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Amos Bronson Alcott (1799-1888), born in Connecticut to a family of farmers, spent most of his adult life in and around Boston and Concord. His father Joseph Alcox, a direct descendent of one of the first settlers who had sailed across the Atlantic in 1630 with Gov. John Winthrop, was a man of little formal education. Besides, the family suffered of financial shortages. Thus, Bronson never enjoyed the education he later enabled for his daughters. Nevertheless, his educational mission did not sway much from the religious mission of the first settlers who had sought to found a new spiritual Garden Eden that would redeem and enlighten the world. Equally, Alcott’s pedagogy was directed toward finding a path of educational enlightenment in par with his religious zeal to cultivate and perfect the human soul. In order to understand Alcott’s pedagogy, it is important to identify American transcendentalism as his ideological inspiration and the myriad pedagogical school of thoughts that shaped his teaching methods. In the following essay, I will begin with examining Alcott’s pedagogy and the theoretical foundations underlying it, which will be further exemplified in his Temple School (1834 – 1837), where he practiced his teachings. Finally, I will conclude with Alcott’s legacy on today’s pedagogy. To bed his teachings into the socio-historical timeframe, I will further draw upon the general education in America during his time and illustrate his relationship to famous contemporaries, including his family. Alcott’s early life shaped his thoughts on education and learning, especially infant and child education, which will be discussed at length later. As a young boy, he did not have the opportunity to attend school regularly, as he had to help out at his father’s farm – common practice in the young Republic. Nevertheless, he managed to teach himself to write by copying letters with chalk on the floor, a method of learning writing he later took up at the Temple School. Since educational instruction in his childhood days was mainly based on memorizing, and neither the schools nor the teachers fostered the individual’s intellect, Bronson’s search for diversity went beyond school environment. In his cousin William A. Alcott Bronson had found an intellectual companion, with whom he ventured beyond the town’s borders to borrow books and further cultivate his mind. Among the most popular books in God-fearing New England besides the Bible was John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” a venerable allegory of salvation (later popularized in Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women”) that teenaged Alcott devoured in his free time. Learning passages by heart, he later claimed that this book had been his most efficient teacher and the dictionary by which he learned English. “The Pilgrim’s Progress” not only gave the contour to Alcott’s pedagogy, it was in fact his chosen way of life, echoing his struggles toward creating earthly perfection. Long after he was forced to close down Temple School, Alcott envisioned and co-founded a utopian community named Fruitlands in 1842, which existed only a few months. Summing up, Bronson Alcott was a self-taught and self-educated man deeply influenced by spiritual thoughts such as conveyed by Bunyan’s book. In a time of religious turmoil in 17th century England, Bunyan wrote one of the first Protestant books, documenting the hardships and endurance needed on one’s own journey of enlightenment, referring to the socio-historical circumstances that prevented equality and religious freedom. In this sense then, Alcott was well prepared for the objections and rejections his pedagogy was to meet with. Inspired by Bunyan, Alcott set out to develop and introduce new educational practices in a society that was neither tolerant for religious nor for educations reforms. Like Alcott, his contemporary and fellow transcendentalist Ralph W. Emerson believed in the spiritual authority of the individual rejecting the shallowness of social religion preached at church. In him, Alcott had found a life-long supporter and friends, both in the intellectual and financial sense. In regard to the spiritual meaning of life, Bunyan presents the story of his protagonist Christian not as mere facts, but as metaphors, encouraging his readers to draw out the spiritual meaning of Christian’s journey. For Alcott, the spiritual meaning of life became the foremost aspect of the human soul that one should strive to develop to perfection, paying attention to one’s moral duties. In reflection on his pedagogy, Elizabeth Peabody’s summary of a conversation between Alcott and his pupils on the purpose of education “to feel rightly, to think rightly, and to act rightly” mirrors his religious conviction. Alcott believed that every child possessed an intuitive spiritual understand that the educator had to draw out. The awakening of the child’s inner intellect is at the core of Alcott’s pedagogy and best attained through Socratic dialogue. However, he neglected the more earthly and practical aspects of education based on his belief that spiritual knowledge is superior to practical knowledge. This turned out to be one of the shortcomings of Alcott’s pedagogy and, among many other factors, lead to the failure of Temple School. However, Bunyan’s book does not quite fit to Alcott’s vision of a non-sectarian religion and the spiritual values that he and his fellow transcendentalists promoted. Alcott’s pedagogy embraced the transcendental philosophies in so far that he had a generalized, non- institutional, religious outlook of love, beneficence, and moral values that were not divorced from Christian idealism altogether. His chosen role model for teaching was in fact Jesus Christ, of whom he thought had lead man to truth through self-realization and not indoctrination. Similarly, Alcott sought to develop self-expression among children. After a brief interim as Yankee Peddler in the South, Alcott began his teaching career in 1823 and applying the basic principles of his pedagogy – the belief to be able to teach children and awaken their spiritual self in order to raise good human beings. Alcott’s teaching methods did not develop until he actually began teaching at various schools. Still in close contact with his cousin William, Bronson continued to develop and perfect his pedagogy. In this context it is important to highlight that the church and family had performed the task of educating children, both in the religious and intellectual field. But as science progressed and the Republic modernized training in the practical, yet higher educational, fields like science, medicine and engineering became more relevant. The first universities and academies, which can be somewhat compared to high schools today, were established at the turn of the 19th century. Bronson himself had had the opportunity to visit such an institution, the Episcopal Academy, for a brief period. But he dropped out at his own choice, as he could not match the practical knowledge or the social upbringing of his peers. The subjects taught at these institutions ranged from languages to bookkeeping, math, algebra and similar subjects that prepared the pupils for their future vocations. Early entrance into work was a common practice in the early Republic, as the financial circumstances of agrarian American demanded it. Furthermore, with America’s independence, the formation of a nation called for a new task in education, namely teaching the notions of nation and citizenship in a federal republic. However, the instruction methods did not revolutionize until the last part of the 19th century when more practical educational reformers like Horace Mann, James G. Carter, and Samuel Hall successfully manifested the new teaching methods and curriculum based on the pedagogy of Pestalozzi, Alcott, and other early educators. In the mid nineteenth century American parents and society held the view of beating the so-called three R’s – reading, writing, arithmetic - into the child, whereas moral upbringing was still being taken care of by society, church, and families and therefore, not part of school curriculum. Alcott’s critique on existing educational practices can best be exemplified through his criticism on preacher, who failed to change the bad habits of the community. Alcott regarded social imparities, war and oppression, and avarice among people as a fault in the human nature of adults, who had not been properly educated. Children, on the other hand, were still pure and untouched by prejudice and other earthly transgressions. The coming generation, if educated properly, would therefore remove all the disparities in American society. Alcott found reassurance in his thinking by the writings of Swiss educator Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, whose writings Alcott had indirectly become acquainted with. None of his biographers and historians on education seem to agree on when and to what extend Alcott’s pedagogy was influenced by Pestalozzi’s. Yet, the similarities in their pedagogy are enough evidence to claim that Alcott’s teaching methods were models on Pestalozzi’s principles. Johann H. Pestalozzi’s career as educator resembles that of Alcott greatly. He, too, had founded a school based on his teaching methods and found even less affirmation and support from parents and society than Alcott did for his educational endeavors. The resonance he did find was among other educator’s, who were drawn to his approach on child instruction. Among his visiting observers was a philanthropist named William Maclure, who brought Pestalozzi’s teching methods to the United States. Maclure engaged Joseph Neef, Pestalozzi’s assistant, to conduct a school in Phildelphia, which opened in 1819, based on Pestalozzi’s teachings. Revolutionary to contemporary America was the inductive approach on object learning, in which the children were taught through observation of nature using demonstrative and graphic aids. Classes were often held outdoors and included physical activity.

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