Henry David Thoreau on Education
Thoreau's relation to the institution of education has been problematic. He entered the teaching profession early, as an undergraduate, and left it a few years later, when he closed the private school he had conducted with his brother. Although there were external reasons for this action, Thoreau's departure from teaching also resulted from disillusion with the conventional classroom, a growing sense that it prevented learning rather then fostering it. Despite having undergone a formal education at Harvard University, Thoreau challenged existing teaching standards and sought to implement idealistic educational principles. He emphasized a deep respect for the local and concrete as the basis of all learning, education through experience as intrinsically valuable, and a vision of schooling in which knowledge is as much constructed as it is transmitted. Also, placing focus where it really should be, he increasingly came to feel that "it is strange that men are in such haste to get fame as teachers rather then knowledge as learners" (Allen 217). He spent the rest of his life learning and writing; the two were usually the same for him. He never lost his concern for teaching, both envisioning better ways to go about it and launching a powerful critique of the way it was usually done: "What does education often do! -- It makes a strait-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook" (Allen 312).
Because he stands outside the mainstream of educational practice, Thoreau can help us transcend the false oppositions that have arisen between traditionalists and progressives, between advocates of traditional education, and those of openness and creativity. Thoreau envisioned and enacted a necessary synthes...
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...learn from them. At the conclusion of Walden, Thoreau urged the reader "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them" (323-24).
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Works Cited
Allen, Francis H. and Bradford Torrey, eds. The Journal of Henry David Thoreau.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.
Crutch, Joseph Wood, ed. Walden and Other Writings. By Henry Thoreau. 1854. Bantam: New York, 1962.
Hovde, Carl F., William Howarth, and Elizabeth Hall Witherell, eds. A week on the Concord and Merrymack Rivers. By Henry Thoreau. 1849. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Sanborn, F. B. The Life of Henry David Thoreau.
Boston: Houston Mifflin, 1971.
Thoreau, Henry. Walden and Other Writings. Ed. Joseph Wood Krutch.
Bantam: New York, 1962.
[Thoreau] stood close to the top of his class, but he went his own way too
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Henry David Thoreau, a Harvard graduate, did not exceed in his professions he studied. Thoreau studied the art of teaching and when he returned to teach in his home town of Concord he quit within the first two weeks because he would not conform to the
...s that you develop a way of regarding the information that you receive to the society that you are living in. He also believes that a quality education develops a students moral views and ability to think. And that these qualities are best developed in the traditional classroom setting by interaction between the student and their professors, and the student’s social life on campus, that is, their interaction with fellow students.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.” In this quote, Eleanor is expressing that you should always take advantage of the universal human right to be an individual. From time immemorial, many of those who have led meaningful and enjoyable lives have shared one particular trait in common: individualism. Chris McCandless and Thoreau were no different, they both embodied individualism and as a result they have unknowingly inspired generations.
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"World Academy of Art & Science." Individuality & Social Conformity – Thoreau's View. World Academy of Art and Science, 09 Jan. 2010. Web. 15 Apr. 2014. .
Although his actions were admirable and act as evidence to integrity, the writings of Henry David Thoreau and Emerson reveal a haughty and pretentious individual. Thoreau's courage was noble. He was quick to immerse himself in his beliefs
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