Different Meanings of an Emerson Passage

“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.” - Emerson discussing college

Words:

They= teachers, professors, college education

Create= come up with their own ideas, perform, give freedom

Gather= collect, receive, take

Every ray of various genius= different interpretations, variety of lessons, from all over

hearts of their youth on flame= make the children interested and excited

Different meanings: 

• Teachers can only provide a good education when they give freedom to the lesson. When they except different varieties of education they make their students interested in what they have to learn. 
• College education is only helpful when we can take information from others and be able to form our own ideas from that. 
• In order for children to stay interested they must be able to come up with conclusions on their own.

Close Reading

My definition of close reading: Close reading is when a person observes part of a text and analyzes it carefully. More specifically when a person finds a passage that strikes them, or they find it very interesting. Then the reader must question why the author used certain words or terms over others. How else could those words be said? What other words could be put there? How do they change the meaning? They must do this by annotating and paraphrasing the text. Conclude by asking, why did the author choose to use the words that he did? 

http:fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr/documents/CloseReading.html

mason.gmu.edu/~rmatz/close_reading.htm

I used the websites above to derive my definition. I believe that they both have very good points of how to do a close reading. In the first website I liked that it said "To answer some of our own questions, we have to look back at the text and see what else is going on." This makes sense because they author could have used different words to make similarities throughout the text. An important quote from the second website was, "Does your paraphrase flow smoothly from one point to another or does it reveal significant gaps?" This is important to think about because if the paraphrase does not flow well with the text it answers what the author was thinking. 

21st Century Emerson

I think that a 21st century Emerson would be disappointed with the society. When looking at today’s society one thing that is associated with Americans is that the majority of us are lazy. This is especially apparent in the media, which, other then experience is a way the rest of the world views us. Usage of television, computers and telephones are way more popular and more highly used then in Emerson’s time. Instead of going outside and playing, many children are glued to the television, which does not shape a good future for them. He spoke of how we learn things during our childhood and youth and know them forever as pictures and important memories. But when people are inside and not going out and experiencing the world those memories become very insignificant. At the time Emerson wrote the American Scholar he described Americans to be “timid, imitative and tame.” This is the opposite of what he views as a scholar, and the society has gotten worse. Teenagers always complain that they are bored, but a scarce amount of them actually go out and observe. They do not learn from nature, they rarely learn from experience, but only the little amount from the books that they choose to read. It has been said that the habits that we learn from childhood stick with us for the rest of our lives. Looking at today’s society I think that Emerson would still see the “Tragic consequence,” that he saw before.