ABSTRACT
A discovery lesson is in progress: the children are exploring the environment under conditions of a very free discipline and are learning from what they find. However, the whole modern theory of 'discovery methods' appears quite explicitly in Rousseau's Emile; and they were actually made use of by a small number of 'progressive' eighteenth-century parents and teachers — men like Richard Edgeworth and David Williams. Rousseau often talks as if a child's mental development occurs spontaneously. He has, for instance, a famous theory of negative education: 'The mind should be left undisturbed till its faculties have developed'. The terminology of 'faculties' is out of date; nevertheless one sees what Rousseau is driving at, and the modern concept of 'readiness' applied to children's development constitutes only a more sophisticated form of Rousseau's rather naive statement. The new methods have sought to harness the informal curiosity of children of the sort Rousseau describes and use it for pedagogic purposes.
