Emerson, President of Nova!

Living in an environment where all share ideas and learn from each other is an idea that Emerson have talked about in his book. Therefore, if Emerson were to be the President of NOVA he would change a few things to improve it. First, he would start to think about the type of students an teachers to admit to the college. Second, changing teaching styles of the professors and enforcing cooperation between teachers and students. Lastly, enforcing internships on students to gain real life experience.

A good college should be judged from the people that inhibit it. The types of teachers that should be admitted should be unique in their own way; ones that have their own thinking, had real like experience with the materials they will teach, and accept students ideas and learn from then as well. The universe has unique people where not one person repeats; no where in the world will you find two one hundred percent identical persons. For this reason, not one person is more correct over the other; we all are knowledgeable and it varies from one thing to the other. Also, no one is wrong, we just have different ways of thinking that is influenced from our life experience. Emerson states, “ Do not think youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark In the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold then he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.” (Self-Reliance, 150). From this, you can see that the young can teach us just as much as a person with a Ph.D. degree can. The difference is that the young can be called as self-reliant from than a man with a Ph.D. because they are too young to be hypocritical or cynical. They also learned from life experience, where as the man with a Ph.D. went though years of studying from teachers that enforced their ideas as correct, from which it was brought from books. Books that people wrote that is also enforcing their ideas as more correct. Emerson states, “ There is a time in every man’s education...; that imitation is suicide...” ( Self-Reliance, 149). Where is the human creativity? Where is the unique thinking of a human being? God has created every single human with their own brain that thinks its own way. If we are going to rely on the teachings of teachers solely who were taught by other teachers that were taught from books... We might as well pray for God to not create brains for us since we are not using them. An example of how teachers should be teaching class, the teacher would encourage the students in a discussion about a book they have been reading. The teacher would give her/his point of view about a certain topic and would listen to what the students think of her/his perception. From this, the teacher and the students are creating a class of creative thinking, where the students and the teacher are engaged in, and are learning from each other at the same time. This helps even those that have not come up with any perceptions to finally think of a new perception from absorbing other students and the teachers information.