Education

Are millions of average thinking people better than a few basic and a few genius spread throughout the world. With the polices we have in school today, although no child is left behind, many students don't reach near their full potentials. So what we end up with is a majority of average thinkers, and then still some who are not even average, more like basic or below. In paragraph 10, Emerson writes about schools having to "lower [their flags] and reef [their] sails" in order to "wait for the dull sailors". These "dull sailors" that we have in many of our schools today aren't students who are incapable of learning and becoming the "potential genius" they are born to be, let alone just don't care about or have the desire to learn and further themselves. Because of the lack of desire to learn and succeed in many students, many other students who are trying to reach their full potential are being held back. In schools today, teachers teach "for large classes instead of individuals". This sort of laziness, that has planted it's bottom in our school systems, is a great barrier for the next generations of genuises, who may potentially have the power to change the world, to overcome.