Education: An Essay and Other Selections 1909

This volume presents the views of Ralph Waldo Emerson regarding education. It consists of his entire essay on "Education," and several additional selections from his other writings. By no means a complete exposition of his philosophy of education, the material presents his fundamental beliefs with regard to the proper aims and methods, which should be pursued in the liberal training of men and women. With rare penetration the essayist reveals the essential nature of the problems, which everywhere arise in the effort to train men. In these days when we are necessarily so largely engaged in adding to our traditional education a system of specialized vocational training in the industrial, agricultural, and commercial arts, there is a danger that we shall lose our sense of proportion, forgetting the full significance of that older liberal education which is designed to equip man for the finer uses of his manhood and his citizenship.

There is no better brief for a broad, human education than that presented in the writings of Emerson. Our best American apostle of culture, he notes with precision the qualities which are the measure of a truly cultivated man. With high critical power, he describes the futility and the narrowness of much that goes under the guise of human training in the schools, and ably defends the larger cause of spiritual development, despite the failures to achieve it in the classroom. When sharp competition forces us to a serious consideration of a school training for bread winning, it is well to be told that the glorified word efficiency means spiritual efficiency as much as economic competency.