Method of Spiritual Culture.
Peabody’s Defense of Bronson Alcott
[Peabody, Elizabeth P.] Method of Spiritual Culture; being an Explanatory Preface to the Second Edition of Record of a School. Boston: James Munroe & Co., 1836.
8vo.; string-bound; first page uncut; rough edges; irregular binding; with stamp of New York State Library on title page; substantial but unobstructive edgewear and wrinkling.
A pamphlet printing of Elizabeth Peabody’s “Explanatory Preface” to the 1836 second edition of Bronson Alcott’s Record of a School. Peabody worked as assistant to the experimental education pioneer Bronson Alcott (father of the celebrated author Louisa May Alcott) at his Temple School in Boston. Alcott, a teacher, writer, and philosopher, advocated a revolutionary style of education, focusing on conversational style and self-instruction, and avoiding the strict punishment used in schools at the time. Peabody began working with Alcott when the school opened in 1834, and published her account as his assistant in 1935’s Record of a School. The following year, Alcott began work on another book about the Temple School. Among the subjects he covered were sex and religion, of which he “was embarrassingly honest in telling the truth about the first, and in expressing his doubts about the second” (Bedell 130-31). Before the book’s publication, Peabody wrote Alcott to express her doubts, asking that he delete some of the questionable passages. Alcott took offense to her suggestion, thinking “she had deserted him” and published the book without her that December (ibid). The book immediately received harsh criticism from the press, one reviewer calling him “either insane or half-witted” and the book “one-third absurd, one-third blasphemous, and one-third obscene” (Marshall 325).
Peabody defended her former boss, writing Method of Spiritual Culture as a preface to the book, which, Alcott noted in his journal, was to be inserted in the Second Edition of the Record “now in press--and 1000 copies have been struck off, and stitched in pamphlet form, for distribution among friends, and others.” He goes on, “It contains some lucid statements of the methods and principles of the school, and is, I think, an improvement upon the first edition of the Record. Additions and revisions, are made in the second edition--which will be, I think, more worthy of the public attention. It will be received, I think, with more favour, than even that” (Myerson 27).
Peabody’s preface begins, “The word now put to the press, for the second time, has, in several particulars, been misunderstood...I here attempt another explanation of the psychology, which is made the basis of Mr. Alcott's School, with the principles and methods, which are evolved from it; intending to alter that chapter considerably, although there is nothing in it, which I wish to take back, or by which I did not mean something important.” On the earlier reviews, she acknowledges, “The objections made against the intellectual influences of Mr. Alcott’s school, by those who do not know much about it, are chiefly of the negative character, which the foregoing pages have attempted to answer” (35).
She provides an explanation of Alcott’s teachings and views toward arithmetic, geography, journal-writing, science, nature, the English language, spirituality, and more, writing “… I have no doubt at all, that as far as regards this particular school, the methods have been in every respect salutary, and the best possible for the members of it. General intelligence, order, self-control, and goodwill, have been produced to a degree that is marvelous to see” (13).
Despite her defense, Alcott and Peabody’s relationship was never truly restored. However, his influence on was instrumental in Peabody’s opening her own school, what would be the first English-language kindergarten in the United States, embracing the Alcott-like premise that children’s play has developmental and educational value.
Sources:
Bedell, Madelon. The Alcotts: Biography of a Family. New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1980.
Marshall, Megan. The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism. New York: Mariner Books, 2006.
Myerson, Joel. “Bronson Alcott's ‘Journal for 1836.’” Studies in the American Rennaisance. 1978.
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