Why does Emerson criticize schools as bureaucratic institutions in his essay, "education"?

School as bureaucratic institutions are perceived as "costly machinery against nature" by the great transcendentalist. Here the education mode aims to facilitate learning and save labor rather than the patience of nature being practiced.

"Whilst we all know in our own experience and apply natural methods in our own business- - in education, our common sense fails us, and we are continually trying costly machinery against nature, in patent schools and academies and in great colleges and universities."

Emerson contests that there can be no true learning when the teacher teaches several classes in which "genius" are mixed with the "dullards". He believes that at the same time there is no mechanical method which can nurture both minds.

"It requires time, use, insight, event, all the great lessons, and assistance of God; and only to think of using it implies character and profoundness; to enter on this course of discipline is to be good and great."

Emerson states that the child is not taught to be disciplined who asks thought-provoking questions but rather embraces for his curiosity. Such bureaucratic rigidity hinders the wit and creativity and inserts that the hierarchy with authority will rule. Further, he states that the love of knowledge in teachers is lost, "The secret of education lies in respecting the pupil" and not in rules, schedules, and tests.

Hence, Emerson concludes that the child's natural freedom of mind is hindered by the bureaucratic institutions of education.