What we now call school training, the pursuit of fixed studies

Hear the words of Simon Newcomb, the great self-taught astronomer and mathematician, who reflected on his youth: “What we now call school training, the pursuit of fixed studies at stated hours under the constant guidance of a teacher, I could scarcely be said to have enjoyed.” In this statement, he reveals both the poverty of his early opportunities and the secret strength that carried him into greatness: he did not follow the straight road of conventional schooling, yet he rose to heights that few who walked that path ever reached.

For Newcomb’s lament is not bitterness but truth. He was deprived of the structured school training that others enjoyed—those daily hours of order, recitation, and measured progress. Yet what he lacked in formality, he gained in fire. For knowledge, when not delivered by the hand of a teacher, must be sought with greater hunger, and that hunger becomes a force of destiny. The absence of a guide made him his own guide; the absence of fixed hours made him labor in stolen hours; the absence of method made him discover his own methods. And thus, through hardship, his mind was tempered into steel.

History honors many such figures, denied fixed studies yet exalted by their own discipline. Consider Abraham Lincoln, who read by firelight after long hours of toil, or Michael Faraday, the bookbinder’s apprentice who taught himself the wonders of electricity from scraps of text. These men, like Newcomb, were not nourished by the regular meals of a formal teacher, but by the crumbs they seized and turned into feasts. Their greatness teaches us that though schooling is a gift, it is not the sole path to wisdom.

Yet Newcomb does not scorn school training itself; he merely states that it was not his portion. There is value in the discipline of hours, in the guidance of masters, in the ordered path. But his life proves a higher lesson: that learning is not bound to walls or schedules. The universe itself is the true school, and curiosity the eternal master. The child who looks at the stars learns astronomy as deeply as one who copies charts; the youth who ponders the fall of an apple may discover gravity without a formal lecture. Fixed studies are but tools—the flame of inquiry is the real light.

From this truth flows a powerful teaching: let no man despair if he lacks the privilege of formal education. For wisdom does not belong only to those who sit in neat rows before a blackboard; it belongs to the seeker, the restless, the one who will not rest until he has wrested truth from the world. What matters is not the presence of a teacher, but the resolve to become a student of life itself. Newcomb’s greatness was not born of circumstance, but of will.

Therefore, O children of tomorrow, learn this lesson well: cherish the school training you receive if it is given to you, but do not imagine that without it you are lost. Your mind is your true classroom; your persistence is your greatest curriculum. Seek knowledge in books, in the earth, in the stars, in the wisdom of elders, in the trials of your own experience. If you lack a guide, become your own guide. If you lack fixed hours, make your own hours.

And remember always Newcomb’s life: though he could scarcely be said to have enjoyed the comforts of school training, he became one of the finest astronomers of his age. Let this be your example. For the flame of learning burns not because others light it for you, but because you choose to kindle it yourself. Schooling may shape you, but the true education is the one you claim with your own heart, your own labor, and your own unyielding desire to know.