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illness had interfered with financial gain and sturdy habits, he decided to seek a position as school-master near his home. The erratic schooling of early years had been supplemented by reading of the best English authors and by observant, studious hours during the first three years of his travels. His uncle, Dr. Bronson, was master of the Cheshire Academy and through this influence the young man gained an appointment to the Centre District School of Cheshire and began the work of educational reform which was to wield such influence upon his later life and the tone of the community.

Public school education was in its throes of infancy with no weak opposition among some of the most cultured men of the age. The words of a college professor in 1826 are quoted as indicative of the sentiment in Connecticut and her neighbor states against any progressive ideas for elementary schools: "The money appropriated for common schools ought to be applied to better purposes,—to the support of colleges. Little good can ever be done in common schools." Facing such obstacles of opinion, with a brief experience in schools at Bristol and Wolcott, the teacher began his work with courage and enthusiasm. He has said that he followed the old methods at first, then gradually introduced his new ideas for the mental and moral betterment of his pupils. Of the actual principles of Pestalozzi and his followers he was almost wholly ignorant at this time, yet he applied many of the methods of the Swiss reformer without realizing the resemblance. His first care was to improve the physical environment of the school. In place of the cramped benches and heavy routine he expended some of his own income in providing more comfortable chairs, and allowed space around the stove where the children could practice light gymnastics and " play games" under his direction. He established a school library,—then indeed a novelty,—and permitted the use of the books by the members of the pupils' families. Adopting the Pestalozzian theory that the child's mind may be best developed by exercising his faculties directly and making appeal to his sensations and conceptions, Alcott utilized the modes of questions and analysis which later distinguished his Boston

school. His second principle was the education of the moral sense in matters of school discipline. To the consternation of the visitors and many of the parents, he abolished corporal punishment, then regarded as the acme of successful teaching, and established a jury among the scholars to decide cases of wrongdoing.

This Cheshire school began to attract curiosity far and near. A few sympathizers were found and an occasional note of approbation was sounded. Such appeared in the Boston Recorder for May 14, 1827, quoting a Connecticut writer :

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"There is one school of a superior or improved kind, viz., Mr. A. B. Alcott's school in Cheshire,-the best common school in this state, perhaps in the United States." (Memoir I, 75, 76.) Despite such rare praise, however, the teacher met growing opposition among his neighbors, to whom, he says, "the fear of innovation hangs like an incubus upon every measure of improvement." When he ventured to ask for more money for changes in the schoolroom the Yankee penuriousness, which has not been wholly eradicated in matters of school expenditure,

Not alone were his demands

submerged all pride in the school. denied, but a rival school was opened in accord with the established, stilted methods of the past, and after two years of experiment and unselfish effort Alcott found further persistence useless. If his brief service seemed a failure to the average resident, there were a few progressive souls who echoed the prophecy, "The public mind is sufficiently awake to make something grow out of what has been effected."

Alcott's school at Cheshire had won the attention of Rev. Samuel J. May, among other noted thinkers of the time, and from this acquaintance resulted, not alone the later successful ventures in Boston, but also the friendship and marriage with Miss May, whose devotion and efficiency saved the Alcott homestead from many a threatened collapse. With justice the aged husband might poetize of this noble woman,

"If fortune smiled and late-won liberty,

'Twas thy kind favor all, thy generous legacy."

After an unsuccessful attempt at teaching in Bristol, Conn., where his Cheshire enemies prevented sympathy, Alcott accepted the suggestion of the May family, and in the summer of 1828 went to Boston and established the infant school which chronicled his initial effort there. After two years of moderate success and widening influence, he was married and left Boston to fulfill the wishes of some Philadelphia friends that he should have a school in Germantown. The plan was outlined that Mr. Alcott should teach the children up to the age of nine years and then promote them to a school by his friend and co-laborer, Mr. Russell, whose Journal of Education was one of the most effective agencies of educational progress for many years. Although the arrangements were not fully perfected, the Alcotts were very happy in their Philadelphia home, and the educator found a new joy in recording the sensuous and mental phenomena of the first child born in their home. In his school of ten pupils he continued the methods of physical exercises, conversations, and reading from allegorical or fanciful tales. He wrote: "Nothing is presented them without first making it interesting to them, and thus securing their voluntary attention. They are made happy by taking an interest in their own

progress and pursuits." The proposed school in Philadelphia failed to gain firm hold, and in the autumn of 1834 Alcott had returned to Boston and opened his famous school in Masonic Temple. For a time he was the educational hero of the hour, was compared to Milton, and extolled by reformers and faddists alike.

The thirty pupils in 1834 increased for two years and then, by public misinterpretation coupled with a courageous position regarding the attendance of a colored child at the school, the popularity waned, until the school closed in 1839. These five years, however, with Mr. Alcott's fearless, persistent course of teaching, left impress upon the educational world that cannot be obscured. In a survey of the advance during the last two decades in aim and method, in considering the stress now placed upon the imaginative and moral faculties of the child, one may read potent echoes of the ideas which dominated the Alcott school. Two books have remained as authoritative expression of the principles and modes of teaching,-The Record of a School, edited by Miss Elizabeth Peabody, and Conversations on the Gospels, conducted by Mr. Alcott with his youthful pupils. The former volume gained great favor with the public and has been reprinted three times, if no more. latter became the snare which entrapped the philosopher-teacher and caused the first attack from press and pulpit.

The

Readers of Little Men and their experiences in Plumfield school are often unfamiliar with the origin of this strange experience. In the preface to the third edition of Miss Peabody's Record, published in 1874, Miss Alcott, then a famous author, wrote in explanation and tribute: "The methods of education so successfully tried in the Temple long ago are so kindly welcomed now-even the very imperfect hints in the story that I cannot consent to receive the thanks and commendations due to another. Not only is it a duty and a pleasure, but there is a certain fitness in making the childish fiction of the daughter play the grateful part of herald to the wise and beautiful truths of the father,-truths which, for thirty years, have been silently, helpfully living in the hearts and memories of the pupils, who never have forgotten the influences of that time

and teacher." A brief review of some of the plans and accomplishments recorded by Miss Peabody from day to day may be interesting, and prove the justice of accrediting Mr. Alcott with many ideas which have slowly permeated the world of education until now they are an unquestioned part of the program of school life. As in former experiences, primal stress was laid upon the surroundings of the child. To make these attractive and comfortable, quiet, and stimulating to the imagination and taste, was the teacher's care,-an idea fully established to-day, but regarded as waste of money and thought fifty years ago. The crude illustration reproduces the general aspect of

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the room, with its spacious, well-lighted effect, its bookcases and casts, that of Christ in the most conspicuous place. Here were also busts of Plato, Socrates, Shakespeare, Milton and Scott, while on a prominent pedestal before the Gothic window stood Silence," with his finger up, as though he said, "Beware." Comfortable desks and movable tablets were arranged around the room, at sufficient distances to remove the temptation for whispering.

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On the first day of school Mr. Alcott awakened the attention and stimulated both the mental and moral faculties by his

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