Dueling Theories of Education

Dueling Theories of Education:

Emerson and The No Child Left Behind Act

The proper way to educate youth has been a topic of debate for centuries. In 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson gave an oration to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Cambridge, addressing the topic of the American scholar. The premise of “The American Scholar” is that scholars can learn more from experiencing the world firsthand than they can from reading about the world in books, and he condemns academia for encouraging students to only heed the theories of past writers, instead of fostering an environment where students can think for themselves. In later essays, Emerson concedes that learning from past thinkers and writers is an integral part of a scholar’s life. In “Quotation and Originality,” Emerson says, “All things are in flux. It is inevitable that you are indebted to the past. You are fed and formed by it” (329). Although he makes this concession, Emerson clearly still believes in the advantages of experiential learning. When trying to reconcile these two opposing ideas, the one resolution that seems to work is that the scholar has to strike a balance between studying books and going out into the world himself. In 2002, the United States Congress enacted the No Child Left Behind Act, which was written in order to remedy gaps in academic performances. The idea was to enact standardized tests, the parameters of which each state could decide for itself. While the intentions of the Act are honorable, it has fallen under criticism due to the way it led to the narrowing of public school curriculum and the discouragement of in-depth understanding of understanding in favor of memorizing trivia-like facts. No Child Left Behind is in opposition to Emerson’s core argument concerning education: that scholars should have a broad education not only from studying books, but experiencing the world.

Emerson’s argument against books and traditional methods of education is most concentrated in the second section of “The American Scholar.” He concedes that books can be extremely beneficial, but the amount of benefit a book can provide “depends on how far the process had gone, transmuting life into truth” (59). His problem is with the way scholars take the words of past thinkers as gospel, never attempting to form their own opinions and views:

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. (59)

The danger, Emerson asserts, is that academia’s concentration on studying books so devotedly stifles the scholar’s mind, and therefore no new ideas are generated. For that reason, Emerson insists that books “are for the scholar’s idle times” (60) and the majority of the scholar’s waking hours should be spent away from the written word.

Emerson expounds on the idea of taking action in the third section of “The American Scholar.” “Action,” Emerson tells us, “is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth” (61). In order to become a true scholar, one must have experiences. One cannot expect to understand the world simply by reading another person’s account of it, simply because each person’s perspective of the world is unique. Each person’s background, how they are raised, where they live, contribute to the way they view the world. Only reading other people’s accounts of the world silences the scholar’s own individual voice. Emerson says of his own experiences, “The world—this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself” (61). Here, Emerson emphasizes the potential for personal growth when one experiences the world. By interacting with the world, one learns not only about the world, but about themselves through their reactions to the world.

The idea of experiential learning exists outside of Emerson. Many educational theorists are supporters of the idea that life experiences are as important, if not more important, than what students learn in the classroom. In 1981, experiential learning was first being introduced as a major part of students’ education:

Experiential learning, the term applied to educational activities undertaken outside the college or university, is the latest in a series of claims in favor of an expanded curriculum, one less dependent on traditional features of liberal education and more pertinent to interests and aims of new and nontraditional students. Indeed, important traditions remain at stake in the debate over experiential learning, one likely ignored if the discussion is not enhanced by attention to issues in a way which recognizes their permanence and complexity. (Weiland, 161)

“Experiential learning” can thus refer to internships, apprenticeships, and even organizations like the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts, which teach practical skills best learned by firsthand experience. The skills learned through these venues make students more well-rounded, and therefore more prepared for the world beyond graduation. John Dewey, a twentieth-century supporter of experiential learning, also noted that the practical skills learned in the classroom are often hard to transfer into the real world due to how they’re taught in schools:

In a certain sense every experience should do something to prepare a person for later experiences of a deeper and more expansive quality. That is the very meaning of growth, continuity, reconstruction of experience. But it is a mistake to suppose that the mere acquisition of a certain amount of arithmetic, geography, history, etc., which is taught and studied because it may be useful at some time in the future, has this effect, and it is a mistake to suppose that acquisition of skills in reading and figuring will automatically constitute preparation for their right and effective use under conditions very unlike those in which they were acquired. (Dewey 47-8)

Learning these subjects can only be effective when it is presented in a way that demonstrates its usefulness and application in the world outside academia. When pressures to meet standards through testing come into play, however, more emphasis is put on simply teaching students to regurgitate facts rather than applying them to real-life scenarios.

This emphasis on simple fact recall is a repercussion of the No Child Left Behind Act. No Child Left Behind was instated by federal government to improve the education in public schools by mandating that schools use standardized testing to create a common achievement level that students must meet. Each state is allowed to decide what criteria to use on the standardized tests. Ideally the quality of education would improve because the teachers would focus on reading and writing skills, mathematics, and science. However, one of the main criticisms is the narrowed curriculum it creates:

Students in affluent schools with good scores may continue to enjoy a full range of subjects including art, social studies and science, while disadvantaged students are condemned to a second class education putting “Reading First” at the expense of a complete education. This preoccupation with LITERACY over all else sets up an increasingly two class society, with one group condemned to a lean diet of basic skills and the other getting the more complete diet associated with power and success in this society. The goal of elevating the performance of all students is laudable, but the change in performance must be across the board on all subject areas. (McKenzie)

Narrowing the curriculum to only two or three subjects deprives students of the skills they can learn through the other subjects. Knowledge of history is lost in this program, and the arts are likewise ignored. This lacking in No Child Left Behind-influenced curricula bother many educational theorists, and it would certainly have bothered Emerson.

Emerson would most likely have had an issue with its emphasis on simple fact regurgitation. Because most standardized tests employed by schools are multiple-choice, in-depth analysis of subjects are rendered irrelevant; instead, it encourages students to memorize facts most likely to appear on the test. This “teaching to the test” does an injustice to students by not allowing them to think abstractly about the subjects. As a result, what they do learn is not ingrained into their minds. At most, they retain the memorized facts until the test and, after the facts’ purpose have been served, students usually forget them because they have no further use for them.

No Child Left Behind, despite its good intentions, has gaps in its coverage of education. It narrows curricula and prevents in-depth understanding. Emerson has a more complete theory of education; one that incorporates both thorough study and experiences in the real world.

Works Cited

Dewey, John. Experience and Education. (New York: Collier Books, 1963) p. 47-48

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Emerson’s Prose & Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris.

“Nature” pp 27-55. New York (2001).

“The American Scholar” pp 56-69.

“Shakspeare or the Poet” pp. 247-260

“Quotation and Originality” pp 319-330 Norton. New York (2001).

McKenzie, Jamie. “Gambling with the Children.” NoChildLeft.com Volume I, Number 1, January, 2003 http://nochildleft.com/2003/jancov03.html#index

Weiland, Steven. “Emerson, Experience, and Experiential Learning”. Peabody Journal of Education Vol. 58, No. 3, Issues and Trends in American Education (Apr., 1981), pp. 161-167  Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1492097

A Call to Generations: Whitman in Ginsberg

Walt Whitman is often viewed as a revolutionary figure in American poetry. His first published collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, caused controversy because of its sexual overtones. Because of this, Whitman has become something of a patron saint to poets who push their generation’s moral boundaries. Allen Ginsberg and other poets of the Beat movement are such revolutionary poets in whose works Whitman’s influence can be found.

Whitman’s poems often address America as a whole, especially the “children” of America. In his poem “Long, Too Long America,” he writes:

But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish,

advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,

And now to conceive and show to the world what your

children en-masse really are,

(For who except myself has yet conciev’d what your children

en-masse really are?) (Whitman 445)

 

Here, Whitman names himself a champion of the next generation, claiming to be the only one who knows what they are capable of. His hint at the idea that there is a misunderstanding about the nature of the younger generation relates directly to the Beat Generation. Ginsberg and his contemporaries lived during the 1950s, which in America was, at the surface, a time of prosper and complacency. The media perpetuated the idea of husbands coming home from work to dinners prepared by their housewives, an American Dream of  domestic tranquility and white picket fences. The Beats represented a less-wholesome subculture of drugs and jazz. Their wild exploits and the resulting works of poetry and prose caused controversy, but it provided a revealing counter to the seemingly flawless veneer of the 50s. Whitman’s poem “Pioneers! O Pioneers!” could easily sound like a letter meant specifically for the Beat Generation:

O you youths, Western youths,

So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship,

Plain I see you Western youths, see you tramping with the foremost,

Pioneers! O Pioneers! (371).

 

Ginsberg and the rest of the Beat movement were pioneers of modern poetry. They took pride in rebelling against the puritanical society of their time, blazing new trails both metaphorically with their work and sometimes even physically, traveling cross-country to meet new people with radical thoughts.

Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” depicts a grittier version of America than did most media of the 1950s. It also shows evidence of Whitman’s influence on Ginsberg’s writing style. The poem opens with a desolate view of Ginsberg’s America:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night… (Ginsberg)

 

In contrast to Whitman’s more optimistic predictions about the generations that would follow his, Ginsberg’s words are pessimistic, but at the same time the poem is a celebration of his America. “Howl” can be broken down into a list of the actions of the Beat poets, a testimonial to their wild way of life. It has echoes of Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself,” also a “list poem,” with the repetition of the same first word in each line:

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall…(Ginsberg)

 

Ginsberg’s use of observation in his poetry mirrors that of Whitman, who wrote similarly about the people he saw every day on the streets of New York. Their poetry is alike in style in that they do not write about stereotypically beautiful things like flowers and sunsets, but instead they write about stark reality in a way that makes it beautiful.

Whitman’s influence can be detected in many modern works of art and literature, but it is most easily recognized in the works of Allen Ginsberg and other Beat poets. Both parties are unafraid to cause controversy with their writing in the pursuit of new, radical thought.

 

 

Works Cited

 

Whitman, Walt. Poetry and Prose.

“Long, Too Long America” p 445

“Pioneers! O Pioneers!” pp 371-375. Library of America (1996) New York

 

Ginsberg, Allen. Collected Poems. “Howl” (1984) The Poetry Foundation             http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=179381 Accessed on   11/19/09

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

In his poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” Whitman describes the act of taking a ferry boat as a unifying event. Everything he sees, everything he notices, the throngs of people also present during his ride, is something he knows that others have experienced before him, and the poem is the revelation of that fact. In Emerson’s essay “The Poet,” he talks about the poet being a kind of spokesperson for society, and I feel that Whitman does this in an unexpected, interestingly direct way. He outright tells the reader that he knows what he is writing is nothing extraordinary; he knows that “Just as you feel when you look on the river and sky, so I felt, /Just as any of you is one of a living crowd, I was one of a crowd, /Just as you are refresh’d by the gladness of the river and the bright flow, I was refresh’d…”  Whitman has an almost conversational tone with the reader that further carries this idea of universality.

Self-Reflection

I’ve never been able to easily start a paper, and concluding them has often eluded me as well. Emerson’s essays never seem concerned with such formalities—it always reads like Emerson just lets himself write whatever comes to mind, letting his thoughts make associations that he somehow relates back to his original point. Whenever I try such “free-writing,” the result seems too unorganized to be a real paper. It’s true, Emerson’s essays probably wouldn’t pass in an introductory college English course, but maybe that’s something we should consider. Does an essay really need to be so structured as long as some idea is conveyed? Emerson may lack organization, but his essays do make you think, and I think that an essay is successful when that is achieved.

Scholar of the World (Revised)

Scholar of the World

In 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson gave an oration to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Cambridge, addressing the topic of the American scholar.  In the address, Emerson stirred up controversy by condemning books. He claims that “Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst” (Emerson 59). The premise of “The American Scholar” is that scholars can learn more from experiencing the world firsthand than they can from reading about the world in books. However, in later essays, Emerson contradicts himself. In “Shakespeare or the Poet,” while he makes the observation that there is no real originality, he makes the observation without criticism. In “Quotation and Originality,” he similarly says, “All things are in flux. It is inevitable that you are indebted to the past. You are fed and formed by it” (329). When trying to reconcile these two opposing ideas, the one resolution that seems to work is that the scholar has to strike a balance between studying books and going out into the world himself.
Emerson’s argument against books is most concentrated in the second section of “The American Scholar.” He concedes that books can be extremely beneficial, but the amount of benefit a book can provide “depends on how far the process had gone, transmuting life into truth” (59). His problem is with the way scholars take the words of past thinkers as gospel, never attempting to form their own opinions and views:
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. (59)
The danger, Emerson asserts, is that academia’s concentration on studying books so devotedly stifles the scholar’s mind, and therefore no new ideas are generated. For that reason, Emerson insists that books “are for the scholar’s idle times” (60) and the majority of the scholar’s waking hours should be spent away from the written word.
Emerson expounds on the idea of taking action in the third section of “The American Scholar.” “Action,” Emerson tells us, “is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth” (61). In order to become a true scholar, one must have experiences. One cannot expect to understand the world simply by reading another person’s account of it, simply because each person’s perspective of the world is unique. Each person’s background, how they are raised, where they live, contribute to the way they view the world. Only reading other people’s accounts of the world silences the scholar’s own individual voice. Emerson says of his own experiences, “The world—this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself” (61). Here, Emerson emphasizes the potential for personal growth when one experiences the world. By interacting with the world, one learns not only about the world, but about themselves through their reactions to the world.
The “other me” or “not me” as it is sometimes referred to also appears in Emerson’s work Nature. According to Emerson, the “not me” encompasses everything in the universe outside of the individual soul, and can be put into the category of “nature.” Emerson values the communion between the soul and nature:
In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,–no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, –my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,–all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball, I am nothing, I see all the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. (29).
In Emerson’s view, one can reach elevated states of being by simply experiencing nature. The “mean egotism” dissipates and one loses himself to the beauty and purity of the world around him. By disconnecting from oneself and immersing oneself into the world around him, one’s mind is opened to otherworldly thoughts, and it circles back and expands his own mind. It is this kind of spiritual experience that the scholar cannot adequately know vicariously through a book; he must live it firsthand, and in Emerson’s mind it is an invaluable experience.
For all of Emerson’s arguments against the scholar immersing himself in books, he also makes points embracing the idea that writers learn almost everything from what has come before them. In “Quotation and Originality,” he states this, not in negativity, but as a neutral fact:
Our debt to tradition through reading and conversation is so massive, our protest or private addition so rare and insignificant,–and this commonly on the ground of other reading or hearing,–that, in  large sense, one would say there is no pure originality. All minds quote. Old and new make the warp and woof of every moment. (320)
It is possible that at this point in his writing, Emerson has surrendered to the fact that the majority of academia has succumbed to the bookworm tendency. But when read without considering his earlier opinions in “The American Scholar,” it sounds as if Emerson recognizes the need for past work to fuel new production. Instead of the idea that creativity has stagnated, one can now see it as more of a cross-generational collaboration between the scholar of the current generation and the writers of the past whose works the scholar has read. The experiences that Emerson urges the scholar to have, and the unique perspective the scholar gains from these experiences, allow the scholar to take the ideas of the past and transform them into something new.
“Shakespeare, or the Poet” also discusses this transformation of the old into the new. Emerson points out that even a revered writer such as Shakespeare drew his inspiration from preexisting tales. What allows the scholar to take an old tale and put his own twist on it is his tie to his own society:

He finds himself in the river of the thoughts and events, forced onward by the ideas and necessities of his contemporaries. He stands where all the eyes of men look one way, and their hands all point in the direction in which he should go. (248)

One can see Emerson’s two ideas—that scholars can neither spend their entire lives studying books, nor escape the inevitable repetition of old ideas—reaching a compromise in “Shakespeare, or the Poet.” It is the bridging of unique experience and tradition by modern society that alleviates the possibility of stagnation. Everything that is old can be recycled and made anew by each scholar’s singular perception of society.
Emerson’s essays “American Scholar,” “Quotation and Originality,” and “Shakespeare, or the Poet” have conflicting but valid points. The true scholar cannot rely solely on books to reveal all the mysteries of the world, and it certainly does not do the scholar any good to parrot the thoughts of writers that came before him. Conversely, true originality is scarce and it is almost inescapable that writers will fall back on old paradigms. The reconciliation is to use one’s own experiences to reconstruct the ideas of the past. As Emerson states, “Each age…must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding” (59). When the scholar uses what he has read, and infuses it with his own perception, the result is a timeless transmutation of life into truth.

Works Cited

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Emerson’s Prose & Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris.
“Nature” pp 27-55. New York (2001).
“The American Scholar” pp 56-69.
“Shakspeare or the Poet” pp. 247-260
“Quotation and Originality” pp 319-330 Norton. New York (2001).

Spiritual Laws

Emerson’s essay “Spiritual Laws” has a lot to say about being your own person. Like in “American Scholar” and “Self-Reliance,” Emerson puts an emphasis on not conforming to outside ideas of how a person should behave and what they should believe.

Early on, he bemoans how “our young people are diseased with the theological problems of originl sin, origin of evil, predestination, and the like. These never presented a practical difficulty to any man,–never darkened across any man’s road, who did not go out of his way to seek them.”   He similarly attacks the practice of Sunday school: “It is natural and beautiful that childhood should inquire, and maturity should teach; but it is time enough to answer questions, when they are asked. Do not shut up the young people against their wills in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.”  Emerson is condemning the way religion forces people to conform to certain ways of thinking, and forces people to ask questions, instead of discovering their own view of spirituality.

Emerson discusses perception a good deal. He argues that what is right and just is something to be determined by each individual, that what is right for one person may not necessarily be right for another. For Emerson, it seems, good is relative. It is not something that can be generalized for society. It’s a bold assumption, because that undermines the idea of rules and laws for society. Without guidelines society would, of course, dissolve into chaos. This either doesn’t occur to Emerson or doesn’t appear to be a real threat. He may be picturing a utopian situation, where there are no conflicting interests.

Scholar of the World

In 1837 Ralph Waldo Emerson gave an oration to the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Cambridge, addressing the topic of the American scholar.  In the address, Emerson stirred up controversy by condemning books. He claims that “Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst” (Emerson 59). The premise of “The American Scholar,” and a point brought up in his other works, is that much of the knowledge a scholar should acquire cannot be found inside a library. Emerson contends that scholars can learn more from experiencing the world firsthand than they can from reading about the world in books.

Emerson’s argument against books is most concentrated in the second section of “The American Scholar.” He concedes that books can be extremely beneficial, but the amount of benefit a book can provide “depends on how far the process had gone, transmuting life into truth” (59). His problem is with the way scholars take the words of past thinkers as gospel, never attempting to form their own opinions and views:

Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books. Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. (59)

The danger, Emerson asserts, is that academia’s concentration on studying books so devotedly stifles the scholar’s mind, and therefore no new ideas are generated. If no new ideas are generated, the concept of the scholar becomes stagnant, and the entire world of academia implodes. For that reason, Emerson insists that books “are for the scholar’s idle times” (60) and the majority of the scholar’s waking hours should be spent away from the written word, in order to expand his own experiences and garner his own philosophies about the world around him.

Emerson expounds on the idea of taking action in the third section of “The American Scholar.” “Action,” Emerson tells us, “is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without it, he is not yet man. Without it, thought can never ripen into truth” (61). In order to become a true scholar, one must have experiences. One cannot expect to understand the world simply by reading another person’s account of it, simply because each person’s perspective of the world is unique. Each person’s background, how they are raised, where they live, contribute to the way they view the world. Only reading other people’s accounts of the world silences the scholar’s own individual voice. Emerson says of his own experiences, “The world—this shadow of the soul, or other me, lies wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my thoughts and make me acquainted with myself” (61). Here, Emerson emphasizes the potential for personal growth when one experiences the world. By interacting with the world, one learns not only about the world, but about themselves through their reactions to the world.

The “other me” or “not me” as it is sometimes referred to also appears in Emerson’s work Nature. According to Emerson, the “not me” encompasses everything in the universe outside of the individual soul, and can be put into the category of “nature.” Emerson values the communion between the soul and nature:

In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life,–no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground, –my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,–all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball, I am nothing, I see all the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. (29).

In Emerson’s view, one can reach elevated states of being by simply experiencing nature. The “mean egotism” dissipates and one loses himself to the beauty and purity of the world around him. By disconnecting from oneself and immersing oneself into the world around him, one’s mind is opened to otherworldly thoughts, and it circles back and expands his own mind. It is this kind of spiritual experience that the scholar cannot adequately know vicariously through a book; he must live it firsthand, and in Emerson’s mind it is an invaluable experience.

Emerson’s address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society was received with a fair amount of criticism, but he raises many valid points. The true scholar cannot rely solely on books to reveal all the mysteries of the world, and it certainly does not do the scholar any good to parrot the thoughts of writers that came before him. As Emerson states, “Each age…must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding” (59). In order for each generation to write good transmutations of life into truth, they must venture out into the world and experience it.

Works Cited

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Emerson’s Prose & Poetry. Ed. Joel Porte and Saundra Morris.

“Nature” pp 27-55. New York (2001).

“The American Scholar” pp 56-69. Norton. New York (2001).

Emerson on Books Part II

In my own personal experience, I’ve never felt that a book we’ve been told to read for school was a complete waste, but at the same time, I know my peers have had moments where they don’t understand why a book “has anything to do with them.” In high school, especially, students often can’t relate to the novels their English teacher assigns them, and therefore disregard what they’ve been assigned to read. This illustrates Emerson’s point that each age “must write its own books,” that the books of the past won’t satiate the literary needs of future generations. I can’t say that I completely agree with this idea; certain books inarguably have a timeless appeal to them, and their themes span across generations. For instance, I can’t understand it when people say they hated reading Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger in high school. I think Holden Caulfield is a universal character: the disillusioned teenager who finds himself questioning the world he has grown up in. And these days there’s no shortage of teenagers venting about their lives on blogs. Holden Caulfield, whether they know it or not, is almost like their patron saint. On the other hand, the influx of new technology takes young readers away from the low-tech eras portrayed in the books that are usually assigned to high school students. Technology changes the way we live and how we interact with the world so much that, someday, students may find it impossible to relate to books with settings devoid of technology.

Emerson on Books

In Emerson’s address to the Harvard class of 1837, entitled The American Scholar, he names books as one of the three major influences upon scholars. However, in his speech, Emerson’s goal is to convince his audience that books “are the best of things, well used; abused, among the worst,” and that in the world of academia, the latter is more prevalent. Emerson’s problem with books in the scholastic world is that it prevents scholars from forming their own philosophies on life because they spend their academic lives devoting themselves to the philosophies of the thinkers whom have come before them. In his words, “instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm.” Emerson notes that these works of the past are undoubtedly important, and many old books are worth reading in the present, but he also points out that the worth of past books is dependent on “how far the process had gone, of transmuting life into truth.” Life is not stagnant; as time progresses, the way people live changes, and for that reason what one reads in a book written centuries, even decades ago, may not be relevant, or easily related to, in the present. The danger lies in the scholars who “grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.” These “bookworms” run the risk of never taking the time to formulate their own ideas of the world. This pattern will, in the opinion of Emerson, stagnate creativity.