Paul Scott Derrick Grisanti - Lines of Thought

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).

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