Bertrand Russell’s Approach to Moral Education in Early Childhood

Abstract

In his Autobiography, Bertrand Russell reports: “When my first child was born, in November 1921, I felt an immense release of my pent-up emotion, and during the next ten years my main purposes were parental” (1969b, p. 211, emphasis ours). The decade to which Russell refers-- Russell, incidentally was fifty at its outset—was indeed for him a period of great involvement in and reflection upon child-rearing and education in a broader sense. During this time Russell published two major books as well as numerous articles on education, and he and his second wife, Dora, founded and conducted their celebrated if sometimes controversial Beacon Hill School.