Paul Scott Derrick Grisanti - Lines of Thought

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?