from Education

Ralph Waldo Emerson

ralph waldo emerson (1803–1882), perhaps best known for his essay
“Self-reliance” (1841), was one of America’s most influential thinkers
and writers. After graduating from Harvard divinity School, he followed
nine generations of his family into the ministry but practiced for only a
few years. in 1836, he and other like-minded intellectuals, including
Henry david Thoreau, founded the Transcendental club, and that same
year he published his influential essay “Nature” (1836). known as a
great orator, emerson made his living as a popular lecturer on a wide
range of topics. From 1821 to 1826, he taught in city and country schools and later
served on a number of school boards, including the concord School committee and
the Board of overseers of Harvard college. emerson’s essay “education,” from which
the following excerpt is taken, was put together posthumously from his writings pub-
lished in the American Scholar and from his commencement addresses.

I believe that our own experience instructs us that the secret of Education
lies in respecting the pupil. It is not for you to choose what he shall know,
what he shall do. It is chosen and foreordained, and he only holds the key to his
own secret. By your tampering and thwarting and too much governing he may be
hindered from his end and kept out of his own. Respect the child. Wait and see
the new product of Nature. Nature loves analogies, but not repetitions. Respect
the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.
But I hear the outcry which replies to this suggestion — Would you verily throw
up the reins of public and private discipline; would you leave the young child to
the mad career of his own passions and whimsies, and call this anarchy a respect
for the child’s nature? I answer — Respect the child, respect him to the end, but
also respect yourself. Be the companion of his thought, the friend of his friend-
ship, the lover of his virtue — but no kinsman of his sin. Let him find you so true
to yourself that you are the irreconcilable hater of his vice and the imperturbable
slighter of his trifling.
The two points in a boy’s training are, to keep his naturel and train off all but
that — to keep his naturel, but stop off his uproar, fooling, and horseplay — keep
his nature and arm it with knowledge in the very direction to which it points.
Here are the two capital facts, Genius and Drill. This first is the inspiration in the
well-born healthy child, the new perception he has of nature. Somewhat he sees
in forms or hears in music or apprehends in mathematics, or believes practicable
in mechanics or possible in political society, which no one else sees or hears or
believes. This is the perpetual romance of new life, the invasion of God into the old
dead world, when he sends into quiet houses a young soul with a thought which

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is not met, looking for something which is not there, but which ought to be there:
the thought is dim but it is sure, and he casts about restless for means and masters
to verify it; he makes wild attempts to explain himself and invoke the aid and con-
sent of the by-standers. Baffled for want of language and methods to convey his
meaning, not yet clear to himself, he conceives that thought not in this house or
town, yet in some other house or town is the wise master who can put him in
possession of the rules and instruments to execute his will. Happy this child with
a bias, with a thought which entrances him, leads him, now into deserts now into
cities, the fool of an idea. Let him follow it in good and in evil report, in good or
bad company; it will justify itself; it will lead him at last into the illustrious society
of the lovers of truth.
In London, in a private company, I became acquainted with a gentleman, Sir
Charles Fellowes, who, being at Xanthos, in the Aegean Sea, had seen a Turk point
with his staff to some carved work on the corner of a stone almost buried in the
soil. Fellowes scraped away the dirt, was struck with the beauty of the sculptured
ornaments, and, looking about him, observed more blocks and fragments like
this. He returned to the spot, procured laborers and uncovered many blocks. He
went back to England, bought a Greek grammar and learned the language; he
read history and studied ancient art to explain his stones; he interested Gibson
the sculptor; he invoked the assistance of the English Government; he called in
the succor of Sir Humphry Davy to analyze the pigments; of experts in coins,
of scholars and connoisseurs; and at last in his third visit brought home to
England such statues and marble reliefs and such careful plans that he was able
to reconstruct, in the British Museum where it now stands, the perfect model of
the Ionic trophy-monument, fifty years older than the Parthenon of Athens,
and which had been destroyed by earthquakes, then by iconoclast Christians,
then by savage Turks. But mark that in the task he had achieved an excellent edu-
cation, and become associated with distinguished scholars whom he had inter-
ested in his pursuit; in short, had formed a college for himself; the enthusiast had
found the master, the masters, whom he sought. Always genius seeks genius,
desires nothing so much as to be a pupil and to find those who can lend it aid to
perfect itself.
Nor are the two elements, enthusiasm and drill, incompatible. Accuracy is 5
essential to beauty. The very definition of the intellect is Aristotle’s: “that by which
we know terms or boundaries.” Give a boy accurate perceptions. Teach him the
difference between the similar and the same. Make him call things by their right
names. Pardon in him no blunder. Then he will give you solid satisfaction as long
as he lives. It is better to teach the child arithmetic and Latin grammar than rheto-
ric or moral philosophy, because they require exactitude of performance; it is
made certain that the lesson is mastered, and that power of performance is worth
more than the knowledge. He can learn anything which is important to him now
that the power to learn is secured: as mechanics say, when one has learned the use
of tools, it is easy to work at a new craft.

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Letter by letter, syllable by syllable, the child learns to read, and in good time
can convey to all the domestic circle the sense of Shakespeare. By many steps each
just as short, the stammering boy and the hesitating collegian, in the school debates,
in college clubs, in mock court, comes at last to full, secure, triumphant unfolding
of his thought in the popular assembly, with a fullness of power that makes all the
steps forgotten.
But this function of opening and feeding the human mind is not to be ful-
filled by any mechanical or military method; is not to be trusted to any skill less
large than Nature itself. You must not neglect the form, but you must secure the
essentials. It is curious how perverse and intermeddling we are, and what vast
pains and cost we incur to do wrong. Whilst we all know in our own experience
and apply natural methods in our own business — in education our common sense
fails us, and we are continually trying costly machinery against nature, in patent
schools and academies and in great colleges and universities.
The natural method forever confutes our experiments, and we must still come
back to it. The whole theory of the school is on the nurse’s or mother’s knee. The
child is as hot to learn as the mother is to impart. There is mutual delight. The joy
of our childhood in hearing beautiful stories from some skillful aunt who loves to
tell them, must be repeated in youth. The boy wishes to learn to skate, to coast, to
catch a fish in the brook, to hit a mark with a snowball or a stone; and a boy a
little older is just as well pleased to teach him these sciences. Not less delightful is
the mutual pleasure of teaching and learning the secret of algebra, or of chemis-
try, or of good reading and good recitation of poetry or of prose, or of chosen
facts in history or in biography.
Nature provided for the communication of thought by planting with it in the
receiving mind a fury to impart it. ’Tis so in every art, in every science. One burns
to tell the new fact, the other burns to hear it. See how far a young doctor will ride
or walk to witness a new surgical operation. I have seen a carriage-maker’s shop
emptied of all its workmen into the street, to scrutinize a new pattern from New
York. So in literature, the young man who has taste for poetry, for fine images, for
noble thoughts, is insatiable for this nourishment, and forgets all the world for
the more learned friend — who finds equal joy in dealing out his treasures.
Happy the natural college thus self-instituted around every natural teacher; 10
the young men of Athens around Socrates; of Alexander around Plotinus; of Paris
around Abelard; of Germany around Fichte, or Niebuhr, or Goethe: in short the
natural sphere of every leading mind. But the moment this is organized, difficulties
begin. The college was to be the nurse and home of genius; but, though every young
man is born with some determination in his nature, and is a potential genius; is
at last to be one; it is, in the most, obstructed and delayed, and, whatever they may
hereafter be, their senses are now opened in advance of their minds. They are
more sensual than intellectual. Appetite and indolence they have, but no enthusi-
asm. These come in numbers to the college: few geniuses: and the teaching comes
to be arranged for these many, and not for those few. Hence the instruction seems

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to require skillful tutors, of accurate and systematic mind, rather than ardent and
inventive masters. Besides, the youth of genius are eccentric, won’t drill, are irri-
table, uncertain, explosive, solitary, not men of the world, not good for every-day
association. You have to work for large classes instead of individuals; you must
lower your flag and reef your sails to wait for the dull sailors; you grow depart-
mental, routinary, military almost with your discipline and college police. But what
doth such a school to form a great and heroic character? What abiding Hope can it
inspire? What Reformer will it nurse? What poet will it breed to sing to the human
race? What discoverer of Nature’s laws will it prompt to enrich us by disclosing in
the mind the statute which all matter must obey? What fiery soul will it send out
to warm a nation with his charity? What tranquil mind will it have fortified to walk
with meekness in private and obscure duties, to wait and to suffer? Is it not mani-
fest that our academic institutions should have a wider scope; that they should not
be timid and keep the ruts of the last generation, but that wise men thinking for
themselves and heartily seeking the good of mankind, and counting the cost of
innovation, should dare to arouse the young to a just and heroic life; that the
moral nature should be addressed in the school-room, and children should be
treated as the high-born candidates of truth and virtue?
So to regard the young child, the young man, requires, no doubt, rare patience:
a patience that nothing but faith in the remedial forces of the soul can give. You see
his sensualism; you see his want of those tastes and perceptions which make the
power and safety of your character. Very likely. But he has something else. If he has
his own vice, he has its correlative virtue. Every mind should be allowed to make
its own statement in action, and its balance will appear. In these judgments one
needs that foresight which was attributed to an eminent reformer, of whom it was
said “his patience could see in the bud of the aloe the blossom at the end of a hun-
dred years.” Alas for the cripple Practice when it seeks to come up with the bird
Theory, which flies before it. Try your design on the best school. The scholars are
of all ages and temperaments and capacities. It is difficult to class them, some are
too young, some are slow, some perverse. Each requires so much consideration,
that the morning hope of the teacher, of a day of love and progress, is often closed
at evening by despair. Each single case, the more it is considered, shows more to be
done; and the strict conditions of the hours, on one side, and the number of tasks,
on the other. Whatever becomes of our method, the conditions stand fast — six
hours, and thirty, fifty, or a hundred and fifty pupils. Something must be done, and
done speedily, and in this distress the wisest are tempted to adopt violent means,
to proclaim martial law, corporal punishment, mechanical arrangement, bribes,
spies, wrath, main strength and ignorance, in lieu of that wise genial providential
influence they had hoped, and yet hope at some future day to adopt. Of course the
devotion to details reacts injuriously on the teacher. He cannot indulge his genius,
he cannot delight in personal relations with young friends, when his eye is always
on the clock, and twenty classes are to be dealt with before the day is done. Besides,
how can he please himself with genius, and foster modest virtue? A sure propor-

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tion of rogue and dunce finds its way into every school and requires a cruel share of
time, and the gentle teacher, who wished to be a Providence to youth, is grown a
martinet,1 sore with suspicions; knows as much vice as the judge of a police court,
and his love of learning is lost in the routine of grammars and books of elements.
A rule is so easy that it does not need a man to apply it; an automaton, a
machine, can be made to keep a school so. It facilitates labor and thought so much
that there is always the temptation in large schools to omit the endless task of
meeting the wants of each single mind, and to govern by steam. But it is at fright-
ful cost. Our modes of Education aim to expedite, to save labor; to do for masses
what cannot be done for masses, what must be done reverently, one by one: say
rather, the whole world is needed for the tuition of each pupil. The advantages of
this system of emulation and display are so prompt and obvious, it is such a time-
saver, it is so energetic on slow and on bad natures, and is of so easy application,
needing no sage or poet, but any tutor or schoolmaster in his first term can apply
it — that it is not strange that this calomel2 of culture should be a popular medi-
cine. On the other hand, total abstinence from this drug, and the adoption of
simple discipline and the following of nature involves at once immense claims on
the time, the thoughts, on the Life of the teacher. It requires time, use, insight,
event, all the great lessons and assistances of God; and only to think of using it
implies character and profoundness; to enter on this course of discipline is to be
good and great. It is precisely analogous to the difference between the use of cor-
poral punishment and the methods of love. It is so easy to bestow on a bad boy a
blow, overpower him, and get obedience without words, that in this world of
hurry and distraction, who can wait for the returns of reason and the conquest of
self; in the uncertainty too whether that will ever come? And yet the familiar obser-
vation of the universal compensations might suggest the fear that so summary a
stop of a bad humor was more jeopardous than its continuance.
Now the correction of this quack practice is to import into Education the
wisdom of life. Leave this military hurry and adopt the pace of Nature. Her secret
is patience. Do you know how the naturalist learns all the secrets of the forest, of
plants, of birds, of beasts, of reptiles, of fishes, of the rivers and the sea? When he
goes into the woods the birds fly before him and he finds none; when he goes to
the river bank, the fish and the reptile swim away and leave him alone. His secret
is patience; he sits down, and sits still; he is a statue; he is a log. These creatures
have no value for their time, and he must put as low a rate on his. By dint of obsti-
nate sitting still, reptile, fish, bird and beast, which all wish to return to their
haunts, begin to return. He sits still; if they approach, he remains passive as the
stone he sits upon. They lose their fear. They have curiosity too about him. By and
by the curiosity masters the fear, and they come swimming, creeping and flying
towards him; and as he is still immovable, they not only resume their haunts and

1A strict disciplinarian. Originally a type of whip. — Eds.

2A mercury compound once used as a laxative, purgative, or disinfectant. — Eds.

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their ordinary labors and manners, show themselves to him in their work-day
trim, but also volunteer some degree of advances towards fellowship and good
understanding with a biped who behaves so civilly and well. Can you not baffle
the impatience and passion of the child by your tranquility? Can you not wait for
him, as Nature and Providence do? Can you not keep for his mind and ways, for
his secret, the same curiosity you give to the squirrel, snake, rabbit, and the shel-
drake3 and the deer? He has a secret; wonderful methods in him; he is — every
child — a new style of man; give him time and opportunity. Talk of Columbus
and Newton! I tell you the child just born in yonder hovel is the beginning of a
revolution as great as theirs. But you must have the believing and prophetic eye.
Have the self-command you wish to inspire. Your teaching and discipline must
have the reserve and taciturnity of Nature. Teach them to hold their tongues by
holding your own. Say little; do not snarl; do not chide; but govern by the eye. See
what they need, and that the right thing is done.
I confess myself utterly at a loss in suggesting particular reforms in our ways
of teaching. No discretion that can be lodged with a school-committee, with the
overseers or visitors of an academy, of a college, can at all avail to reach these dif-
ficulties and perplexities, but they solve themselves when we leave institutions
and address individuals. The will, the male power, organizes, imposes its own
thought and wish on others, and makes that military eye which controls boys as
it controls men; admirable in its results, a fortune to him who has it, and only
dangerous when it leads the workman to overvalue and overuse it and precludes
him from finer means. Sympathy, the female force — which they must use who
have not the first — deficient in instant control and the breaking down of resis-
tance, is more subtle and lasting and creative. I advise teachers to cherish mother-
wit. I assume that you will keep the grammar, reading, writing and arithmetic in
order; ’tis easy and of course you will. But smuggle in a little contraband wit,
fancy, imagination, thought. If you have a taste which you have suppressed
because it is not shared by those about you, tell them that. Set this law up, what-
ever becomes of the rules of the school: they must not whisper, much less talk;
but if one of the young people says a wise thing, greet it, and let all the children
clap their hands. They shall have no book but school-books in the room; but if
one has brought in a Plutarch or Shakespeare or Don Quixote or Goldsmith or
any other good book, and understands what he reads, put him at once at the head
of the class. Nobody shall be disorderly, or leave his desk without permission, but
if a boy runs from his bench, or a girl, because the fire falls, or to check some
injury that a little dastard is indicting behind his desk on some helpless sufferer,
take away the medal from the head of the class and give it on the instant to the
brave rescuer. If a child happens to show that he knows any fact about astronomy,
or plants, or birds, or rocks, or history, that interests him and you, hush all the

3
A type of duck. — Eds.

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classes and encourage him to tell it so that all may hear. Then you have made your
school-room like the world. Of course you will insist on modesty in the children,
and respect to their teachers, but if the boy stops you in your speech, cries out that
you are wrong and sets you right, hug him!
To whatsoever upright mind, to whatsoever beating heart I speak, to you it is 15
committed to educate men. By simple living, by an illimitable soul, you inspire,
you correct, you instruct, you raise, you embellish all. By your own act you teach
the beholder how to do the practicable. According to the depth from which you
draw your life, such is the depth not only of your strenuous effort, but of your
manners and presence. The beautiful nature of the world has here blended your
happiness with your power. Work straight on in absolute duty, and you lend an
arm and an encouragement to all the youth of the universe. Consent yourself to
be an organ of your highest thought, and lo! suddenly you put all men in your
debt, and are the fountain of an energy that goes pulsing on with waves of benefit
to the borders of society, to the circumference of things.

Questions for Discussion

1. In this essay, Ralph Waldo Emerson describes his view of an ideal education. What
are its defining characteristics?
2. In what ways is Emerson’s advice appropriate to a child’s first teacher — his or her
parents?
3. Why does Emerson believe “[i]t is better to teach the child arithmetic and Latin
grammar than rhetoric or moral philosophy” (para. 5)?
4. In what ways does this essay point out the education system’s effect on teachers as
well as students?
5. What exactly is the “natural method” to which Emerson refers (para. 8)?
6. Why does Emerson criticize schools as bureaucratic institutions (para. 10)?
7. Emerson refers to educating “a boy” and “a man” and uses masculine pronouns when
referring to students. As a reader, does this gender bias affect how receptive you are
to Emerson’s ideas? Are his ideas equally applicable to women? If you do not think
so, then how would they need to be changed to be applicable to both men and
women, boys and girls?
8. Describe the adult that Emerson imagines would emerge from an education based
on the principles he supports.

Questions on Rhetoric and Style

1. What does Emerson mean when he says, “Nature loves analogies, but not repeti-
tions” (para. 1)?
2. Why is the relationship between “Genius and Drill,” as Emerson explains it, para-
doxical (para. 3)?

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