Dupouy, Jean-Pierre <br/><br/>
“By form of paradox”: The didactical propositions of Etienne Tabourot (1585) 

 -  2019.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 90 
<br/><br/> Etienne Tabourot, a contemporary of Montaigne and a judge in Burgundy, was fond of word games and bawdy stories. In 1585, he published a book of Bigarrures ( Miscellanies), the first chapter of which is called: “Useful points about the Education of Children”. Long forgotten but reissued a few years ago, this short essay is worthy of consideration by educational historians and philosophers for several reasons. On the one hand, it testifies to the continuity between humanist pedagogy, from Erasmus to Montaigne, and to the methods used in the first Jesuit schools. On the other hand, it offers original views on learning to read and write, on the didactic importance of spatial representation and on the cognitive function of memory conceived as a dynamic process of constructing knowledge.