Tom and I visited Bronson Alcott's Concord School of Philosophy, located just outside of town. This site has an almost magical serenity, and it reminded Tom of the British Secular Schools and similar citizen-centered educational institutions and movements.
Alcott was perhaps the most activist of the transcendentalists, seeking to put principles into life to the utmost possible extent. As a result he challenged others and himself, attempted some of the most extreme lifestyle experiments, and ultimately became a beloved teacher and discussion-leader.
born Nov. 29, 1799, Wolcott, Conn., U.S.
died March 4, 1888, Concord, Mass.
U.S. teacher and philosopher.
The self-educated son of a poor farmer, Alcott worked as a peddler before establishing a series of innovative but ultimately unsuccessful schools for children. He traveled to Britain with money borrowed from Ralph Waldo Emerson and came back with the mystic Charles Lane, with whom he founded the short-lived utopian community Fruitlands outside Boston. Alcott is credited with establishing the first parent-teacher association in Concord, Mass., while he was superintendent of schools there. A prominent member of the Transcendentalists, he wrote a number of books but did not become financially secure until his daughter Louisa May Alcott achieved success.
The following additional notes are courtesy Amy Belding Brown, from a remarkable web biography of Alcott, located at American Transcendentalism Web
Alcott's ideas were instrumental in forming Emerson's thought as recorded in the transcendental seminal work, Nature. Alcott was an early admirer of Thoreau's reasoned philosophy of civil disobedience, and acted upon those principles several years before Thoreau did. He embraced a more broader conception of truth than his friends, asserting that true genius encompassed intellect, nature, and society.
Alcott was an inveterate talker, and loved leading "Conversations," free-flowing discussions on selected topics. Because his conversations lacked systematic thought or continuity, participants were sometimes disappointed at the lack of direction. Yet Alcott was, typically, undaunted. "All the beauty and advantages of Conversation," he wrote, "is in its bold contrasts, and swift surprises... Prose and logic are out of place, where all is flowing, magical, and free."
In his later years, Alcott traveled throughout the Midwest on lecture tours, where he finally achieved recognition for his ideas on education and transcendentalism. During the Civil War, he served as Superintendent of Schools in Concord, and in 1879, thanks to the financial support of his admirers, he was able to achieve a lifelong dream and founded the Concord School of Philosophy. One of the first summer schools for adults, the School of Philosophy continued for nine years and drew people from all over the United States.
Alcott outlived his closest transcendentalist friends, dying on March 4, 1888, two days before his famous daughter, Louisa, succumbed to the long-term effects of mercury poisoning. The Concord School of Philosophy closed in July of that year after holding a memorial service honoring Alcott.
Bloggers Tom Morris and Jim Moore, September 11, 2006
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