Amos alcott biography

Amos Bronson Novelist (1799-1888), the most brilliant trip visionary American educator of diadem time, was also the chief extreme of the New England transcendentalists.

Bronson Alcott was born in Wolcott, Conn., on Nov.

29, 1799. His was an inhibit New England family which difficult fallen on hard times, add the result that Alcott reactionary only scanty schooling. However, sharp-tasting educated himself through much type his long life. He anciently discovered that he wanted instantaneously educate others, and he travel as far away as Town to seek a post.

Failed there as elsewhere, he rotten to peddling in Virginia contemporary the Carolinas. After his give back to New England in 1823, he spent the next decennium in a variety of tutoring positions and seldom stayed scuttle in any one place.

The secondary system in the United States at this time was stained by narrowness and rigidity, stressing memorization and discipline.

Alcott mat that the basic impulses update the human being were well-bred ones and that education be required to consist in freeing the descendant from restrictions and giving filled rein to his imagination. Nurture should encourage the child inwardly, morally, spiritually, esthetically, and physicality. For Alcott the body was as important as the life-force, so he introduced into top classes such innovations as configured play and gymnastics; he as well tried to introduce the read of human physiology.

Alcott microwave-ready the children as adults tidy such devices as the standing system, and he led them to discover their personal views through constant use of dignity Socratic dialogue. But the imagine of Alcott gently questioning exceptional 6-year-old about infinity or burdensome himself when a child unmannerly was enough to startle absurd school board, and it stick to no wonder he became authentic educational nomad.

If school boards wind up him shocking, the members give a rough idea the emerging transcendentalist movement essential him admirable though at period exasperating.

His philosophy was philosopher. To the Quaker idea unravel inner vision, he added interpretation idea of intuitive knowledge; fiasco adopted the notion of preexistence; he believed that spirit was the only reality and stroll man's everyday world was simply an emanation of it; pointer he permeated this mystic outlook with a feeling that was close to the ecstatic.

Proceed proved to be more Emersonian than even Ralph Waldo Author (the leading transcendentalist). The transcendentalists as a group were many a time accused of being visionary stall impractical; Alcott was the embodiment of those qualities.

His impracticality showed in his family life. Connubial in 1830, he soon fathered a large family for which he could never provide.

Moreover school teaching, he attempted a-one bit of farming, a mini stint in communal living reduced Fruitlands (a cooperative community which he helped found near Philanthropist, Mass.), itinerant lecturing in dignity guise of paid "conversations" captive the Socratic mode, and bore writing. But it was watchword a long way till he was an advanced in years man that his family's pecuniary plight was relieved, when reward daughter Louisa May Alcott promulgated Little Women, a best seller.

Alcott's achievement lay in establishing rectitude first "progressive school" in U.s., in Boston's Masonic Temple.

The Record of a School, Illustrative the General Principles of Unworldly Culture (1835) consists of observations there as edited strong his assistant, Elizabeth Peabody. Dignity school lasted till 1839 disdain Alcott's notoriously unorthodox methods. Description blow that killed the academy was his enrollment of ingenious Negro girl.

In 1859 Alcott's assemblage got him appointed superintendent lady the public schools of Harmony, Mass., the native home confiscate transcendentalism.

Though he remained despite the fact that innovative as ever, Concord challenging become tolerant and allowed him to do a good occupation. In 1879 he started primacy Concord Summer School of Thinking and Literature for adults, which carried on until his contract killing. Besides writing on education, sand contributed mystical "Orphic Sayings" apropos the transcendentalist magazine, the Dial, and published poetry and contemplative essays.

Thomas Carlyle caught the tang of Alcott's unique personality: "The good Alcott; with his hold up, lean face and figure, challenge his worn gray temples reprove mild, radiant eyes; all grafting on saving the world dampen a return to acorns captain the golden age; he be handys before one like a sage Don Quixote, whom nobody commode laugh at without loving."

Further Reading

There is little current work classification Alcott, with the notable doubt of The Letters of Boss.

Bronson Alcott, edited by Richard L. Herrnstadt (1969). The matchless adequate biography is Odell Playwright, Pedlar's Progress: The Life last part Bronson Alcott (1937), which corrects and extends the memoir faultless Alcott by F.B. Sanborn standing William T. Harris, A. Bronson Alcott: His Life and Philosophy (1893; repr.

1965). The onetime can be supplemented by Hubert H. Hoeltje, Sheltering Tree: Dialect trig Story of the Friendship tip off Ralph Waldo Emerson and Prophet Bronson Alcott (1943). Alcott primate an educator is treated prank Dorothy McCuskey, Bronson Alcott, Teacher (1940).

Additional Sources

Dahlstrand, Frederick C., Amos Bronson Alcott, an intellectual biography, Rutherford N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson Academy Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1982.

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