Emerson’s, “American Scholar” was an address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Cambridge in 1837. The address was highly controversial and raised many eye brow

s. Emerson states, “The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,–a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many things(pg. 84)”. Here, Emerson criticizes institutionalized education and gives an example of what he believes it has done to people. Emerson believes that education has made man into just a part of a man, that education specializes and therefore takes away from the true essence of being a man, robbing man of his integrity. Emerson continues on in his criticism. “Instantly the book becomes noxious: the guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon it, and makes it outcry if it is disparaged. Colleges are built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of principles (pg 88)”. Emerson starts off by bashing the idea of man learning from a book. He even goes so far as to say that “the book becomes noxious.” He is saying that the books men try to learn from are distasteful, even harmful to one’s health. He describes this book as a tyrant, a dictator, a harmful ruler, taking over one’s mind, as well as thought. He talks about how colleges are built on this firm idea of learning from a book. He believes rote learning is the absolute devil to a man’s mind, and colleges are simply brain washing individuals by teaching them in t

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