Emerson in Suburbia; S. Withers

EMERSON IN SUBURBIA As Ralph Waldo Emerson's voice in Boston's Athenaeum is said to have entranced his listeners, so the voice in his essays has made many readers since his day feel suddenly responsive. But Emerson does not go over in today's suburbia. He is not "with it." The boys and girls whom I taught English in a wealthy New York suburb mayor may not be "tomorrow's leaders" (as they are so often told they will be) but they are the sons and daughters of today's leaders. They are unusually earnest for high school students. They want to understand. But they just can't dig Emerson. His voice has stopped somewhere short of their ken. "To believe in your own thought," Emerson said, Uto believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men-that is genius." It is a genius miss ing among "tomorrow's leaders." The sophisticated high school boys and girls today are suspicious of this kind of self-trust. Popular psychology, learned from TV, mag azines, and their parents and teachers, has made them Mr. Withers is Administrative Director of the Council for Basic Education, and prior to that had been a high school tea<::her of English in a wealthy New York suburb.

77 78 SAMUEL WITHERS distrust difference as eccentricity-eccentricity attributa ble to repressions or obsessions. So in proper caution most of them measure their own thoughts against those of others. To Emerson's statement, "God will not have his work made manifest by cowards," their reaction is that God, if there is a God, will not have his work done, necessarily, by either cowards or brave men. He will have his work done by reasonable men, who understand human motivation, sitting in committee and producing a result that all reasonable men may readily accept. It would be unfair to make this generalization about today's suburban youth without some apology for them. To begin with, there are a few adolescents who admire Emerson's thoughts and genuinely try to live by their own convictions. Secondly, it must be admitted that Emerson did not appeal to the majority of men even in his own time. And in the third place, we must concede the much rehashed assertion· that adolescence is a period of conformity not only in suburbia but throughout the world. In that age, which we are told is "insecure," boys and girls take comfort from dressing, talking, and think ing alike.

But there are significant objections to this apology. Not only are there very few (one or two in a class at the most) who find Emerson's philosophy compatible; most of the students I taught were positively hostile to it. They either considered it dangerous and disruptive or else the product of a puerile mind which had not, alas, had the advantage of familiarity with post-Freudian thought. And while Emerson never appealed to the maEMERSON IN SUBURBIA 79 jority, these students themselves are hardly representa tive of the man on the street. They take their academic work seriously, many of them come from illustrious families, and their average I.Q. ranges with that of the better independent preparatory schools. If any of today's adolescents might be expected to heed an appeal to in dividualism, they might. But I have taught in rural schools, both in Vermont and in New York state, and in both places I found more individualism and more respect for individualism than I did in suburbia, though most of the individualists I found in the rural schools were of a homespun variety that Emerson would doubtless have approved more than they would him. Furthermore, most of these will keep the noiseless tenor of their way along the cool sequester'd vale of life, while their better educated contemporaries will provide the Cromwells and the Miltons of the com ing generation-if, indeed, there be any. To be a Crom well or a Milton you have to have the genius to believe in your own thought.

Angry at Society? To most of my students in suburbia I assigned both "Self-Reliance" and "Heroism," the essays in which Em erson makes his strongest appeals for integrity of thought and conscience. One boy, a thoughtful one and a stu dent leader, made an objection to Emerson that im mediately had the rest of the class echoing with ap proval. It was to Etnerson's statement, "Society every80 SAMUEL WITHERS where is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members." The boy asked, "What was the matter with Emerson? Was he angry at society?" He implied that only dyspepsia could account for such an attitude. Turning to the class generally I asked, "Haven't you ever felt social pressure?" Of course, they admitted that they had. But they did not feel that this was pressure against their own integrity. Rather, they grudgingly said that social pressure is something to be grateful for. "It helps us when we get out of line."

"Heroism" made even less sense to them than did "Self-Reliance." The students commented on it with re strained contempt, "The hero," said Emerson, "is a mind of such balance that no disturbances can shake his will, but pleasantly and, as it were, merrily he advances to his own music, alike in frightful alarms and in the tipsy mirth of universal dissoluteness." One of the more pre cocious boys asked, as we considered this, whether or not Emerson was paranoid. Seeing that they did not accept Emerson's concept of a hero, I asked them what theirs was. Apart from the expected examples of physical heroism, such as rescuing people from a burning build ing, the students showed disrespect not only for Emer son's concept but for the idea of heroism generally. The word hero~ indeed, was among many of them a slur word: "What are you trying to be, a hero?" It was bad form to stand out. Other terms popular among the students also indicate their cast of thought. A "fink" is someone who plays a lone game. Emerson today would be a fink if he were EMERSON IN SUBURBIA 81 among these students. From popular psychology comes their term "sick," a term which is applied not only to individuals but to any ideas that are "way out." A term of great approval is "cool," but it is applied only to things which are strictly regulation. If a thing is "shoe,"

it's O.K., even though it may not be cool. This distrust of individualism and worship of con formity is at least partly the fault of adults. Teachers have long been blamed for rewarding docility and com pliance while punishing nonconforming behavior. Our faculty devised a way to insure the success of such "co operation." It was called the "Citizenship Committee," and, although its ideals were nobly stated, one of its ef fects was to dim the spark that Emerson pleaded for. The Citizenship Committee was composed of both faculty and student members. I remember on one occasion hearing the faculty head of the committee speak proudly of the effectiveness of its work over the preceding two or three years. There had been a home football game in which the opponents up rooted our goalposts after the game. "There wasn't a move on anybody's part to stop them, and there wasn't any fight," the faculty man boasted. "Only a few years ago we'd have had a real fight on our hands." While I am not in favor of brawls, it seemed to me that some thing had been lost with this gain-perhaps something more vital than the avoidance of bloodied noses or the show of "ungentlemanly behavior" -something that Em erson called in "Self-Reliance" a IIwild virtue."

There is another reason why the pupils I taught found 82 SAMUEL WITHERS . Emerson's ideas so incompatible: it is their concept of democracy. "Democracy" has become a word almost re ligious in its earnest application (and, as I feel, misap plication) with these boys and girls. It is a worship of majority opinion. The individuals who occasionally stood up in righteous indignation within their town meetings, which fostered our original brand of democ racy, in order to protest a majority feeling, would be way out in today's suburbia. Emerson's voice cried, "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." And suburbia's voices would chorus in reply, "Nothing is at last sacred but the collective will of the people." The respect for the dissenter which character ized our earlier brand is gone with their veneration of majority rule. Justice Holmes is credited with having said, "Truth is the majority opinion of that nation which can lick all others"; but one senses the wryness with which the old man made such a cynical pronouncement. It comes pretty close to being what the young people in the sophisticated suburban schools believe with a straight face.

The Discouraging Prospects It may be old-fogeyism to be concerned about sub urban kids' reactions to Emersonian thought. Maybe, af ter all, they are not tomorrow's leaders. There has al ways been in this country a tradition of leadership ap pearing, almost miraculously, from the back woods or hills. The most obvious example is a man from KenEMERSON IN SUBURBIA 83 tucky and Illinois, who kept the country one. But the discrepancy today between the kind of education avail able in wealthy suburban schools and those of impover ished rural areas is greater than it used to be, and a good college education is now a sine qua non for anyone we would call a leader. The chances are that the boys and girls who reject Emerson as archaic or psychotic are the people who will take over their generation. If they do, they will take it over in teams and committees, and a right reasonableness will help the aspirant to qualify for the best team or committee. This prospect seems to have little about it that savors of greatness.

About greatness, two of Emerson's succinct aphorisms are, "To be great is to be misunderstood" and "Greatness appeals to the future." Among the Beatitudes in the book of Matthew there is a parallel: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be exceed ing glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so per secuted they the prophets which were before you." But the children of today's suburban dwellers would choose a different Beatitude, if any: "Blessed are the peace makers; for they shall be called the children of God." Peacemakers, to be sure, not in any international sense, but in the sense that lets the goalposts drop because it is immature to defend them. Peacemakers who try to show recalcitrant objectors to a majority opinion the er ror of their ways. It is no wonder, considering their conditioning, that these young people are hostile to Emerson's philosophy 84 SAMUEL WITHERS of individualism. "What I must do is all that concerns me," Emerson said, "not what the people think." To boys and girls who have been taught to venerate what the people think, these words raise a banner for chaos and anarchy. It may be that some of the seeds of anarchy are in Emerson's words. But so are the seeds of integrity, and it is disheartening to see these lost.

Old and middle-aged alarmists have always thought that the younger generation is going to pot, and I must confess qualms about my own observations. But they are temporary qualms, because I subscribe to Emerson's in junction, "Trust thyself." And my qualms are about "to morrow's leaders." Where will the people come from who will fight for a vision even though they may not find it popular at first? Whether the adults of suburbia can do anything to provide the real leadership we will need in the seventies and eighties or not, I don't know. Perhaps we could stop inculcating the supreme virtue of "cooperation/' Per haps we could question "the Freudian Ethic" more than we do in our English and especially our social science courses. But these seem weak negatives. We need, our selves, to believe in the sacredness of the integrity of our own minds-and to show that we believe in it. Stout heartedness engenders stoutheartedness, as the song says which begins, "Give me ten men... ." If parents and teachers can hear again the voice of the Athenaeum with some respect, we may gain a new audience for it in a new generation. It has dropped to a whisper now.