The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education.

Emerson draws a sharp distinction between schooling and education. The “things taught” in formal institutions—facts, languages, methods, and disciplines—are, in his view, instruments rather than the end itself. Education properly understood is the cultivation of the mind’s powers: independence of judgment, moral and intellectual self-reliance, and the ability to turn knowledge into insight and character. The line reflects Emerson’s broader Transcendentalist suspicion of secondhand authority and rote learning, urging learners to treat curricula as tools for self-development rather than as credentials or finished wisdom. It also implies that genuine education continues beyond classrooms, through experience, reading, and reflective engagement with life.