Thoreau set his mind to improving pencils. Part of the issue was you couldn't really read about how to make better pencils. Somehow Thoreau figured it out. Better clay, more finely ground graphite, hotter stove to mix the ingredients. For a while Thoreau and Sons made the best pencils in America. They also kept it a secret, and didn't write anything down.
This is an aspect of knowledge, that the hoarding of it makes you money. There was a fantasy that the internet would liberate us with open source information.
The fantasy was in Buddhism that you could just learn all the deepest teachings and than that would liberate you. But you have to grind at meditating at least 2 hours a day, and that's not easy. Plus you need a teacher or a friend to discuss your meditation with. So what happened in America is you get a bunch of people who know a lot of exotic teachings but have a kind of intellectual digestion because the lack of community. Rugged individualism doesn't work at a certain point in spirituality. So the fantasy of open source helping us all get enlightened doesn't work. The teachings that come down to us are vague, and you really need community. People go to r/Buddhism and imagine they can find the secret and get enlightened, when it's an arduous path of intense meditation within a community that is the path.
That's one thing Thoreau was good at, being a friendly open person.
At the school in Concord after he graduated, he'd quit after 10 days because he didn't want to whip the students. He still wanted to be a teacher, but he didn't want to whip children, as required in the day. He had trouble finding a job near his home. He could go out to Kentucky and find a job, but he didn't want to have to go so far away from home. He went to Maine. He overcame his shyness and worked to enjoy meeting new people and traveling. He didn't find a job and instead opened a school in his home. He didn't get enough students to make it lucrative at first, but soon required a second teacher. With his brother, they reached 25 students, teaching from 8-12, and 2-4. His brother John was the head teacher, and Henry the assistant.
Amos Bronson Alcott was a teacher in Boston, and Elizabeth Peabody wrote a book about his school, but when it came out he gave sex education, parents withdrew their children, and when he admitted a black kid, the rest withdrew their kids. There was educational reform in the air, and Thoreau had his ideas about not forcing rote memorization reinforced by the whip.
I want to learn more about Alcott's veganism, and his life, and why his daughter wrote a novel without the father being present.
Thoreau had a lot of field trips in nature, and to learn about the world, to see how a newspaper was made, and how guns were made. They built a boat and spent time on the river. He taught a little archaeology, how to find the burnt stones of Native American encampments.
Henry didn't play with the students are recess, but John did. I've played basketball at lunchtime with students, but outside that, I was never really into overly mixing with students. I had to go to the prom and facilitate dancing, and other social integration activities that maybe I even needed help with, but I'm more like Henry than John Thoreau.
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