Education by Emerson SOAPST

Literature is worthless....without the proper analysis into depths which the deepest oceans cannot compete with. Analysis is key to understanding anything, but when it comes to literature SOAPST is very useful to scratch the surface of a text. Ralph Waldo Emmerson is a highly regarded writer. His famous works are a great read, but all his works require analysis. "Education" is no different. Education is what molds the future members of society, and Emerson knows this quite well. Although he wrote about this topic in detail in the early 1800's, they are more than applicable to today's world. The acronym SOAPST stands for six important aspects of a text: speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, subject, and text. The speaker in this case is Ralph Waldo Emerson, a well-known transcendental writer of the 1800's. The occasion is between 1820's and 1830's and because he sees issues with the system of education. The audience is everyone, but specifically teachers, parents, and students. His purpose is to inform, to inspire, and to reform. The education system lacks all three, and in turn needs all three. His subject is education, but more specifically the problems the education system faces. And finally the tone of his text is confident, informative, thought-provoking, and friendly.