Record of a School

by Megan Marshall

Elizabeth Palmer Peabody's Record of a School is a collection of notes on Bronson Alcott's dialogues with his students at the Temple School of Boston. It was first published in 1835. In 1836, after half of the first printing of 1,000 was destroyed by fire, a second edition, with a new preface, was printed. The book received considerable attention in the New York press, which was unusual considering that it was a small volume about a tiny school. By 1838, the school was shut down after Bronson Alcott had shocked Boston with a subsequent publication about the school. However, the importance of the Temple School, Bronson Alcott, and his methods has been acknowledged by generations of educators, and the book is the remaining record of the school. Contains an informative introduction by Megan Marshall, author of The Peabody Sisters.

Genres: Education

226 pages, Paperback

First published June 13, 2006

About the author

Megan Marshall is the author of The Peabody Sisters, which won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in biography and memoir. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, The Atlantic, and Slate. A recipient of Guggenheim and NEH fellowships, Marshall teaches narrative nonfiction and the art of archival research in the MFA program at Emerson College.

Her biography of Margaret Fuller is the winner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book that I purchased at the Prudence Crandall School museum. Elizabeth Peabody took notes while Bronson Alcott taught a group of children at the Temple School (1834-1836). It was shocking to me how much Christianity/ spirituality (Bronson's version of it) was focused on with children as young as four years old. There was a preponderance of judgment by Alcott and Peabody about the children's character. The children's were guided by Alcott and sometimes Peabody to self-analysis, and they encouraged the children to judge their peers. I did not warm up to Elizabeth Peabody who made her own comments from time to time. At one point, she disagreed with Bronson who did not approve of capital punishment. As an educator, I found some of it very interesting: They understood the demands placed on children during written expression. The children regularly recorded their experiences and thoughts in journals. During lessons, there was a tremendous amount of questioning. When asked, "What is a word?" one child responded, "something made of letters" while another replied, "a thought shaped out by letters." When asked, "what is the meaning of ?" a child responded, "to bring together." What is the meaning of ?" a child responded, "to collect again." Latin was taught. Elizabeth Peabody went on to found the first American kindergarten. Alcott was Louisa May Alcott's father, which I found so hard to imagine as she was such a free thinker. His style was authoritarian with the children at this school and yet his daughters were creative, independent women. I am interested in learning more about the Peabody sisters. I always want to know more about the Alcotts.