Rousseau’s Social Contract and Conflicts in Education

Abstract

In this chapter, the theme of conflicts in education will be explored from a theoretical viewpoint. How are conflicts essential for the growth and development of a child into an adult, and for society becoming more human? Jean-Jacques Rousseau‘s pedagogical texts, social contract and his other philosophical writings were used in this chapter, to explore the question of reconciling conflicts in education. The chapter concentrates its examination on the concept of social contractthat Rousseau employs valuation of conflicts in education and the practical suggestions for the application of conflicts in the aims and objectives of education. This work have selected those fragments that relate, explicitly or implicitly, to conflicts and dealing with conflicts in education, and while carefully reviewing the role of Rousseau‘s social contract in existing debate between liberalists and paternalists on one hand the proponents of agonistic and deliberative democratic education on the other hand.