In his essay "The American Scholar" Ralph Waldo Emerson expresses a rather progressive for his time position on the role and the duties of the intellectual, as well as on the different ways of learning and their significance. He rejects the rigid methods of education, which rely on the "exertion of mechanical skills," and speaks in support of a teaching that develops the personality and gives importance to the individual.
Emerson states that the three main ways in which a person learns are through nature, through the past, best communicated in the form of books, and through his own actions…
