Horace Mann and the Twelfth Annual Report to the Massachusetts Board of Education
It may be hard to imagine that going to school was a rare occurrence for children in the United States in the years before the Civil War. Only in the last half of the 1800’s, was an elementary school system provided and funded by the State a common practice. (Tharpe pg. 15) At that time laws requiring parents to send their children to elementary schools became the norm. The person most commonly credited with the development of widespread education for all citizens in the United States is Horace Mann.
Prior to Mann’s efforts in the 1830’s and 1840’s, only private schools existed and education was generally limited to the very rich (Cremin pg. 24). The vast majority of Americans received no formal education and instead simply followed their parents into the workforce. As part of the reform movements of the 1800’s, when a lot of the roles of the state in society were questioned and changed, Mann and his like- minded colleagues fought for an educational system that was open to everyone.
Mann was born into privilege and was one of the few Americans that had access to an education. He was educated at Brown University and later studied law. While a lawyer he became involved in Massachusetts’ state politics. As a state official he sought an appointment to the newly created state Board of Education. In 1937 he was “appointed secretary of the newly organized board of education” (Cremin pg. 140). Required by state law to make an annual report to the legislature on the condition of the state's school districts and programs, Mann turned the legal mandate into a yearly treatise on educational philosophy and methods.
These annual reports laid out the arguments and philosophy behind the need for the benefits of widespread compulsory public supported education. Over 150 years later these reports are still remarkable in the clarity and logic of Mann’s thoughts. Even today they are widely circulated and read in Education departments of Universities and in Scholl Boards across all of America. The ideas and arguments he set forth are raised over and over in debates on the value and need for funding for public schools and in the endless debates on school voucher programs. They are in many ways the logical and philosophical underpinning of our entire system of education.
The Twelfth Annual Report published in 1848 is considered the most famous of his annual reports. This primary source report deals with the broad topic of education and national welfare. This primary source is a public record written to the people of Massachusetts. Horace Mann wrote this document to set expectations to the people of Massachusetts and the nation outlining his views on what American education in a democracy should look like. In this report he makes three main points.
The first point made in the report is that education is the great equalizer in society and without an open access to a quality a society can never truly be free and equal. He states in the report that “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” (Mann pg. 4). He argues that the goal of a free society must allow every citizen to “strive to obtain for themselves and their families that the necessities and conveniences of life” and not “accept what is needed for life form the hand of charity or extorted by poor laws” (Mann pg. 4). His view is that “education should be universal and complete to obliterate fractious distinctions in society” (Mann pg. 4).
The second argument is in the report is that in the best interest of society that the public be educated and that and ignorant public is creates a burden that is far greater than the cost of an education. In his words “every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power” (Mann pg. 7). He argues that all of society will improve as the “intellectual consistency” of all citizens increases. If there is an educated society then “contributions to the common good and wealth of all would numberless and inestimable value” (Mann pg 8). He also argues that the current wealthy class would benefit from the education of the masses. “To men of property he asserted that their security and prosperity depended upon having literate and law-abiding neighbors who were competent workers and who would, via the common school, learn of the sanctity of private property” (Mann pg. 10).
His final point in the Twelfth Annual Report is that a republican form of government is too complicated to function without an educated public making informed decisions in selecting those who represent them. His view was that through education and the resulting educated public, “educated legislators will never surpass their elector” (Mann pg 13). He also was adamant that a well informed and educated public was critical to understand the “true nature and functions of a government under which they live” (Mann pg. 15).
In other annual report he set out his ideas on education. May of these ideas were radical at their time and were not often well received. He argued that such education to ensure equality and equal treatment for everyone that this education should be paid for, controlled, and sustained by an interested public (Cremin pg. 157). Further he argues that a free society requires that this education will be best provided in schools that embrace children of all diversities. An education in a diverse setting furthers the goals of free society which he argues cannot be done when that education is provided in a sectarian or religious setting (Cremin pg 157). Finally he argued that that this education must be taught by the spirit, methods, and discipline of a free society; and which can only be provided by well-trained, professional teachers (Tharp pg. 215).
As is clear in his Twelfth Annual Report, Mann's commitment to common schools stemmed from his belief that political stability and social harmony depended on universal education. One hundred and fifty year after its publication, the report still stands out as a call to educate all of our society and a way of making all of our lives better and allowing us to live in greater freedom.
References
Cremin, Lawrence A. 1957. The Republic and the School: Horace Mann on the Education of Free Men. New York: Teachers College Press.
Mann, Horace. Education and prosperity. From his Twelfth Annual Report as Secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education, 1848. [Boston: Directors of the Old South Work, 1903].
Messerli, Jonathan. Horace Mann: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1972.
Tharp, Louise Hall, Until victory: Horace Mann and Mary Peabody, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1977
