[Julia Dey]

In Staton’s Solitude and Self, gender equality is one of the main points. Stanton also discusses the importance of individuality. She does this by arguing that solitude is the best way for someone to find one’s “self.” She also discusses the important role that nature can play in this journey of finding one’s self. This goes hand in hand with Thoreau’s idea of nature and the role that plays in self-dependence. In Alcott’s Transcendental Wild Oats, she makes fun of Thoreau and Staton’s transcendental and self-sufficient lifestyle. She talks about the family not being able to properly grow crops and refusing to eat anything that doesn’t come from the ground. This is clearly making fun of Thoreau’s idea of bearing food from your own labor. In theory it’s a great system, but when seasons like the Winter move in, it leaves people to starve. One difference between Thoreau and Staton’s ideas is the topic of education. Stanton believes that education is a very important factor to becoming an individual and gaining individual responsibilities, while Thoreau believes our education comes from our life experiences.

 

[Julia Dey]

Thoreau discusses how we are driven by our goals to be successful so we can make lots of money and buy things that we really don’t need. He talks about how we live in a world where people have more than necessary to survive. I think that this offered some interesting insight into the debate about college and the large amounts of debt that students are creating.  People go to college so they can attain an education that will in turn make us money so we can afford the lives we want to live. According to Thoreau we labor away our whole lives. This is even more true in present day. We spend our whole lives working while the retirement age is raising, social security may not even be around by the time we finally decide to retire. Many will not be able to retire. So why do we spend our whole lives working so hard and creating much stress that eventually will kill us? According to Thoreau we don’t need any of this to have a successful life. He suggests that we can live off the land and separate ourselves from society, making our life experience unique. We don’t need to slave our whole life away only to retire at the tail end of our life. We should enjoy ourselves in the moment and not be tied down by education or fancy jobs.

As we discussed in class today, Thoreau was a privileged individual. It’s hard to take his advice into perspective when a Harvard graduate tells you education and hard work is excessive and unnecessary. Now a days you need an education if you want to go anywhere in life. Even a high school education is necessary to get a entry level job. I think that a college education is worth every penny. I believe that the experience alone was a giant step in my life journey. College helps people discover who they are what they want to do in life. It helps them find happiness and allows them to explore all the wonders of life. Not only does it allow us to explore the world through things like studying abroad, but it allows us to explore what’s most important to us.

I think its unfortunate that education is so expensive and not affordable for a majority of people. Nobody should be denied an education. Because it’s so necessary in today’s society I don’t think that such a high price should be put on education.  From a person who is graduating without any college debt, I think it’s important to remember that there are options. Community colleges and public universities provides people with an education that is just as good as a private university for a fraction of the price.With that being said, my final insight is that economy is just as complicated as our education system.

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