Naturalism does not believe in specialized education. It stands for liberal education, i.e., free cultivation of all human powers in the interest of perfect individual development. Rousseau believed on the development of the whole man.
He was against cramping and distorting specialization. Rousseau says: “Education by nature will restore the natural unsophisticated man, whose sole function is to be a man. In the natural order of things, all men being equal, their common vocation is manhood; and whoever is well trained for that, cannot fail to perform any vocation connected with it.”
Evidently under naturalism the student is not to be prepared for any definite vocation or definite social position. He is to be so developed that he can adjust himself of the ever-chanting conditions of the industrial civilization.
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Naturalism stands for the democratic doctrine of ‘equality, liberty and fraternity’, and consequently it has greedy furthered the advance of universality and democracy in education.
Naturalism has emphasized the need of physical education and health training, but the process it has recommended is a negative one. Rousseau speaks of many good health rules, though they are mostly negative.
He recommends that the young child must be allowed utmost freedom of movement and he should not be confined to bed. For making the child healthy, he must be exposed to cold, head at risk as far as possible.
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Naturalism regards moral education as a matter of experience rather than of instruction. Rousseau has favored a moral training through the natural consequences of a child’s acts, thinking that the unnatural and undesirable acts will be inhibited and the natural and desirable ones will be retained automatically.
Naturalism limits intellectual education to the informal training of the senses. It wants that the child’s power of sense discrimination should be developed by stimulating his natural curiosity and interest. The child should be encouraged to express his ideas freely.
Sufficient opportunities should be given to him for scientific observation, investigation and inference. Affected speech and verbosity are to be carefully avoided. According to naturalism, too much reliance on books is detrimental to intellectual development.
To naturalism religion is a matter of the heart and not of the head. Religion is to be felt and not to be reasoned. So every child should be allowed to develop his own religion.