[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Jones came to Hull House tolecture, discuss the need for labor unions, and to help work in givingaid to the destitute.Addams in turn often supplied the pulpit for Jonesand even performed weddings and funerals.Becoming a kind ofteacher/pastor, Jones called her the  sage of Hull House. She wrote, For many people without church affiliations the vague humanitari-anism the settlement house represented was the nearest approach theycould find to an expression of their religious sentiments. AlthoughHull House never had regular religious services, in the early yearsthere were regular evening meetings with Bible readings and prayers.After the turn of the century, Addams increasingly turned toward ag-nosticism, and fewer traditional expressions of religious sentimentwere seen at Hull House.Addams published many works, but is bestknown for Twenty Years at Hull House.She died on May 21, 1935.AGNOSTICISM.Term coined by Thomas Huxley in 1870, agnosti-cism is a viewpoint that many Unitarian Universalists hold.In the1989 Commission on Appraisal report, The Quality of Religious Lifein Unitarian Universalist Congregations, 3 percent defined them-selves as agnostic/skeptic in their religious position, but more tellingwas the response to a question in the survey asking how they woulddescribe the divine.Two responses that indicate strong agnostic ten-dencies were 11 percent who said  don t know/uncertain and an-other 11 percent who said  unknowable power. While the atheiststates with final certainty that there is no God, the agnostic says thatthere is no way of absolutely knowing if God exists, and thus the ag-nostic will neither affirm nor deny the existence of God because theydo not have the evidence to tell one way or the other.While similarto skepticism, the agnostic will not go to the extreme of saying thatany true knowledge is impossible.The agnostic position is alwaysopen to discovery, willing to doubt, and is never complete.His father,Julian Huxley, also considered himself an agnostic and in Religionwithout Revelation wrote:  I hold that all our life we are oscillatingALCOTT, AMOS BRONSON (1799 1888) " 13between conviction and caution, faith and agnosticism, belief andsuspension of belief. This exploring nature in matters of faith, led H.L.Mencken to say,  The most satisfying and ecstatic faith is almostpurely agnostic.ALCOTT, AMOS BRONSON (1799 1888).A brilliant and progres-sive, but misunderstood, educator, whose Temple School in Bostonwas among the most innovative education institutions of its times.Alcott was born in poverty near Wolcott, Connecticut, and had littleformal schooling.His teaching career began in Cheshire, Connecti-cut, after a stint as an itinerant peddler.He called his school theCheshire Pestalozzi School after the great Swiss educator of his daywhose theories Alcott embraced.His educational innovations in thisclassroom included a large library, decorations for the room, anddesks for each child.Every subject was taught in a different manner.For example, instead of studying maps for geography, the studentsmade a map of their own schoolyard.Alcott s central concern wasteaching children how to learn, but his progressive ideas alienated theparents, and after a couple of years the school was closed.After a brief period in Boston, his next teaching experience was inGermantown, Pennsylvania, in a new private school, which againwas closed when parents learned that Alcott wanted to treat the chil-dren with as much respect as the adults.This school was conducted(1831 34) with his new wife, Abigail May, whom he had married in1830.During his life, Alcott tried many other projects that neverseemed to come to fruition.His family was always in financial diffi-culty, especially after the failure of the Temple School (named for theMasonic Temple it was housed in on Tremont Street in Boston),which lasted from 1834 until 1839 when Alcott admitted an AfricanAmerican child, and all the white children except one were with-drawn by their parents.His philosophy and methods are seen in hisRecord of Conversations on the Gospels (1836).He assumed the spir-itual integrity of young minds with an innate ability to embrace thedivine in their own souls.Jesus was the great educator.After the school s failure, the Alcotts moved to Concord in 1840,where  conversations became one of the few means of income forthe Alcotts.He took whatever work he could find, but mostly sur-vived by being a woodchopper.The family followed the nutritional14 " ALCOTT, LOUISA MAY (1832 1888)philosophy of Sylvester Graham, a vegetarian.Alcott was devoted tohis four daughters, Anna, Louisa, Elizabeth, and May, to whom hetaught the alphabet by acting out the shapes of the letters.He workedon the manuscript about their development, Psyche, for years.Alcottvisited England in 1842 to see the Alcott School, which followed hisimaginative ideas of education.Ralph Waldo Emerson, who oftenlent his friendly support to Alcott, wanted to learn the latest philo-sophical news from England and financed the trip to England.Alcottwas a member of the Transcendental Club, and many of his writ-ings were published in the Dial, including his  Orphic Sayings(1840).Here he encouraged youth to believe that  your heart is an or-acle. In England, Charles Lane taught him some utopian notions.Al-cott returned to America with three companions including Lane whomade up a crowded household in Concord.Vowing to live simply offthe land, Alcott started the utopian community Fruitlands in Har-vard, Massachusetts, but it foundered after less than six months in1843.The family moved around a great deal and moved back to Bostonwhere Alcott s wife Abigail became one of America s first socialworkers.Bronson made frequent appearances around the country asa lecturer [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]