Ways of learning (Thoreau)
April 27th, 2006 | Published in Education, Quotes
Which would have advanced the most at the end of a month—the boy who had made his own jackknife from the ore which he had dug and smelted, reading as much as would be necessary for this—or the boy who had attended the lectures on metallurgy at the Institute in the meanwhile, and had received a Rodgers penknife from his father? Which would be the most likely to cut his fingers? … To my astonishment I was informed on leaving on leaving college that I had studied navigation!—why, if I had taken one turn down the harbor I should have known more about it.
—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 42