This is my peer response to Eric Chan’s post.

I agree with Eric saying that school and books are a great source of education, but it cannot be your only kind of education. Man rely too much of his education on books, rather than trying to find the genius within himself. It is true that books are great for teaching the past, but “they are for nothing but to inspire” (Emerson 2). Books should allow your mind to think and create new. For a bookworm, books could be dangerous. People who value books too much lose all their original distinctive thoughts and just accept what’s written inside the book. For book valuers, “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 an outcry, if it is disparaged” (Emerson 2). Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm” (Emerson 2). A Man Thinking would be someone who reads about other’s ideas, brainstorms from it, and develops a new modern idea; rather than following ideas from the past. An example of a book worm would be, “the English dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred years” (Emerson 2). Instead of creating their own poems, they are obsessed with Shakespeare, which is already outdated. 

Emerson says college is built from books. He says, “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. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books” (Emerson 2). This is very true in modern day education, students just memorize facts straight from the textbook. Not many actually go beyond, test the ideas, and develop new ones. But just accepting the ideas written by young men is still wrong. A Man Thinking will go out into nature, explore, and from their discoveries they will produce unique ideas.

I agree with what Eric said about the connection of Locke to this topic. I also want to add on how Rousseau view of books. Rousseau says we should not just learn from books, but rather go out and experiment and experience. From your very own experience, we have a true scholar and not from being mesmerized with ideas of past. Overall, I agree with  much Eric has said his post and also “books are well used but abused.”