AF: The Rhetorical Precis

Rhetorical Precis:  Emerson's "Education"

In a posthumously published essay entitled “Education,” Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) asserts THAT it is in our very nature to love and seek education, and if properly fed and nourished by skillful teachers, we all have capacities for genius and insight.  Emerson develops his position by describing the tension between educating the masses -- an enterprise requiring structured curriculum, rules, assessments and schedules -- and nurturing the intellectual inclinations, passions and disciplines of the individual student.  A critic of a system that can extinguish the joy of teaching and learning for both teachers and students -- but offering no solution -- Emerson writes IN ORDER TO illuminate the most pernicious problem in education: our struggle to educate the individual in an institutional setting.  Writing for the child’s first teachers -- their parents -- Emerson seeks to encourage us to protect and inspire our young people's interests so that they may realize their natural genius.