Quote From The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail--How it Reflects Transcendental Thought

"Our own school, John.  No buildings.  Break out of the classroom prison.  All we need is the sky!"  This quote from Henry David Thoreau in The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail really reflects Transcendental thought.  A big thing that Transcendentalists believed in was the concept of seeking nature and action.  They believed that the best way to learn was to go outside and get experiences of your own.  In this quote, when Henry is talking about John and him having a school of their own, he says, "All we need is the sky!"  This reflects the Transcendental thought of going outside and getting real experiences.  Also, Transcendentalists really believed that formal education got into the way of real learning.  They didn't think that sitting around in a classroom with textbooks and a curriculum telling the teachers exactly what to teach and the students exactly what they needed to learn was a good way for a school to work.  In this quote the typical school classroom is called a prison, which I think fits perfectly with Transcendentalism.  When reading the quote, it is easy to tell that Thoreau was very excited about having his own school where he could dismiss formal education and go out into the world to truly teach his students.  I really like this quote, and I agree with the Transcendental thought that people learn better when they are outside of a classroom and are getting their own experiences.