.

    to regulate the education of a pupil according to his nature

  3. C.

    the teacher should follow his discretion

  4. D.

    knowledge should be given according to the teacher’s nature

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: B

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's doctrine of Naturalism, summed up in the maxim ‘Follow Nature’, holds that a child grows through its own inherent, natural stages of development. The task of education, on this view, is not to impose adult conventions, discipline, or ready-made knowledge from outside, but to arrange the pace and content of instruction so that it corresponds to — and grows out of — the child's own unfolding nature.

Applied to this maxim, ‘Follow Nature’ therefore means that a pupil's education must be regulated according to the pupil's own nature: his interests, readiness, and stage of growth, rather than according to any external party's convenience.

  • Handing the teacher full and unconditional freedom concerns the TEACHER's own liberty of action, not the principle that the child's own development should set the course of instruction; Rousseau's naturalism is specifically a check on unrestrained adult authority, not an expansion of it.

  • Making the teacher's personal discretion the deciding factor keeps the operative authority with the adult educator; naturalism instead sets out to minimise exactly this kind of externally-imposed, adult-driven control over how a child is taught.

  • Anchoring the content of instruction to the teacher's own disposition assigns 'nature' to the wrong party altogether — it does not correspond to any recognised formulation of Rousseau's maxim, which is about the person being educated, not the educator.

Hence, among the given options, only regulating a pupil's education according to his own nature captures what Rousseau's ‘Follow Nature’ asserts.

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