HORACE MANN
" The Father of American Education"," Horace Mann, was born in Franklin, Massachusetts, in 1796. Mann's schooling consisted only of brief and erratic periods of eight to ten weeks a year. Mann educated himself by reading ponderous volumes from the Franklin Town Library. This self education, combined with the fruits of a brief period of study with an intinerant school master, was sufficient to gain him admission to the sophomore class of Brown University in 1816" (4, Cremin). He went on to study law at Litchfield Law School and finally received admission to the bar in 1823 (15, Filler). In the year 1827 Mann won a seat in the state legislature and in 1833 ran for State Senate and won." Throughout these years Horace Mann maintained a thriving law practice, first in Dedham and later in Boston" (5, Cremin).
" Of the many causes dear to Mann's heart, non was closer than the education of the people. He held a keen interest in school policy. April 20, 1837, Mann left his law practice and accepted the post of the newly founded Secretary of Education" (6, Cremin). During his years as Secretary of Education Mann published twelve annual reports on aspects of his work and programs, and the integral relationship between education, freedom, and Republican government. He wanted a school that would be available and equal for all, part of the birth-right of every American child, to be for rich and poor alike. Mann had found "social harmony" to be his primary goal of the school. (8, Cremin).
Horace Mann felt that a common school would be the "great equalizer." Poverty would most assuredly disappear as a broadened popular intelligence tapped new treasures of natural and material wealth. He felt that through education crime would decline sharply as would a host of moral vices like violence and fraud. In sum, there was no end to the social good which might be derived from a common school (8, Cremin).
"What is most important about Mann's view of the common school is that he saw in it an educational purpose truly common to all" (12, Cremin). As Secretary of the Board of Education, Mann presided over the establishment of the first public normal school in the United States at Lexington in 1839. Mann also reinvigorated the 1827 law establishing high schools, and fifty high schools were created during his tenure. He also persuaded the Massachusetts legislature to establish a six month minimum school year in 1839 (15, Filler). Mann also led the movement to set up teacher institutions throughout the state (21, Cremin).
In 1848 Mann resigned as Secretary of Education and went on to the U.S. House of Representatives and then took the post of President of Antioch College in 1852. He stayed at the college until his death in August 27, 1859. Two months before that he had given his own valedictory in a final address to the graduating class; " I beseech you to treasure up in your hearts these my parting words: Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for Humanity" (27, Cremin).
Mann had won his victory as the public school soon stood as one of the characteristic features of American life - A "wellspring" of freedom and a "ladder of opportunity" for millions.
Works Cited
Cremin, Lawrence A. The Republic and the School: Horace Mann On the Education of Free Men. New York: Teachers College, 1957.
Filler, Louis. Horace Mann on the Crisis in Education. Ohio: Antioch Press, 1965.
Prepared by Pam Mason-King
EDUCATIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF HORACE MANN. Perhaps no one more deserves the title of father of American public school education than Horace Mann. This list contains many of his contributions to education and events in his life.
1. EARLY YOUTH. Horace Mann was born in Franklin, Massachusetts, May 4, 1796. His youth was lived in poverty and hardship on the family farm. His schooling was limited to about three months of instruction during each year. However, he mastered the tenets of the orthodox Calvinist faith by the age of ten. He rejected this faith when he was twenty-three years old in favor of Unitarianism. His remarks to the graduating class at Antioch College a few weeks before his death, "Be ashamed to die before you have won some battle for humanity," reflects his Unitarian convictions. These beliefs, accepting the possibility of improvement of the human race, played no small role in Mann's efforts to establish free, public, non-sectarian education for every man and woman.
2. BROWN UNIVERSITY. After receiving some private tutoring, Mann qualified for the sophomore class at Brown. When he graduated, he studied law and was admitted to the Bar in 1823.
3. POLITICIAN. Between 1827 and 1848, Horace Mann had a brilliant career, first as a State Representative and then as a Senator, in the Massachusetts Legislature. He was active in establishing a state mental hospital in Worcester, Massachusetts.
4. SECRETARY OF THE MASS. STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION. In 1837 Horace Mann accepted the position of First Secretary of the State Board of Education in Massachusetts. His humanitarian impulses led him to abandon a highly promising career in politics in favor of education. He took office at a time when glaring weaknesses existed in public education in Massachusetts. Mann achieved the following in his twelve years as First Secretary:
a. Campaigned for Education. Realizing the need for public support and public awareness of the educational problems of poor teaching, substandard materials, inferior school committees and pupil absences, Mann campaigned throughout the State. This campaign was eminently successful. The schools were improved everywhere in the State.
b. Established Schools For Teacher Training. The first Normal School for Teachers was established in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1839 through the efforts of Mann.
c. Established School District Libraries. Horace Mann improved education by advocating successfully the establishment of free libraries.
d. Won Financial Backing for Public Education. Mann knew the importance of money in making educational progress. Through his efforts, the wages of teachers were more than doubled, supervision of teaching improved with compensated school committees, fifty new secondary schools were built, State aid to education doubled, and textbooks and educational equipment improved.
e. Extended His Influence Beyond Massachusetts. Horace Mann edited the "Common School Journal" and wrote twelve Annual Reports which became famous. Some important Annual Reports were;
(1) Fifth Annual Report (1841). Mann argued successfully that economic wealth would increase through an educated public. It was therefore in the selfinterest of business to pay the taxation for public education.
(2) Seventh Annual Report (1843). Horace Mann inspected and appraised favorably the Prussian school system. This report led to widespread improvement .of education through the educational theories of Pestalozzi, Herbart and eventually Froebel.
(3) Tenth Annual Report (1846). Mann asserted that education was a natural right for every child. It is a necessary responsibility of the State to insure that education was provided for every child. This report led to the adoption of the first State law requiring compulsory attendance in school in 1852.
(4) Twelfth Annual Report (1848). He presented a rationale for the support of public education through taxation. Society improves as a result of an educated p ublic. He argued for non-sectarian schools, so the taxpayer would not be in the position of supporting any established religion with which he might disagree in conscience.
5. LAST YEARS. Horace Mann resigned in 1848 to take a seat vacated in the United States Congress. In 1853 he assumed the Presidency of Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. He became President to implement his educational ideas in higher education. This college was coeducational and non-sectarian. The labor of raising funds for Antioch College weakened his health. He died August 2, 1859.
A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.
Horace Mann
A human being is not attaining his full heights until he is educated.
Horace Mann
A teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
Horace Mann
Be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity.
Horace Mann
Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves.
Horace Mann
Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment which is, at once, best in quality and infinite in quantity.
Horace Mann
Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.
Horace Mann
Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.
Horace Mann
Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.
Horace Mann
Evil and good are God's right hand and left.
Horace Mann
Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality and benevolence, the other from pride or fear.
Horace Mann
Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.
Horace Mann
If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.
Horace Mann
If evil is inevitable, how are the wicked accountable? Nay, why do we call men wicked at all? Evil is inevitable, but is also remediable.
Horace Mann
It is well to think well; it is divine to act well.
Horace Mann
Jails and prisons are the complement of schools; so many less as you have of the latter, so many more must you have of the former.
Horace Mann
Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.
Horace Mann
Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever.
Horace Mann
Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.
Horace Mann
Much that we call evil is really good in disguises; and we should not quarrel rashly with adversities not yet understood, nor overlook the mercies often bound up in them.
Horace Mann
Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.
Horace Mann
Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise.
Horace Mann
Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.
Horace Mann
The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.
Horace Mann
To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.
Horace Mann
Two golden hours somewhere between sunrise and sunset. Both are set with 60 diamond minutes. No reward is offered. They are gone forever.
Horace Mann
Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as his time.
Horace Mann
When a child can be brought to tears, and not from fear of punishment, but from repentance he needs no chastisement. When the tears begin to flow from the grief of their conduct you can be sure there is an angel nestling in their heart.
Horace Mann
Life and Works of Horace Mann, Volume 2
http://books.google.com/books?id=4AqdAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Page 3
“Indeed, the only consideration of weight to prove the inefficiency of our public schools to evaluate and dignify the people who sustain them, is the indifference and neglect into which they have fallen amongst themselves: and yet they have not wholly fallen into forgetfulness in a community which rouses itself to reclaim them.”
“It may, indeed, be said that it was the freedom of thought, constituting as it did, the main element of Protestantism, which has given superiority to the communities where common schools have flourished. …yet could Protestantism itself have survived without the alliance of a system of public instruction?”
Page 4
“The public voice, the public press, and the public mind have been prolific of that doubtful virtue, which substitutes empty commendations of what is good for earnest efforts to procure it.”
Mann believed that each individual would be influenced by others, and that it was the duty of others to be good influences, teach correctly, to enforce good qualities and correct learning. Everyone is “encompassed by a universe of relations, each one of which will prove a blessing or a curse,” (6). Horace Mann actually goes so far as to say that neglecting a child physically is less than neglecting a child intellectually.
Page 7, “a proper education of the rising generation is the highest earthly duty of the risen.”