ABSTRACT
A pedagogical system, according to E. Durkheim, is born of the need to reflect on all the data of the educational situation instead of accepting them as unalterable facts. The aims of Charles Fourier’s educational proposals are threefold: political, psychological, and industrial or vocational. Fourier is a great believer in the importance of education. Education is of basic importance in his ideal society. One purpose of Fourier’s political organization is to establish social harmony; and education is one of his principal means of achieving this. The idea of education for all was being actively debated at the time Fourier wrote, and it was very variously interpreted. Fourier’s proposals were that education should be communal, residential, free, universal but not compulsory. The intrinsic superiority of his methods will, he claims, attract rich and poor alike, and compulsion will prove superfluous. The education of the individual must be based on his needs and these needs arise from the nature of man.
