Amos Bronson Alcott
American transcendentalist philosopher Amos Bronson Alcott developed a theory of education, based on mutual respect and Socratic questioning rather than authority and rote learning.
He fathered Louisa May Alcott, a daughter.
This teacher, writer, and reformer pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He expected to perfect the human spirit and to that end advocated a vegan diet before people coined the term. He, also an abolitionist, advocated for rights of women.
Alcott with only minimal formal schooling attempted a career as a traveling salesman. Worried about potential negative effect of the itinerant life on his soul, he turned to teaching. With his controversial innovative methods, however, he rarely stayed in one place very long. He turned his experience at his most well-known teaching position at the temple school in Boston into two books: Records of a School and Conversations with Children on the Gospels. Alcott, a major figure in transcendentalism, befriended Ralph Waldo Emerson. People heavily criticize his incoherent writings on behalf of that movement. Based on his ideas for human perfection, Alcott founded Fruitlands, a transcendentalist experiment in community living. After seven months, the brief project failed. Alcott continued to struggle financially for most of his life. Nevertheless, he continued focusing on educational projects and opened a new school at the end of his life in 1879.
Alcott married Abby May in 1830, and four daughters eventually survived. Their second daughter, Louisa May Alcott, fictionalized her experience with the family in her novel Little Women in 1868. Alcott, often criticized for his inability to earn a living and to support his family, often relied on loans from other persons, including his brother-in-law and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was never financially secure until his daughter became a best-selling novelist.
(From wikipedia.com, link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Bro...)
“Prudence is the footprint of Wisdom.”
“All unrest is but the struggle of the soul to reassure herself of her inborn immortality.”
“Добрата книга дава плодове, раждайки други книги; нейната слава се носи от век на век, а прочитането й представлява цяла ера в живота на читателите.”
“In the ardor of his enthusiasm, a youth set forth in quest of a man of whom he might take counsel as to his future, but after long search and many disappointments, he came near relinquishing the pursuit as hopeless, when suddenly it occurred to him that one must first be a man to find a man, and profiting by this suggestion, he set himself to the work of becoming himself the man he had been seeking so long and fruitlessly.”
“Man must have some recognized stake in society and affairs to knit him lovingly to his kind, or he is wont to revenge himself for wrongs real or imagined.”
“Of books in our time the variety is so voluminous, and they follow so fast from the press, that one must be a swift reader to acquaint himself even with their titles, and wise to discern what are worth reading.”
“Who knows the mind has the key to all things else.”
“The passions refuse to be organized on a basis of their own; hostile to personal freedom and one another, they rush precipitately into anarchy and mob rule.”
“Ideas first and last: yet it is not till these are formulated and utilized that the devotees of the common sense discern their value and advantages. The idealist is the capitalist on whose resources multitudes are maintained life long. Ideas in the head set hands about their several tasks, thus carrying forward all human endeavors to their issues.”
“The history of books shows the humblest origin of some of the most valued, wrought as these were out of obscure materials by persons whose names thereafter became illustrious. The thumbed volumes, now so precious to thousands, were compiled from personal experiences and owe their interest to touches of inspiration of which the writer was less author than amanuensis, himself the voiced word of life for all times.”
“An author who sets his reader on sounding the depths of his own thoughts serves him best.”
“Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats.”
“Education is that process by which thought is opened out of the soul, and, associated with outward . . . things, is reflected back upon itself, and thus made conscious of its reality and shape. It is Self-Realization. As a means, therefore, of educating the soul out of itself, and mirroring forth its ideas, the external world offers the materials. This is the dim glass in which the senses are first called to display the soul, until, aided by the keener state of imagination . . . it separates those outward types of itself from their sensual connection, in its own bright mirror recognizes again itself, as a distinctive object in space and time, but out of it in existence, and painting itself upon these, as emblems of its inner and super-sensual life which no outward thing can fully portray. . . . A language is to be instituted between [the child’s] spirit and the surrounding scene of things in which he dwells. . . . He who is seeking to know himself, should be ever seeking himself in external things, and by so doing will he be best able to find, and explore his inmost light.”
“Who speaks to the instincts speaks to the deepest in mankind and finds the readiest responses.”
“Concord is a classic land. The names of Emerson and Thoreau and Channing and Hawthorne are associated with the fields and forests and lakes and rivers of this township.”
“To be ignorant of one's ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.”
“One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.”
“Devotees of grammatical studies have not been distinguished for any very remarkable felicities of expression”
“Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable.”
“The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.”
“The less of routine, the more of life.”
“Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary.”
“Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few.”