More Unitarians
• Alcott, Amos Bronson Burleigh, Celia C. Channing, William Henry Cordner, John Dall, Caroline Wells Healey Furness, William Henry Harper, Frances Ellen Watkins Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Hosmer, Frederick Lucian Johnson, Samuel Judd, Sylvester Latimer, Lewis Howard Lowell, James Russell Ripley, George Savage, Minot Judson Sears, Edmund Hamilton Sullivan, William Laurence Taft, William Howard Walker, James Weiss, John Wendte, Charles William Wooley, Celia ParkerAmos Bronson Alcott
(1799-1888)
 Amos Bronson Alcott |
A brilliant and progressive, but misunderstood educator, whose Temple School in Boston was among the most innovative education institutions of its times. Alcott was born in poverty near Wolcott, Connecticut, and had little formal schooling. His teaching career began in Cheshire, Connecticut after a stint as an itinerant peddler. He called his school the Cheshire Pestalozzi School after the great Swiss educator of his day whose theories Alcott embraced. His educational innovations in this classroom included a large library, decorations for the room and desks for each child. Every subject was taught in a different manner. For example, instead of studying maps for geography, the students made a map of their own schoolyard. Alcott’s central concern was teaching children how to learn, but his progressive ideas alienated the parents, and after a couple of years the school was closed.
After a brief period in Boston, his next teaching experience was in Germantown, Pennsylvania in a new private school, which again was closed when parents learned that Alcott wanted to treat the children with as much respect as the grown-ups. This school was conducted (1831-34) with his new wife, Abigail May, whom he had married in 1830. During his life, Alcott tried many other projects which never seemed to come to fruition. His family was always in financial difficulty, especially after the failure of the Temple School (named for the Masonic Temple it was housed in on Tremont Street in Boston), which lasted from 1834 until 1839 when Alcott admitted an African-American child, and all the white children except one were withdrawn by their parents. His philosophy and methods are seen in his Record of Conversations on the Gospels (1836). He assumed the spiritual integrity of young minds with an innate ability to embrace the divine in their own souls. Jesus was the great educator.
After the school’s failure, the Alcotts moved to Concord in 1840, where “conversations” became one of the few means of income for the Alcotts. He took whatever work he could find, but mostly survived by being a woodchopper. The family followed the nutritional philosophy of Sylvester Graham, a vegetarian. Alcott was devoted to his four daughters Anna, Louisa, Elizabeth and May, to whom he taught the alphabet by acting out the shapes of the letters. He worked on the manuscript about their development, “Psyche,” for years. Alcott visited England in 1842 to see the Alcott School, which followed his imaginative ideas of education. Ralph Waldo Emerson, who often lent his friendly support to Alcott, wanted to learn the latest philosophical news from England, and financed the trip to England. Alcott was a member of the Transcendental Club, and many of his writings were published in the Dial, including his “Orphic Sayings” (1840). Here he encouraged youth to believe that “your heart is an oracle.” In England Charles Lane taught him some utopian notions. Alcott returned to America with three companions including Lane who made up a crowded household in Concord. Vowing to live simply off the land, Alcott started the utopian community, Fruitlands in Harvard, Massachusetts, but it foundered after less than six months in 1843.
The family moved around a great deal, and moved back to Boston where Alcott’s wife Abigail became one of America’s first social workers. Bronson made frequent appearances around the country as a lecturer. With Louisa’s success as a writer the family was finally able to settle in Concord permanently in 1857. After 1859 he was superintendent of the Concord public schools until 1865. In 1879 Alcott founded the Concord School of Philosophy, which remained a summer school of adult education until his death in 1888. Throughout his career he was befriended by the members of the Concord literary circle, and he left a great legacy as an educator and philosopher whose ideas were far in advance of his time.
