Essay: Of the Education of Children

Context and Aim

Addressed to a noblewoman charged with directing a young gentleman's upbringing, Montaigne proposes a humane, practical program of education. He seeks to form character and judgment rather than display of learning, persuading his reader that the proper end of study is the art of living well, not pedantry or careerist show.

The Tutor

Everything depends on choosing a guide of sound soul and sense. A tutor should have “a well-made rather than a well-filled head, ” more probity than erudition, and a life that models what he teaches. Authority by example, not intimidation, is the backbone of the enterprise, for the child learns conduct by imitation more readily than by precept.

Method: Judgment over Memory

Montaigne detests schools that cram memory with citations while leaving understanding empty. The pupil must chew and digest knowledge, not swallow it whole. He should be asked to retell lessons in his own words, to weigh reasons on both sides, to prefer truth to authority, and to measure Aristotle and Plato as men, not idols.

Socratic Conversation

Instruction should proceed by dialogue, contradiction, and free inquiry. The tutor provokes the student to answer, doubt, and choose, testing his discernment in every subject. Victory in disputation is worthless; the prize is a mind that can suspend judgment, sift appearances, and settle on modest, reasoned conclusions.

Experience, Travel, and the World

Books are companions, not masters. The broader school is the world: laws, customs, commerce, and the varied theater of human behavior. Travel and conversation with different sorts of people cure provincial conceit, teach adaptability, and engrave practical wisdom. Observing life refines judgment better than cloistered study.

Discipline without Cruelty

Severity that breaks a child’s spirit is folly. Montaigne wants firmness tempered by gentleness, forming liberty rather than servility. He condemns cruelty as a chief vice and would have the child trained to endure hardship and fortune with steadiness, but never hardened into inhumanity.

Virtue as the Center

The curriculum is moral before it is technical: courage, temperance, honesty, modesty, and the habit of referring all action to the rule of reason. Philosophy is a manual for life and death, teaching how to enjoy what is present, fear less what is future, and submit to necessity without complaint.

Language and Style

Good speech should be clear, sincere, and appropriate to action, not ornamented for vanity. Montaigne values a natural eloquence that serves understanding. He prefers the guidance of Plutarch and Seneca, whose moral sense and practical counsel shape a spirit more than they burden a memory.

Body and Habit

Mind and body must be trained together. Exercise, riding, and the disciplines of health make a sturdier judgment by toughening the instrument that carries it. Simple diet, measured pleasures, and familiarity with discomfort prepare the pupil to bear both labor and leisure without being mastered by either.

Religion and Civility

Piety is to be taught without fanaticism, with obedience to the laws and charity toward differences. Montaigne advises a civic disposition that is sociable, measured, and tolerant, steering clear of factional heat.

The End of Education

The portrait of the finished pupil is not a scholar stuffed with verses but a gentleman fit for public and private life: free in judgment, modest in speech, steady in action, and ready to live and die with grace. All learning is ordered to that simple and difficult end.