It is much better to learn the elements of geology, of botany, or ornithology and astronomy by word of mouth from a companion than dully from a book.
Interpretation
Learning from experience and conversation is more engaging than just reading from books.
Emerson emphasizes the value of experiential learning through direct interaction with others, suggesting that discussions and shared knowledge can make subjects like geology, botany, and astronomy more vivid and memorable compared to the passive act of reading. This approach to education fosters deeper understanding and connection to the material.
In practice
In a lecture about teaching methods, I quoted Emerson to highlight the importance of interactive learning.
It is plain that there is no separate essence called courage, no cup or cell in the brain, no vessel in the heart containing drops or atoms that make or give this virtue; but it is the right or healthy state of every man, when he is free to do that which is constitutional to him to do.
Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth without a plan, and are always at the end of their line.
Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations
Tis the good reader that makes the good book; a good head cannot read amiss: in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakeably meant for his ear.
The world belongs to the energetic.
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?
The world is a university and everyone in it is a teacher. Make sure when you wake up in the morning you go to school.
Children want to mimic adults. They notice when you choose to prepare fresh vegetables over calling in another pizza pie for dinner. They will see that food made with love and care outweighs going through the drive-through window.
In the future, how we educate our children may prove to be more important than how much we educate them.
I had just taken to reading. I had just discovered the art of leaving my body to sit impassive in a crumpled up attitude in a chair or sofa, while I wandered over the hills and far away in novel company and new scenes... My world began to expand very rapidly,... the reading habit had got me securely.
A person who won't read has no advantage over one who can't read.
School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned.
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