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Emerson? In the Classroom? A Few Considerations on an Emersonian Model of Learning^*

Nietzsche learned from Emerson how to impart wisdom by provocation, not instruction. I am neither philosopher nor sage but a school-teacher and I keep trying to learn from Emerson how not to teach. Here in America we should be blessedly free of authority: There are no foundations for us to augment.

Harold Bloom (The Daemon Knows)

Maybe the most important lesson that any individual can ever learn in life is how to become himself.

Of course, there’s nothing new or innovative in this idea. It’s always been true. But it may be even truer today, when the mass media, exponentially potentiated by the revolution in communication technologies, are invading more and more of our intimate mental and emotional spaces and, as a consequence, usurping so many of the prerogatives of the mind. On the one hand, we are charmed—almost hypnotized—by the marvels of technology. How easy, how comfortable, how entertaining they make our lives. On the other hand, nothing is free. All of those supposed improvements—the labor- and time-saving devices, the almost instantaneous access to an overload of futile information, the fully-integrated home entertainment systems—they all have a price. The incursion of technology into our lives makes it practically impossible for any of us in the developed world to escape from the tidal wave of pre-packaged voices, images and ideas, to resist the pressure to conform to externally-imposed standards and, even worse, to resist the allure of externally-imposed desires.

Plugging ourselves into the circuitry of an electronically-powered virtual reality—one more version of what Thomas Pynchon calls “Death the impersonator”—we are short-sightedly forfeiting what we are. We are losing touch with our innate ability to meditate and reflect, to commune in peaceful, selfsufficient solitude with the silent forces that animate the natural world and constitute the source of life. We are losing touch with the still, small voice that each of us harbors inside, which is the key to our individuality and therefore the key to our freedom, and therefore the key to our humanity.

Everything has its price. The power we need for our self-indulgent dream of control has to come from somewhere. And we take it, unreflectingly, from every “resource” we can. Is it any wonder that the world is dying all around us?

We are all here, as teachers of American literature, to exchange ideas about how our subject matter should be taught. But I would like to bend that objective just a little bit and think in deeper terms about our functions and our duties. Anyone who presumes to be a teacher presumes to participate—or to interfere—in the formation of other minds. And this, in spite of the evidence provided by our salary scales, is a deeply serious responsibility.

I have long believed that the underlying principle of all education should be to inculcate what Ralph Waldo Emerson called, in the 19^th century, self-reliance. Because Emerson was such a central figure in the course of American literature, my interest in his philosophy, my own consequent thoughts on education, on what we should be trying to do in the classroom, and my love for the subject matter that I attempt to teach, are all threads that form part of a single fabric.

At the beginning of Emerson’s first serious philosophical essay, “Nature,” he lucidly describes the existential hermeneutics which is the foundation of his, and of all romantic thought:

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation, so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life before he apprehends it as truth. (Porte 1983: 7)

Those last two sentences are tremendous. Let’s listen to them again: “Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life before he apprehends it as truth.” Could this have anything to do with education? Well, obviously it can, as long as we consider that the phenomenon of human curiosity, the drive to formulate questions and to search for their answers is an important part of the educational process. Emerson is saying here that each one of us already contains the answer to any question we may be able to ask, since both, the question and the answer, arise from the same source: “the order of things,” “the perfection of the creation,” or, simply, nature.

The secret lies first in asking the right questions, and then, in managing to get back to the source.

So let us participate in this process and try to pose an appropriate question for the present discussion: “If the purpose of a responsible education is to develop this kind of existential self-reliance, then what should the duties of the teacher be? How can we best help our students to discover their own sources of knowledge and wisdom?” The answer, once again, is nothing new. Or it shouldn’t be. If we subscribe to Emerson’s way of thinking, then the duties of the teacher are to stimulate the mind, to encourage creativity, to instill critical thought and to cultivate the courage to disagree.

Unfortunately, during more than eleven years of experience at this university, I have observed that we too often tend to do precisely the opposite. And in my opinion, the degree to which we do the opposite is, at the same time, the degree to which we, as educators, fail.

But we have come, at this point, to a fundamental and very problematic conflict. We teachers form part of a collective. We represent a state institution. However, the kind of education I am advocating places primary importance on the freedom and responsibility of the individual. The needs of the individual versus the pressures of the collective: this is the quintessential American dilemma—a dilemma that impinges, to some degree, on almost every aspect of American life and pervades practically all of American literature. Isn’t this one of the reasons why we Americans are so fascinated with schools and the process of schooling? Doesn’t that fascination, in itself, reflect the power that the problem of setting limits on individuality in a supposedly free society has always exerted on us?

I’m sure that everyone here recalls quite well how this dilemma, to give just one example, motivates the action of The Dead Poets Society, and how it applies just as much to the “Emersonian” teacher, John Keating, as it does to his students. And I’m sure that everyone here could construct their own list of corresponding examples from American literature and history.

My list, dictated by my own arbitrary interests, would constitute a line drawn backwards, from The Dead Poets Society to The Catcher in the Rye to Huckleberry Finn, and even to The Scarlet Letter. Because if Huck Finn finds himself squirming uncomfortably under the forced tutelage of Aunt Polly, Hester Prynne certainly finds herself squirming much more intensely under the pressures of the invested power of the Puritan authorities.

But I personally find it even more interesting to observe that John Keatings’ ignominious defeat at Welton Academy is a not-so-distant echo of the very bitter experience that Emerson had when he presented his “subversive” ideas on education at Harvard University in 1837. Even though it deeply inspired the students who heard it, his commencement address, that later came to be known as “The American Scholar,” was energetically denounced by the respectable members of the Faculty.

But then, let’s make no mistake about it, this American pattern had already been marked out as early as the 1630s, when Anne Hutchinson placed the dictates of her own conscience and her faith in the ultimate validity of her own “inner voice” in opposition to John Winthrop and the collective dictates of that solid Puritan theocracy that he so conscientiously represented.

Indeed, one way to think about our literature in general, as Sacvan Bercovitch has eloquently pointed out (1993), is as a continuous effort to search for viable, peaceful means to resolve the tension between these two extremes. In this respect, Emerson’s thoughts on the function of the educational institution were very clear. He says, for example, in “The American Scholar” that

Colleges [...] have their indispensable office,—to teach elements. But they can only highly serve us, when they aim not to drill, but to create; when they gather from far every ray of various genius to their hospitable halls, and, by the concentrated fires, set the hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. (Porte: 59)

Somehow, I don’t think that too many of our colleagues would seriously subscribe to this vision of what the university should do. Isn’t Emerson really saying that we should aim to inspire our students—rather than forcibly drill them? And doesn’t this imply that we should allow them the freedom and the space to become themselves by discovering what they really are?

What I am talking about is the difference between indoctrination and cultivation, an important difference that we should always strive to keep in mind. Are we here simply to dictate to our students what they have to think? Or, much more complexly, are we here to help them along the difficult road toward learning to think for themselves?

Those of us who have been called upon to teach literature, because of the very nature of our subject matter, have a special opportunity to carry out this kind of open-ended practice. I have tried to elucidate, in a different forum, ¹ what I conceive to be the similarities between what poetry does and what the teacher of literature should do. I know it is a difficult posture to defend, but in many ways I think of teaching, as Robert Frost said of his poetry, as “one step backward taken,” if we think of that “step” as a move back home toward ourselves. It seems to me that if the study of literature has any clear purpose, it must be this: to teach us, time and again, what we are, to keep us constantly aware of everything it means to be human.

I realize that I am out of step with the majority of the members of our academic community in my belief that it is not an imperative to master the latest technological gadgets to be an effective teacher, that Powerpoint in the classroom or Internet in the study do not necessarily bring us closer to the goals of a creative and affirmative education, that the cold, depersonalized data of all pedagogical surveys and experiments only serve to obscure the individual and the individual’s needs, and that the growth of a mind—the ultimate goal of any creative and affirmative education—has a host of incalculable parameters that can never be satisfactorily measured by the results of any kind of objective test.

I am also aware, though, that this way of thinking entails a considerable problem. Because, as a fellow graduate student once said to me in a course on teaching methodology where I was advocating this same posture: What else is there? That is, if we forgo all of these clever crutches we have devised for ourselves, what do we do instead?

But maybe the solution to this problem lies, as so many solutions do, in posing the question differently. How can we, as literature teachers, help a mind to grow into itself, as opposed to the rather easier temptation to force a mind to become what we think it should be?

I would suggest, in the first place, that we must not be afraid of not being in control. We must not let ourselves be deluded into believing that we have to dominate the educational process through statistics and data, nor that we should dominate the student through a mastery of indiscutable facts. This kind of an approach closes the mind rather than opening it. It turns the teacher into a pedant—a transmitter of data—and it turns the student into a bookworm—a memorizer of those same data—or, as Emerson puts it, “the parrot of other men’s thinking.”

On the other hand, if you will permit me a small digression here, I’m not advocating that we necessarily go as far in this direction as Amos Bronson Alcott did in his own quite curious, and ill-fated, experiment in Transcendental education at the Temple School in Boston. Alcott, whose greatest claim to recognition for us today is probably the fact that he sired Louisa May, is a quintessential example of the kind of eccentric figures that Emerson inevitably attracted into his circle.

Basing his whole pedagogical approach—and reputation—on the kind of ideas I am talking about here, this incurable idealist and incorrigible egotist dedicated his school to teaching religion, including some highly complex theological concepts, to children, mostly under the age of 10, simply by conversing with them, by delicately asking them what they thought about various passages from the Bible, or from poetry, that they read together. He himself described the experiment as

[...] a course of conversation with children, on the Life of Christ, as recorded in the Gospels [...] an attempt to unfold the Idea of Spirit from the Consciousness of Childhood; and to trace its Intellectual and Corporeal Relations; its Temptations and Disciplines; its Struggles and Conquests, while in the Flesh. To this end, the character of Jesus has been presented to the consideration of the children, as the brightest Symbol of Spirit; and they have been encouraged to express their views regarding it. The Conductor of these Conversations has reverently explored their consciousness, for the testimony which it might furnish in favor of the truth of Christianity. (Miller 1956: 152)

His assistant in this noble enterprise was Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, the sister of Sophia, who married Nathaniel Hawthorne, and of Mary, who married Horace Mann. Peabody would later become the publisher of The Dial and would go on to found the first American kindergarten in 1860. And interestingly, when Peabody left the Temple School, her place was taken by none other than Margaret Fuller.

In an attempt to raise interest in their efforts, Peabody published her Record of a School in 1835 (with a revised edition in 1836) and Alcott published his grandiloquently titled Record of Conversations on the Gospels Held in Mr. Alcott’s School, Unfolding the Doctrine and Discipline of Human Culture at the end of 1836.

Unfortunately, middle-class public opinion, as represented by the Boston newspapers, was not prepared to appreciate Alcott’s ethereal intentions. He was referred to as a “visionary pedagogue” and a “blockhead” who encouraged ignorant children to express their crude opinions on “the most solemn of all subjects—the fundamental truths of religion as recorded in the Gospels of our Savior.” Emerson sympathized with Alcott and supported him, but as always, the power of the establishment was too strong. The final blow was struck by Andrews Norton, Dexter Professor of Sacred Literature at Harvard University, the same Andrews Norton who so strongly opposed the ideas Emerson was later to express in his “Divinity School Address.” Norton opined, in the Boston Courier, that a third of Alcott’s book was absurd, another third blasphemous, and the rest obscene.

The Temple School would never recover. Alcott gradually lost his students, moved to a cheaper location and finally, by the middle of 1837, had to close down shop completely.²

Maybe he went too far in pursuing his Romantic conviction that “the child is father to the man” and that innocent children have a more immediate access to the inherent wisdom that we adults, in the process of growing up, almost inevitably “unlearn.” He probably could’ve been more cautious and tactful, and shouldn’t have been so blind to the realities of the world he lived in. But this whole fascinating and very American incident is only one more illustration of the point I am trying to make.

Only when we open our own minds will we be able to open the minds of our students. If we need to learn to relinquish control, an important part of that relinquishment may lie in renouncing any definite goals or objectives for the classroom and in placing the emphasis on intellectual and emotional enrichment rather than the transmission of a pre-determined body of facts. And this is especially true in our case, the case of the study of literature. We are doing our students a grave disservice if we teach them to approach their studies with that terrible thought in mind: “What do I need to know about this to pass the exam?” Much rather, we should be teaching them to inquire: “What can I learn from this for the betterment of my own life?” After all, what is literature if not a collective body of deep reflections on the manifest truths of human experience?

At the worst, we can teach them names and dates and movements—to memorize, parrot and forget. At the best, we can open their minds to the deepest potentials of the works we read together—potentials that we teachers may not even be aware of.

But what kind of test can measure those effects?

Clearly, mine is not a very scientific or rational approach to education. But I hope it is, above all, a human one, and a humanly responsible one. Literature is life. If we are conscientious, skillful and lucky, then we may just be able to plant a few seeds in our students’ minds. Who can tell how those seeds may grow, how fast they may grow, or when they will bear fruit? I know, for example, that I am still learning, 25 or 30 years later, from things that certain teachers of mine said or did in the classroom and which I did not fully comprehend at the time. They were the ones, I now reflect, who really did know what they were doing.

As Emerson implies throughout “The American Scholar,” all of us are students, all of our lives, in this existential learning-place which is the world. The only authentic final exam is how well we manage to formulate ourselves and, in so doing, positively contribute to the world we live in. The great American modernist poet, Marianne Moore, meditates on all of these Emersonian concepts in her aptlytitled poem, “The Student”:

[. . .]

and here also as

in France or Oxford, study is beset with

dangers—with bookworms, mildews,

and complaisancies. But someone in New

England has known enough to say

the student is patience personified,

is a variety

of hero, “patient

of neglect and of reproach”—who can “hold by

himself.” You can’t beat hens to

make them lay. Wolf’s wool is the best of wool,

but it cannot be sheared because

the wolf will not comply. With knowledge as

with the wolf’s surliness,

the student studies

voluntarily, refusing to be less

than individual.

If we dedicate our lives to studying a literature, shouldn’t we take it seriously enough to try to put the ideas it contains into practice?

Literature is life. At a time when we are so obsessed with theory, when teaching methodology has come to be confused with the serious and neverending task of learning, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of believing that teaching and learning are basically a question of establishing clear human relationships, and that the teacher-student relationship is ultimately only a question of one human being talking to others (and, in the happiest case, those others responding)—a question of shared experiences.

I suspect that we teachers are, only nominally, “information resources,” and that our deepest function is as role models. What our students really acquire from us, through those ancient and indefinable human channels that have always propitiated learning, are attitudes, value judgments and standards of behavior. What we are is just as important as what we know.

I said above that we may need to renounce all definite goals in the classroom, but I would like to conclude by indulging in my human prerogative to contradict myself. The only clear objective we should always keep in view is the idea I began with. Maybe we can help our students to become themselves by providing them with the emotional complexity, the intellectual curiosity and the confidence—the self-reliance—to think for themselves, to question patiently, reflectively and intelligently, absolutely everything.

And that includes their teachers.

WORKS CITED

Baker, Carlos. 1996. Emerson among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait. New York: Viking Press.

Bercovitch, Sacvan. 1993. Rites of Assent: Transformations in the Symbolic Structure of America. New York: Routledge.

Miller, Perry. 1956. The Transcendentalists: An Anthology. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Porte, Joel (ed.). 1983. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures. New York: The Library of America.

^* Originally published in Carme Manuel (ed.). 2001. Teaching American Literature in Spanish Universities. València: Biblioteca Javier Coy. 75-80.

¹ See the previous essay, “Heart Is Where the Home Is. Some Reflections on the Line between Wisdom and Knowledge.”

² An entertaining account of Alcott’s relationship with Emerson, including the events surrounding the Temple School, is provided in Baker (1996).