Walt Whitman's Influence On Education

Education is a highly controversial topic in modern-day America, but how long has the school-system had errors? Those who believe that the school system is biased or limiting freedoms arise quite often in the media. Tracie Mitchell, in her article entitled “Art Grows the Imagination,” in the September 19, 2015 edition of Northern Wyoming Daily News, says, “Hendrickson (artist is trying to keep art in the hearts and minds of elementary students as more and more schools are pulling art from the curriculum, especially in the town where he grew up. (Mitchell, 1)” This shows just how much school suppresses creativity and individuality. However, this is not a new concept. Even in the seventeenth century, issues such as this were arised. Walt Whitman,

Even something as miniscule as design, Walter Whitman, Jr. stood out. While designing the cover for Leaves of Grass, Whitman, according to Ivan Marki, decided to give it a sense of originality. “The physical design of the book is unusual. Spread over the dark green covers and sprouting from the words ‘Leaves of Grass’ embossed in gold in the center, patterns of vines, tendrils, and tufts of grass announce the spirit of organicism and give visual confirmation to the words' suggestion that the contents have grown like grass. These words are the only title to appear in the book, in bold big letters on the title page, in somewhat smaller characters at the head of the first six poems (serving as a repeated title for those pieces), and as a modest refrain at the top of each page. (Marki)” This proves how far Walt Whitman would go to stand out from the rest of the world. His opposition to the “boring” is humorous in a way, due to the way he instructs students to do the same. Within Song 17, Whitman jokes how, “There are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they are not original with me. If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing or next to nothing. (Page 430, lines 11-14)” This mindset describes how people of that time worked. Uniformity is key in this type of world, which Whitman so graciously

Within Song 6 in Song of Myself, Whitman is approached by a child with what seems to be a simple question. “A child said What is the grass? Fetching it to me with full hands, how could i answer the child. I do not know what it is any more than he. (Page 428, lines 16-18)” One would imagine that with much more experience than the child, Whitman would answer factually. Quite the contrary, he responds with the same question. To treat a child as if they are incoherent is not Whitman’s pedagogy. He allows the student to teach the teacher. He understands that children and students and teach the instructor just as easily as it is done vice versa. Kiera Chase, an instructor at Envision Schools, stated that, “We wanted to increase student engagement and foster an authentic sense of urgency around their education. By turning the school paradigm upside we aimed to create opportunities for students to explore teaching and learning in a new and remixed way. Central to our vision was for students to publicly share their own understanding, thus fostering authentic dialogue about what they learned. (Chase)” By allowing the student to teach, more is learned by both parties, as Whitman so determined in the seventeenth