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Bronson Alcott, a la Shmoop. In earlier times, the American classroom was
basically aÉ Pit of Despair.
Every day, students passed over the threshold and suffered while their teachers drilled
the same facts into their heads over and over and over again.
As if this weren't torture enoughÉ
Éstudents were forced to copy the works of great authors and thinkers in order to learn
how people wrote about the weather in ancient Greece. Not very useful.
In these dark days, many students went mad with boredom, and many more expired of hand
cramps. But then! On the horizon, there appeared a
hero, a knight in shining armor: Bronson Alcott.
Alcott was not an educator by training; in fact, he only became a teacher to get out
of debt.
Your teacher would probably find that hysterically funny.
At any rate, once Alcott was in the classroom, he took... steps.
Gone was the whole copying-other-writers thing!
Instead, Alcott favored writing from personal experience.
He believed that students could tie the events in their livesÉ like what they did on summer
vacation É to the subjects they learned in class.
Alcott also believed in self-analysis, and that students learned best when they were
encouraged to talk amongst themselvesÉ
Édebating difficult questions like:
What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
Sadly for our hero, his progressive methods and theological leanings got him booted out
of Boston, where he was working as a teacher.
Alcott moved his family to Concord, Massachusetts, where he became acquainted with men like Ralph
Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
Not that they didn't think Alcott was crazy, too... but every small town needs a resident
lunatic.
While Alcott's ideas gained traction in later years, if you know of him today, it's likely
because he had a famous daughter:
Louisa May Alcott, who authored several 19th century novels aboutÉ midgets.
While Alcott may not have been able to make dramatic changes to the American education
system while he was alive, his ideas are widely used today.
Without Alcott, many of the innovative tools your teacher uses todayÉ like Shmoop!...
wouldn't exist...
...and school would still be a Pit of Despair.