If you care about climate change, racial justice or equality, thank a transcendentalist
The 19th century movement has much to say to us today.
A wooden marker denotes the site of Henry David Thoreau s cabin in Walden Pond, where he wrote his famous essay Walden.(Kirkikis / Getty Images)
By John A. Buehrens
.
Often we first meet them in literature classes: chiefly through Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. Yet they were more than writers, or individualists, praising “Self-Reliance,” or living at Walden Pond. Historically, transcendentalism was a movement of creative thinkers and activists, working for both spiritual and social transformation. They have much to say to us yet today.
Wed, 03/10/2021 - 3:44pm sarahp MARY (ARNOLD) PEABODY
BRISTOL Mary (Arnold) Peabody, 83, was lifted to Heaven on Sunday, March 7, 2021, from EastView in Middlebury, Vt. Daughter of Elizabeth (Hamlin) Arnold and Philip E. Arnold, Mary was born on April 25, 1937, in Worcester, Mass. She grew up in western Massachusetts and southern Vermont, graduated Jacksonville (Vt.) High School in 1955, matriculated at the University of Vermont, where she met her future husband, Jim Peabody, and graduated in 1959 with a B.S. in Home Economics.
Mary and Jim were married on Sept. 5, 1959, in Jacksonville, settled first in Vergennes, Vt., and subsequently moved to Bristol, Vt., where they have lived for 59 years.
This process took decades. By the mid-1960s, still only about half of states offered funding for kindergarten programs. The final growth spurt took place over the next decade, according to a study by Dartmouth economist Elizabeth Cascio. Many states especially in the South and West saw kindergarten as a way to ultimately save money.
“[States thought] this is going to reduce grade repetition where we have to pay for a kid to go through this grade twice,” Cascio said.
By the latter half of the 20th century, the K-12 school system had been largely established.
This melding of kindergarten with the broader education system led to a kind of natural merger. By virtue of being in the same buildings and under the same administrative auspices, kindergartens naturally became more academic.