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Thoreau was known for his ability to teach, to inspire students, and to foster creativity; and he was known for his practice of leaving the classroom to take his students on walks and exploring the woods with them. He resisted many commonplace educational practices; the most important example is his dislike for corporal punishment. Thoreau resisted its use in the burgeoning public school system of Concord, and he eventually left his post because he could not approve of attempts to make him do otherwise. This distaste for corporal punishment was part of a larger distrust of popular views of education in general; he had been educated in a system that emphasized rote learning. His educational values and distrust for standard educational practices, however, harmonized with those of his Transcendentalist friends; one of the recurring themes in Transcendentalism, for example, is how to improve education, its creative potential, and its ability to transform society. From within this context, Thoreau esteemed education as a freeing activity and as an integral part of the social fabric.

A common motif in Thoreau’s work is the unexpected; he esteems novel insights or fresh ways of seeing. On May 30, 1853, Thoreau wrote the following words in his journal: “That which had seemed a rigid wall of vast thickness unexpectedly proves a thin and undulating drapery. The boundaries of the actual are no more fixed and rigid than the elasticity of our imaginations. The fact that a rare and beautiful flower which we never saw, perhaps never heard [of], for which therefore there was no place in our thoughts, may at length be found in our immediate neighborhood, is very suggestive” (Journal 5 203-04). This passage returns to the tension between common and uncommon sense; for Thoreau, there is an attraction to seeing things in an uncommon way, encounters with the world that reveal how porous and flexible our understanding of the world should be. Instead of education being a way to train students through rote learning and rigid constructs, Thoreau envisioned education as being more about provocation, imagination, and freeing students to experience moments of insight more frequently. Education, therefore, had an element of cultivating a sensibility for the unforeseen, for the wild.

In a similar approach to his outlook on authorship, Thoreau understood education as a highly personal experience with transformative qualities. He esteems the subjective element in learning.

There is no such thing as purely objective observation. Your observation, to be interesting, i.e. to be significant, must be subjective. The sum of what the writer of whatever class has to report is simply some human experience, whether he be poet or philosopher or man of science. The man of most science is the man most alive, whose life is the greatest event. Senses that take cognizance of outward things merely are of no avail. It matters not where or how far you travel,—the farther commonly the worse,—but how much alive you are. (Journal 6 236-38)

The duality between objective and subjective observation has important implications for education. First, it means that education is not based on the model of a phlegmatic observer who is separate from that which is being observed; instead, observation and learning emerge from a life lived with intensity and subjective concerns. Secondly, the intensity of one’s life conditions one’s ability to look at the world in a more fruitful way; to live more freely and in a way not restrained by restrictive customs and habits will lead to greater appreciation for the unexpected in life, which keeps the senses attuned to the external world and its wildness. The terminus, however, is the integration of the external world with one’s internal world; eventually, all the data will take on the personal qualities of the observer, which leaves education a highly subjective act fully merged with daily life within specific contexts.

Thoreau offers a type of education that should aspire to a level of wildness or should be a little uncivilized. Not only is education stultifying for students who are forced to take part in rote learning, but pedantic teachers also cultivate a way of engaging life and studies that is constraining. In his journal, Thoreau explains, “Scholars have for the most part a diseased way of looking at the world. They mean by it a few cities and importunate assemblies of men and women—who might all be concealed in the grass of the prairie” (Journal 2 69). The overly pedantic learning of scholars is “diseased,” as it takes a very partial or narrow view of what counts for life, who counts as a person, and what locations are significant for human life. The end of Thoreau’s entry reintroduces the tension between civilization and the wilds of the natural world: “They describe their world as old or new—healthy or diseased—according to the state of their libraries—a little dust more or less on their shelves. When I go abroad from under this shingle or slate roof—I find several things which they have not considered—their conclusions seem imperfect.” Scholars remain content with the knowledge in their libraries and do not seek other forms of experience or fresh insights. Thoreau reuses the word “diseased” to emphasize a faculty not functioning at its healthiest capacity; unlike these scholars, however, Thoreau moves beyond the construction of the house and ventures into the world beyond books and libraries. It is beyond the bookish space of the scholar that he finds things that undo their arguments; they have come to the wrong conclusions; their encyclopedic knowledge is unsound.

To be an educator, a student, or a scholar means more than understanding the common sense of other writers; true education and learning exceed the encyclopedic knowledge of a community. Sitting in the same room or at the same desk day after day is an ineffective way to cultivate knowledge. Contrary to the cultivation of facts and the short time devoted to education in life, education is a life-long process for Thoreau that, ideally, should inform the community’s ethos, turning all members of society into a team of mutually-supportive learners or a culture based on continuing education.

We boast that we belong to the nineteenth century and are making the most rapid strides of any nation. But consider how little this village does for its own culture . . . We need to be provoked,—goaded like oxen, as we are, into a trot. We have a comparatively decent system of common schools, schools for infants only . . . and latterly the puny beginning of a library suggested by the state, no school for ourselves . . . It is time that we had uncommon schools, that we did not leave off our education when we begin to be men and women. It is time that villages were universities, and their elder inhabitants the fellows of universities, with leisure—if they are indeed so well off—to pursue liberal studies the rest of their lives. (Walden 108-09)

In this passage, which is as much a criticism of local and state practices as much as a comment on education, Thoreau advocates a communal emphasis and pride of place for education and schools. It is not enough to educate people for part of their lives; instead, education should be a continuous process throughout our lives. Against simple factual acquisition, early childhood education only, the devaluation of the schools, and a lack of funding, Thoreau paints a picture of education that is freeing, dynamic, done in shifting contexts, and invaluable to the health of society. Education should prepare us for engaging life in fresh ways and experiencing the flux that constitutes all existence.