Amos
Bronson Alcott is best remembered as the father of Louisa May
Alcott, whose famous book, Little Women, was a fictional
account of their family life. But Amos Alcott, along with his
friends Emerson and Thoreau, was also a leader of 19th century
idealism, expressed in the Transcendentalist movement. Alcott,
like the other transcendentalists of the 1830 and 1840s, believed
that people and nature were basically good, but are corrupted
by society and its institutions, particularly politics and religion.
As a teacher, Alcott was highly controversial in his conversational
method of teaching. He advocated against the strictness and reliance
on reinforcement through punishment popular in his day, but instead
sought to make learning interesting and fun by engaging students
in dialogue, and exposing them to art, music and nature, in addition
to traditional subjects. He also stressed the need for physical
education, and advocated a vegan diet, because his goal wasn't
to develop intellectuals, but to help students to become better
people. Alcott was actively involved in the many movements for
change of his time - he was a strong supporter of the suffrage
movement working for women's right to vote, and an abolitionist
seeking to abolish slavery.
