Amos Bronson Alcott - Poems

Classic Poetry Series Amos Bronson Alcott - poems - Publication Date: 2012 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive Amos Bronson Alcott(29 November 1799 – 4 March 1888) Amos Bronson Alcott was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a vegan diet before the term was coined. He was also an abolitionist and an advocate for women's rights. Born in Connecticut in 1799, Alcott had only minimal formal schooling before attempting a career as a traveling salesman. Worried about how the itinerant life might negatively impact his soul, he turned to teaching. His innovative methods, however, were controversial, and he rarely stayed in one place very long. His most well-known teaching position was at the Temple School in Boston. His experience there was turned into two books: Records of a School and Conversations with Children on the Gospels. Alcott became friends with <a href=" Alcott married Abby May in 1830 and they eventually had four surviving children, all daughters. Their second was Louisa May, who fictionalized her experience with the family in her novel Little Women in 1868. Alcott is often criticized for his inability to earn a living and support his family; he often relied on loans from his brother-in-law, Emerson, and others. He was never financially secure until his daughter became a best-selling novelist. Life Early life A native New Englander, Amos Bronson Alcott was born in Wolcott, Connecticut (only recently renamed from "Farmingbury") on November 29, 1799. His parents were Joseph Chatfield Alcott and Anna Alcott (née Bronson). The family home was in an area known as Spindle Hill, and his father, Joseph Alcox, traced his ancestry to colonial-era settlers in eastern Massachusetts. The family originally spelled their name "Alcock", later changed to "Alcocke" then "Alcox". Amos Bronson, the oldest of eight children, later changed the spelling to "Alcott" and dropped his first name. At age six, young Bronson began his formal education in a one-room schoolhouse www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 1 in the center of town but learned how to read at home with the help of his mother. The school taught only reading, writing, and spelling and he left this school at the age of 10. At age 13, his uncle, Reverend Tillotson Bronson, invited to take him into his home in Cheshire, Connecticut to be educated and prepared for college. Bronson gave it up after only a month and was self-educated from then on. He was not particularly social and his only close friend was his neighbor and second cousin William Alcott, with whom he shared books and ideas. Bronson Alcott later reflected on his childhood at Spindle Hill: "It kept me pure... I dwelt amidst the hills... God spoke to me while I walked the fields." Starting at age 15, he took a job working for clockmaker Seth Thomas in the nearby town of Plymouth. At age 17, Alcott passed the exam for a teaching certificate but had trouble finding work as a teacher. Instead, he left home and became a traveling salesman in the American South, peddling books and merchandise. He hoped the job would earn him enough money to support his parents, "to make their cares, and burdens less... and get them free from debt", though he soon spent most of his earnings on a new suit. At first, he thought it an acceptable occupation but soon worried about his spiritual well-being. In March 1823, Alcott wrote to his brother: "Peddling is a hard place to serve God, but a capital one to serve Mammon." Near the end of his life, he fictionalized this experience in his book New Connecticut, originally circulated only among friends before its publication in 1881. Early career and marriage By the summer of 1823, Alcott returned to Connecticut in debt to his father, who bailed him out after his last two unsuccessful sales trips. He took a job as a schoolteacher in Cheshire with the help of his Uncle Tillotson. He quickly set about reforming the school. He added backs to the benches on which students sat, improved lighting and heating, de-emphasized rote learning, and provided individual slates to each student — paid for by himself. Alcott had been influenced by educational philosophy of the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and even re-named his school "The Cheshire Pestalozzi School". His style attracted the attention of Samuel Joseph May, who introduced Alcott to his sister Abby May. She called him, "an intelligent, philosophic, modest man" and found his views on education "very attractive". Locals in Cheshire were less supportive and became suspicious of his methods. Many students left and were enrolled in the local common school or a recently re-opened private school for boys. On November 6, 1827, Alcott started teaching in Bristol, Connecticut, still using the same methods he used in Cheshire, but opposition from the community surfaced quickly; he was unemployed by March 1828. He moved to Boston on www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 2 April 24, 1828, and was immediately impressed, referring to the city as a place "where the light of the sun of righteousness has risen." He opened the Salem Street Infant School two months later on June 23. Abby May applied as his teaching assistant; instead, the couple were engaged, without consent of the family. They were married at King's Chapel on May 22, 1830; he was 30 years old and she was 29. Her brother conducted the ceremony and a modest reception followed at her father's house. After their marriage the Alcotts moved to 12 Franklin Street in Boston, a boarding house run by a Mrs. Newall. Around this time, Alcott also first expressed his public disdain for slavery. In November 1830, he and William Lloyd Garrison founded what he later called a "preliminary Anti- Slavery Society", though he differed from Garrison as a nonresistant. Attendance at Alcott's school was falling. A wealthy Quaker named Reuben Haines proposed he and educator William Russell start a new school in Pennsylvania. Alcott accepted and he and his newly-pregnant wife set forth on December school was established in Germantown and the Alcotts were offered a rent-free home by Haines. Alcott and Russell were initially concerned that the area would not be conducive to their progressive approach to education and considered establishing the school in nearby Philadelphia instead. Unsuccessful, they went back to Germantown, though the rent-free home was no longer available and the Alcotts instead had to rent rooms in a boarding-house. It was there that their first child, a daughter they named Anna Bronson Alcott, was born on March 16, 1831, after 36 hours of the fall of that year, their benefactor Haines died suddenly and the Alcotts again suffered financial difficulty. "We hardly earn the bread", wrote Abby may to her brother, "[and] the butter we have to think about." The couple's only son was born on April 6, 1831, but lived only a few minutes. The mother recorded: "Gave birth to a fine boy full grown perfectly formed but not living". It was in Germantown that the couple's second daughter was born. Louisa May Alcott was born on her father's birthday, November 29, 1832, at a half hour past on described her as "a very fine healthful child, much more so than Anna was at birth." The Germantown school, however, was faltering; soon only eight pupils remained. Their benefactor Haines died before Louisa's birth. He had helped recruit students and even paid tuition for some of them. As Abby wrote, his death "has prostrated all our hopes here." On April 10, 1833, the family moved to Philadelphia, where Alcott ran a day school. As usual, Alcott's methods were controversial; a former student later referred to him as "the most eccentric man who ever took on himself to train and form the youthful mind." Alcott began to believe Boston was the best place for his ideas to flourish. He contacted theologian William Ellery Channing for support. Channing approved of Alcott's methods and promised to help find students to enroll, including his www.PoemHunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive 3 daughter Mary. Channing also secured aid from Justice Lemuel Shaw and Boston mayor Josiah Quincy, Jr. Experimental educator On September 22, 1834, Alcott opened a school of about 30 students, mostly from wealthy families. It was named the Temple School because classes were held at the Masonic Temple on Tremont Street in Boston. His assistant was Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, later replaced by Margaret Fuller. Mary Peabody Mann served as a French instructor for a time. The school was briefly famous, and then infamous, because of his original methods. Before 1830, writing (except in higher education) equated to rote drills in the rules of grammar, spelling, vocabulary, penmanship and transcription of adult texts. However, in that decade, progressive reformers such as Alcott, influenced by Pestalozzi as well as Friedrich Fröbel and Johann Friedrich Herbart, began to advocate writing about subjects from students' personal experiences. Reformers debated against beginning instruction with rules and were in favor of helping students learn to write by expressing the personal meaning of events within their own lives. Alcott's plan was to develop self-instruction on the basis of self-analysis, with an emphasis on conversation and questioning rather than lecturing and drill, which were prevalent in the U.S.

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