When in the time of Whitman, learning was thought of in a whole different way. Whitman believed that you learn best by doing, not telling, while others believed in telling and not doing. There is no right or wrong answer, of course, because it depends on the person to decide which type of learning method is the best. I, for example, learn best by being told what to do, and then doing the activity itself, so I need a little bit of both to learn in the best way. While there are other people that do best when they are JUST told what to do, or when they are JUST shown what to do. Whitman was a self taught man, who taught himself by going out into nature and learning what to do,…show more content… He states this opinion in many of his poems that he wrote throughout his lifetime, but there is a single poem that sort of represents this statement much more. And this poem is When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer, and it talks about how Whitman talks about a teacher and how he doesn’t think that teaching in a classroom does nothing. Whitman thinks that you need to be outside, in nature, learning how God wants you to learn. “Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.” Whitman says this because he thinks that in the midst of things, you need to realize that nature is where you are going to be happiest. Whitman says in his book Leaves of Grass, “One sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter...” That totally relates to this poem and everything he has to say about nature and the difference of learning. I love Whitmans way of thinking; it is so abstract and different from everybody else, and that is a very unique and lovely thing to have. Most people do not have the confidence to have a different way of thinking in that time, and I love that Whitman showed everyone that he did not care what other people had to…show more content… “He most honors my style who learns under it to destroy the teacher.” He says that if you choose to learn in his way you will one day be better than teachers, and you will be the best. Which is what you always want to end up being. According to Ed Folsom and Kenneth Price, “The young have the ability to defeat the old -- to be better than the old ever have been. They are the face of our history.” Folsom and Price say the same things that Whitman say; the young will someday defeat the old. Gay Wilson Allen also said “Mr. Whitman believed that in order to learn you need to do hands-on activities, because there isn’t any better way to learn.” Whitman believed in this statement hardcore, and that is the one thing he loved to believe in. Learning through nature is the best way to learn, and there was no way he was going to change his mind about
