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GERDIL, Hyacinth Sigismond. The Anti-Emile: Reflections on the Theory and Practice of Education against the Principles of Rousseau. Translated and Introduced by William A. Frank. South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine's Press, 2011. xlii + 174 pp. Cloth, $30.00- Rousseau's influence on American ideas about education, childhood, and romance is immense. In addition to his impact on philosophy of education, the idea of childhood as a blissful and carefree time to be preserved as long as possible, the model of a guardian carefully controlling all aspects of his charge's life while the charge believes himself to be free, and the privileging of the supposedly natural and intuitional over the institutional and traditional can all be found in Rousseau. Thus, an earnest and wise voice warning against Rousseau's principles and arguing for the classical tradition that Rousseau sought to destroy is just as relevant today as it was in 1764, when the Italian philosopher, theologian, and educator Hyacinth Gerdil published his Anti-Emile.
William Frank's efforts to make Gerdil accessible to the modern reader are impressive. He has divided the continuous text into an introduction, a two-part body, and a conclusion, and he has subdivided the body into 29 chapters. These divisions are generally accurate and natural and make the reading easier, though a few are somewhat forced, and the fact that they are not original should be kept in mind. Frank's endnotes indicate Gerdil's use of Emile by reference to Allan Bloom's edition, identify the myriad of classical, renaissance, and modern authors that Gerdil names and alludes to, and provide full bibliographical information for them. Translations from non-English...